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It's still math. If you go that route, then the people who build and program the robots will necessarily be paid less. Today that is likely a top 10% job. (Mor

It's still math. If you go that route, then the people who build and program the robots will necessarily be paid less. Today that is likely a top 10% job. (More likely a top 5% job if we're being honest.) In a world where everyone has a college degree and there are 30 times the number of people who can program those things because the tools have gotten just that easy... well, you do the math. At the extreme, you can't just pay 100% of the labor market more money because they have a college degree. It just doesn't work like that. Put in more base terms, there is only room for 1% of the people, in the top 1%. You may be able to, through the magic of increased production, decrease the price of everything in your economy. So that the other 99% of people can afford access to everything to which people in the top 1% have access. But even that is difficult in the extreme. It'd just be easier, over time, than is paying everyone in your economy more over time.

jayd16 7y ago
This is a real misunderstanding of economics. If you increase productivity through technology, it's possible for everyone to earn more real dollars (as a product of cost of living). It's not a zero sum game. Imagine it this way. Everyone today is making more than hunt from a cave money. Why is that? Because a single human can produce more than the bare minimum for survival.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  There are zero sum subgames, such as: - who gets to buy prime location property - who ends up in best schools - who gets to own mines and infrastructure - who gets to truly rule (too big governments are slow) - every instance of packing problem where supply is limited by real scarcity or scaling by communication
  - jayd16 7y ago
    Uh, alright but that has nothing to do with average real wages.
ajross 7y ago
> Put in more base terms, there is only room for 1% of the people, in the top 1%. That... seems to be a total misunderstanding of why people are concerned about income inequality. The fact that the sizes of the percentile buckets are fixes does not mean that the distribution between the buckets is zero sum. There's no "just math" reason for why we pay some jobs more than others. It's not even a "just market" reason. There are elaborate regulations on income (c.f. tax brackets, minimum wage, investment taxes, mortgage deductions...) all across the board. And those aren't working well, as evidenced by the numbers in the linked article. None of that stuff is "math". It's policy.
imtringued 7y ago
>At the extreme, you can't just pay 100% of the labor market more money because they have a college degree. It just doesn't work like that. Actually this is exactly what should happen. Maybe the increase in wages isn't as extreme as 100% but it should be at least 2% per year. The problem is that it didn't happen during the last decade.

jayd16 7y ago

This is a real misunderstanding of economics. If you increase productivity through technology, it's possible for everyone to earn more real dollars (as a product of cost of living). It's not a zero sum game. Imagine it this way. Everyone today is making more than hunt from a cave money. Why is that? Because a single human can produce more than the bare minimum for survival.

AstralStorm 7y ago
There are zero sum subgames, such as: - who gets to buy prime location property - who ends up in best schools - who gets to own mines and infrastructure - who gets to truly rule (too big governments are slow) - every instance of packing problem where supply is limited by real scarcity or scaling by communication
- jayd16 7y ago
  Uh, alright but that has nothing to do with average real wages.

ajross 7y ago

> Put in more base terms, there is only room for 1% of the people, in the top 1%. That... seems to be a total misunderstanding of why people are concerned about income inequality. The fact that the sizes of the percentile buckets are fixes does not mean that the distribution between the buckets is zero sum. There's no "just math" reason for why we pay some jobs more than others. It's not even a "just market" reason. There are elaborate regulations on income (c.f. tax brackets, minimum wage, investment taxes, mortgage deductions...) all across the board. And those aren't working well, as evidenced by the numbers in the linked article. None of that stuff is "math". It's policy.

imtringued 7y ago

>At the extreme, you can't just pay 100% of the labor market more money because they have a college degree. It just doesn't work like that. Actually this is exactly what should happen. Maybe the increase in wages isn't as extreme as 100% but it should be at least 2% per year. The problem is that it didn't happen during the last decade.