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Comment by BobbyJo | Hacker News Reader

I think this is exactly what parent meant. "How much is made" doesn't strictly mean "profit" in terms of a for-profit institution. The net output of a non-profit is directed somewhere, either internal or external to the entity, and that can loosely be considered "making money", or at least in the sense I believe parent meant.

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GDP is denominated in dollars, so this seems to be a somewhat vacuous position - yes, that's how we measure economic activity, but it doesn't have to involve money changing hands.

Productivity is based on the value of the work done, not any profitability assessment. The original post which set off this chain asserted it was about not how much workers get done but how much money is made off of what workers get done ... which is unambiguously wrong.

> The original post which set off this chain asserted it was about not how much workers get done but how much money is made off of what workers get done... which is unambiguously wrong

I don't believe the difference is consequential here, since the originating point still holds even using your definition. I wouldn't say it's "wrong" so much as imprecise, as the way I interpreted the statement would encompass your more detailed description.

It's like when I ask people "how much money" they make, I intend them to include non-cash compensation in the number (in dollar equivalent), and pretty much all do without additional prompting.

Yes. My point was that when people read these articles they think of a much more casual definition of productivity that has more to do with a sense of "getting things done," but the word is jargon for something that has little to do with that.

I was playing loose with the jargon meaning for sure, but I'm pulling out to what articles in the Washington Post or other economics-focused media really care about: the impact to corporate bottom line.

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