The first question we should ask is where does the extra value come from (not money, but value, and you'll see why in a moment). One answer may be automation,

The first question we should ask is where does the extra value come from (not money, but value, and you'll see why in a moment). One answer may be automation, and typically, the excess value is passed on to the customer in the form of lower cost. (That's why we ought to talk about value, even if we can't easily measure it). One alternative is not to pass on the value to the customer, but to give it to the workers. You could do this by reducing hours, increasing pay, or some combination. There are two problems with this: 1. You can't do this in an open, market economy. The government could do this with government jobs where they have a monopoly. 2. It is kind of arbitrary that you decide to value this particular worker over this particular consumer. Another solution is to give everyone a basic income with all the extra value (collected as taxes, roughly equally) that automation generates. So the seller might give a discount to the customer but the rest of the value would go to the state. Then people can decide how they want to spend it.