Technology is of little help

Over the last 50 years, there is no doubt that technology has made significant contributions to GDP and thus to national productivity. However most technology soon reduces in price and thus any contribution is soon lessened. Worse, we appear to be in a relative technology slump - there has been little true innovation in the last few years.

So, technology is not going to come to our rescue. We have to take the 'low road' and pick up all the small productivity gains we can. We need a systematic, national productivity drive with government addressing policy and infrastructure and companies addessing skills and culture. We can create impact but it's not going to be easy.