A SIMPLE OVEREMPLOYMENT PROBLEM:

Are unemployed workers a good thing? The math of productivity says yes: Every time a worker with below-average output per hour exits the work force, economy-wide output per hour increases. Ban low-wage work entirely and "productivity" would skyrocket. So would prices. Total output and standards of living, especially for lower-income households, would fall.

Perhaps that seems a reductio ad absurdum, undermining a sound principle by taking it to a logical extreme -- except that, in his case for a national productivity strategy, Rob Atkinson embraces it: "The former CEO of McDonald's reported that, in response to the possibility that the minimum wage will be raised to $15 an hour, McDonald's began accelerating its deployment of self-serve kiosks and other automation technologies," he writes. "Wonderful! Fewer low-wage jobs."

Is that "wonderful"? McDonald's can now serve the same number of customers with fewer hours of human labor. Perhaps the restaurant will replace four or five cashiers with a single IT technician and some expensive equipment. In the standard economic formulation, we have achieved "productivity growth."

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