If output displacement hides productivity, so does input displacement.

Sir, Dr Peter Johnson, responding to Diane Coyle’s “Conventional measures pose the wrong productivity question” August 16, argues that “Shift in output definition [is] at the heart of the productivity puzzle” and concludes “We are not counting apples for apples”,August 20.

As one example of “output displacement” output Johnson writes that “A great deal of retail banking activity has been displaced to private individuals [as a result of internet technology] and is not included in the calculations of output or productivity.”

There is also the other side of that same mirror namely that which you could call input displacement. 

In a letter to you referring to that same article by Diane Coyle I mentioned a post by Dan Dixon, in Bank of England’s “bankunderground” blog, titled “Is the economy suffering from the crisis of attention?” 

It said, “With the rise of smartphones in particular, the amount of stimuli competing for our attention throughout the day has exploded... we are more distracted than ever as a result of the battle for our attention. One study, for example, finds that we are distracted nearly 50% of the time.”

Sir, if those interruptions were recorded for what they really are, reduced working hours and increased consumption of distractions, we would probably see a dramatic increase in productivity, in real salaries, in voluntary unemployment and in GDP.

In other words our current economic compasses might not be working properly, risking taking us in the wrong direction.

@PerKurowski