When a company buys a 2x faster copy machine, they don't double the salary of the human operator. If a department is able to lay off half its staff thanks to a

When a company buys a 2x faster copy machine, they don't double the salary of the human operator. If a department is able to lay off half its staff thanks to automation, they don't double the salaries of the remaining staff. There's little in the way of forces that push wages up. Unions, basically, acting on the idea that rich companies should share the wealth. The market value of a human butt-in-chair operator remains low. Unskilled labor is a commodity, and it can be found increasingly cheaply on the global market. Keynes died before the first computer was invented. Probably his concepts of "technological innovation" and "worker productivity" do not apply today.