Allister Heath reckons economists are complaining too much about Britain’s dismal productivity:
Too few economists seem prepared to accept that at least some of the UK’s productivity shortfall was a good thing. It happened because a large number of low productivity workers found work in the UK, dragging down the average. Similar workers have not been able to get jobs in other countries.
Productivity in countries like France, he says, is only higher because they have kept all their low productivity people from getting jobs:
To see why this matters, consider the following thought experiment: imagine two countries with identical economic characteristics and where the bottom 10pc of workers contribute 5pc of output. In the first country, a new law is passed banning them from working. They all lose their jobs, GDP drops by 5pc – but productivity shoots up by 5.5pc. Now imagine that all these workers move to the…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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