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Wages stopped increasing when human productivity peaked. The continued gains in productivity we have seen since that time have come by way of mechanization/auto

Wages stopped increasing when human productivity peaked. The continued gains in productivity we have seen since that time have come by way of mechanization/automation. Given that the system encourages productivity, those who bring that automation to the economy reap the rewards. Those who only offer their labour to the economy are stuck since labour productivity has peaked. Humans simply cannot provide more productivity on their own. As most people only offer labour and only a small group offer the more and more productivity gains of automation, it is true that the rewards end up being concentrated in that small group of productivity providing people. "The top" as you put it. That disparity is meant to incentivize you to develop your own technologies that increase productivity further instead of "wasting" your time selling productive-constrained labour, but in the real world it is unquestionably difficult to recognize where productivity can be gained. The understanding of that was the basis for the idea behind pushing everyone into post-secondary schools, with a promise that higher learning would teach you how find solutions for increasing productivity, and thus increasing your reward for increasing overall productivity (a.k.a. providing you with a higher income). However, the real world is again messy and it hasn't really worked out. Despite a substantial increase in post-secondary attainment in recent times, the vast majority of graduates are making no more than they would have without having attended a post-secondary school (wages have been stagnant for decades upon decades) as they by and large end up only selling their productivity-limited labour.

WanderPanda 7y ago
Chapeau! This is the only rational comment I found under this post. Why is everybody just becoming emotional and reflexively starts hating minorities (like „the 1%“)?
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  It's not hating someone to say they shouldn't have more than XX million dollars.
pdonis 7y ago
> Humans simply cannot provide more productivity on their own. Sure they can. Who is designing and building and installing all that automation? I know that you recognize this since it's a key point of the rest of your post. But I don't think you've fully realized the implications. The problem is not just that post-secondary schools haven't lived up to their promise of teaching people how to increase overall productivity. The problem is that, fundamentally, increasing overall productivity is entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship is not something that can be taught in schools. It's a fundamental change in viewpoint: you have to stop thinking of yourself as an employee, a wage earner, and start thinking of yourself as a business owner. But schools teach people to be wage earners, and as you quite correctly point out, there is no real growth to be had at this point in being a wage earner.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- randomdata 7y ago
  > Sure they can. Who is designing and building and installing all that automation? The work of designing, building, and installing remains constrained to the limits of human productivity. The only way to make those jobs more productive is to use tools, and, like always, those who control the tools are those who reap the additional spoils.
lsc 7y ago
> The continued gains in productivity we have seen since that time have come by way of mechanization/automation. but that has been true since the first chimp figured out how to shove a stick into an anthill and get more tasty bugs than just picking off the ants on the surface. We use tools, better tools are how productivity advances. Yes, yes, we have better tools than ever before, to the point where they don't look like tools. We can build a machine to do a thing and then leave, and only come back and tinker with it when it breaks. Some time in the previous century basically everything switched over to assembly-line type production, where nobody built the whole widget themselves. the current switchover is to, uh, I guess you would call them robots. Tools that do the thing with one time input to guide them (and, of course, lots of ongoing maintenance) But make no mistake, these "robots" we have are still just tools; tools that give massive leverage to the labor that programs those robots and that maintains those robots.
- lsc 7y ago
  I think a lot of it is politics and labor leverage and education. after the new deal and the second world war and the GI bill, a lot of our workers had free education. We had a serious safety net for the time and a very progressive tax system with very high top marginal rates to pay for it. and lots of unions. All things that give workers more negotiation power.
Dylan16807 7y ago
Time goes on, machines get cheaper, the surplus doesn't go to the inventor but to the people buying the machines. So wealth turns into more wealth. Even if a person can't provide productivity "on their own", productivity per person increases, and it's bad for that to be tied to an increase of wealth inequality. And trying to have everyone invent solutions sounds like a weak justification for a broken system to me, along the lines of the temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

WanderPanda 7y ago

Chapeau! This is the only rational comment I found under this post. Why is everybody just becoming emotional and reflexively starts hating minorities (like „the 1%“)?

Dylan16807 7y ago
It's not hating someone to say they shouldn't have more than XX million dollars.

pdonis 7y ago

> Humans simply cannot provide more productivity on their own. Sure they can. Who is designing and building and installing all that automation? I know that you recognize this since it's a key point of the rest of your post. But I don't think you've fully realized the implications. The problem is not just that post-secondary schools haven't lived up to their promise of teaching people how to increase overall productivity. The problem is that, fundamentally, increasing overall productivity is entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship is not something that can be taught in schools. It's a fundamental change in viewpoint: you have to stop thinking of yourself as an employee, a wage earner, and start thinking of yourself as a business owner. But schools teach people to be wage earners, and as you quite correctly point out, there is no real growth to be had at this point in being a wage earner.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
randomdata 7y ago
> Sure they can. Who is designing and building and installing all that automation? The work of designing, building, and installing remains constrained to the limits of human productivity. The only way to make those jobs more productive is to use tools, and, like always, those who control the tools are those who reap the additional spoils.

lsc 7y ago

> The continued gains in productivity we have seen since that time have come by way of mechanization/automation. but that has been true since the first chimp figured out how to shove a stick into an anthill and get more tasty bugs than just picking off the ants on the surface. We use tools, better tools are how productivity advances. Yes, yes, we have better tools than ever before, to the point where they don't look like tools. We can build a machine to do a thing and then leave, and only come back and tinker with it when it breaks. Some time in the previous century basically everything switched over to assembly-line type production, where nobody built the whole widget themselves. the current switchover is to, uh, I guess you would call them robots. Tools that do the thing with one time input to guide them (and, of course, lots of ongoing maintenance) But make no mistake, these "robots" we have are still just tools; tools that give massive leverage to the labor that programs those robots and that maintains those robots.

lsc 7y ago
I think a lot of it is politics and labor leverage and education. after the new deal and the second world war and the GI bill, a lot of our workers had free education. We had a serious safety net for the time and a very progressive tax system with very high top marginal rates to pay for it. and lots of unions. All things that give workers more negotiation power.

Dylan16807 7y ago

Time goes on, machines get cheaper, the surplus doesn't go to the inventor but to the people buying the machines. So wealth turns into more wealth. Even if a person can't provide productivity "on their own", productivity per person increases, and it's bad for that to be tied to an increase of wealth inequality. And trying to have everyone invent solutions sounds like a weak justification for a broken system to me, along the lines of the temporarily embarrassed millionaire.