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Hell, how can we compete even in low-tech markets?

Well I think I have spotted one way we could knock their socks off and put ourselves well and truly at the top of the productivity and earnings ladder.

What's more, the solution is incredibly simple: remind everyone that their TV set has an off-button.

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You see, according to this report, the average US family views over eight hours of TV per day.

Yes, that's right -- they spend more time passively watching the boob-tube than they do sleeping or working.

I strongly suspect that the figures here in NZ are just as bad, if not worse.

Now, imagine how much our productivity and GDP would rise if the average Kiwi took just one hour of their TV viewing time and actually spent it doing something useful instead.

Let's say that there are a million people of working age in NZ. Let's assume that they all watched one hour less TV per day -- that's some 356 million man-hours (45 million man-days) or the equivalent of adding 23,000 full-time workers to the workforce.

It's time to remind ourselves that right now we've got no problem with unemployment -- in fact we've got the lowest rate in the developed world. What's more, I seem to recall reading that we're now on the verge of a labour supply crisis where there are more jobs than workers and that this will cause our growth to slow significantly.

Surely foregoing an hour of TV per day would therefore be a great way for the country to lift its game and move up the OECD ladder (which is what the government has been aiming for).

Of course not everyone will be in a position to work an extra hour per day, nor will many actually want to -- but there are other things they could do with that time to hike the nation's welbeing.

The first and most powerful one would be to spend that time (re)educating themselves or learning a new skill.

The more skilled and educated our workforce is, the more chance we've got of competing effectively in the 21st century's global economy so let's do it!

And, even if education isn't your ball, maybe we'd all benefit if people just spent an extra day with their families, doing family things rather than passively squatting in front of a flickering box.

More and better parenting would produce better and less problematic kids, which would in turn translate to lower crime rates and reduced enforcement costs.

I mean -- come on people! Let's wake up to the fact that the vast majority of Kiwis are addicted to TV and this addiction does to the mind what smoking does to the body.

Now I strongly suspect that most Aardvark readers watch less TV than the average (mainly because they prefer to use rather than abuse their brains) -- but do you think we spend too much time playing couch-potato?

Should the government spend some of our tax-dollars on weaning people off this opiate of the masses -- or would they be too worried that TVNZ's dividend would fall too much?

Go have your say in The Aardvark Forums

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