Chris Johns

That's what productivity growth means.

There are all sorts of ancillary questions associated with productivity.

productivity growth.

You can have it and it can lead to living standards.

One of the problems that we've had is the meager productivity growth in recent decades and the fact that that meager growth has been shared very unequally.

And that's the inequality thing that people talk about, the distributional consequences or outcomes of productivity growth.

These things are incredibly complicated.

Productivity growth is only something itself that we imperfectly understand.

There's no button or lever that you can push or pull to

in government that says increase productivity growth.

That's what they would all love to do.

But you've got to do an awful lot of hard yards in terms of policy, in terms of structural economic policies, creating the conditions for productivity to, in a kind of magical way, improve.

And that means flexible labor markets.

It means a culture that fosters innovation.

It means an entrepreneurial culture to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises.

It's a whole rake of very hard things to do.

because each policy lever and button that you push in this regard involves trade-offs, involves winners and losers, and you're going to make some people unhappy.

And if you're the kind of politician, looping back to our first discussion about Keir Starmer, who is so reluctant to push any button, pull any lever, you're not going to get anywhere.

But one of the reasons why the UK is in its mess and the US economy isn't is because of that productivity growth story, Jim.

It's quite remarkable.