TIM HAZLEDINE: The deadweight of white collar drones

Thu, 08 Oct 2020

One of the surprises delivered by covid is how little effect it seems to be having on output in the economy (level 4 lockdown excepted).People have suggested this is because working at home is a good substitute for going to work. I have my doubts about this, but in any case, I am going to suggest a more radical possibility. It may be the disruption to what are mainly white-collar office jobs has had little effect on GDP because many, perhaps most, of these jobs don’t produce anything of value in the first place.These are...

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