> What's your explanation for the much-observed fact that most of the productivity gains of the last thirty years haven't trickled down to most of the workforce

> What's your explanation for the much-observed fact that most of the productivity gains of the last thirty years haven't trickled down to most of the workforce? Because much of the productivity gains of the last 30 years have less to do with extra labor done by workers, and more to do with the fact that we've had personal computing advances, industry-specialized software, etc., etc. It used to take our accounts payable team two weeks to process an expense reimbursement, because I had to give them the paper receipts, mail it in, they would record the data by hand into a ledger, validate it by phone, and then cut me a paper check. Now, I can take a photo of the receipt, submit it digitally, and it's automatically recorded and validated by TriNet expense software, and the payment is programmatically added to our accounting software. All someone has to do is click "Approve" or "Disapprove". It used to take me a couple hours to write a pen-pal, and a few days worth of travel time in the mail before they would receive the letter. Now I can send them an email, a Facebook message, an SMS, a tweet, etc., etc.