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There are two points I think that need to be raised here: 1) GDP-Per-Capita has grown steadily and is at an all-time high https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/

There are two points I think that need to be raised here: 1) GDP-Per-Capita has grown steadily and is at an all-time high https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?location... 2) Real wages per capita have stagnated since the 70s https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us... So in general, productivity per worker has increased. Amazon can move more products direct to your home with fewer people than was possible in 1970. Greater and greater value is being generated in the economy due to these increasing efficiencies. Yet the suggestion that businesses should pay their workers who enable this value proportionately gets responses that we will be squashing economic potential, dragging these enterprises down, etc. Instead Walmart, Amazon, etc. use these great efficiencies of scale to compete on lower prices. Which totally does have economic benefits, but it also pushes out competition. Local stores can't compete with an international megacorp's productivity leverage, so we end up with a Walmart in every town and Amazon boxes on our doorstep. Is that truly an economic plus? It sure is nice in some ways, but are all those warehouse workers Amazon employs really new jobs? Or are they replacing a similar or greater number of jobs that were previously providing those same goods and services in a decentralized manor?

saddlerustle 6y ago
> Greater and greater value is being generated in the economy due to these increasing efficiencies. This is very unclear and it depends on what measurements you look at. Lots of economists claim we've had historically low productivity growth in the last two decades - eg Total-Factor Productivity growth has been very low (~0.5%/year) every year since ~2005.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  The little device in everyone’s pocket can do is much that required other people’s time and labor. Purchasing travel, researching real estate markets, checking into a hotel, comparing prices, obtaining product information and reviews, etc. If I need to find something at Home Depot or Target or Lowes, I don’t need a person to help me anymore. I go to their website and it tells me exactly where the item is. All of these little efficiencies add up to me needing fewer other people to help me.
  - saddlerustle 6y ago
    Improvements in consumer technology is arguably offset by lots of areas of the economy becoming less efficient every year. Consider infrastructure, health care and education - those sectors require more labor now to produce the same or less output than they use to.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Declining real wages for decades are my evidence that supply curves are ahead of demand curves. I don’t see why education needs more labor, the number of children will be declining for the foreseeable future. More importantly, the buyers of that labor (government) are famously stingy and with budgets already strained with pension and other debt, I doubt they’re going to give up any extra wage gains.
      - maerF0x0 6y ago
        not that we should go back, but it's worth noting that women entering the workforce probably greatly increased the supply side of the equation. Concurrently we're needing less and less people whilst also trying to figure out what to do with all this new supply introduced.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Yes, that was also a huge factor.
  - asdff 6y ago
    And yet, people are still helpful. I go to the lowes search bar and draw a total blank. I can describe a part I need to another human, but I sure as hell don't know its archaic catalog name, and will probably buy the wrong part if I order online. As a result, even in a pandemic, all the hardware stores by me have lines wrapped around the parking lot because brick and mortar is just better from a consumer perspective. I've been fleeced buying junk online, from amazon or even less shady places, too many times for whatever price efficiencies online offers to work itself above actually handling the product before you put money down and own it. Running to fedex to print and ship my amazon return is a cost to bear if you have a busy life.
- xiler 6y ago
  Another measure is major sector labor productivity (labor inputs vs outputs): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workforce_productivity#/media/File:US_productivity_and_real_wages.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workforce_productivity#/media/...
- samstave 6y ago
  But now the economy has shrunk by at least 30% according NPR...
  - samstave 6y ago
    OK cool you brilliant a-hole: tell me the GDP impact of a 30% GDP implosion, not even considering the fact that they are not even stating the actual numbers across a ll industries, which means, the GDP is F* and that the economy is WAY LESS
    - samstave 6y ago
      he deleted his reply.... so it looks like I an=m replyingg to my self
hindsightbias 6y ago
There seems to be some dichotomy between what Americans as workers and Americans as consumers want. And they just want corporations to figure it out and fix it. This is not how socially ethical societies operate.
- aeternum 6y ago
  Both are a form of supply and demand. 1) Consumers want the product which provides them with the most value given the item's cost. 2) Workers and companies want the most value per their capital expenditure (whether personal labor or funds). I don't see any problem with that, both can be maximized at the same time and work as a balance. One issue is that we've become much better at optimizing #1, and have become worse at optimizing especially the worker part of #2. Workers still relatively rarely switch jobs, which eliminates a good amount of upward pressure on wages. Stuff like the employer-paid health insurance tax deduction is detrimental to this liquidity. Give the deduction to individuals, not employers.
- DeonPenny 6y ago
  Thats exactly how a ethical society operate if they know givin the idea that large government programs natural shift towards tyranny and that bad things are inevitable and trying to legislate them out typically works out terribly. I don't think americans want corporations to solve this either I think they want people to have the ability for people to solve it for themselves for better or worse.
  - andrekandre 6y ago
    > I don't think americans want corporations to solve this either I think they want people to have the ability for people to solve it for themselves for better or worse. i think ideally, this is what everyone wants, but like with anything 1. you can only do as well as the system lets you (fairness, opportunity, education, livelyhood, available free-time, paperwork, insurance, healthcare etc) 2. some people can cope with things better than others... these are personality traits, physical issues (endurance, headaches, anxiety, digestive issues etc) (1 and 2) can be helped with more universal access to (to help them stand on thier own) such as heathcare, transportation, job opportunites for when the economy goes down, minimal sheltering, cheap postal services (free even for those who dont have an address), free counceling services etc
twoodfin 6y ago
Your second link is not real wages per capita, it's average real wages for workers (and only non-supervisory workers at that!). A true per capita figure would have to count wages of non-workers as 0. The distinction is important: One reason real individual wages haven't grown with GDP is that a much larger fraction of women are now working than in 1970, and basic microeconomics suggests that as supply (of workers) grows, prices (wages) drop. There are a bunch of other problems with the implied claim that workers are no better off today than in the 1970's: There have been major demographic shifts. Non-wage benefits make up a much larger fraction of total compensation today. Comparing against the mid-'70s is effectively cherry-picking due to the massive (and unseen since) run-up in inflation over the next decade. Trying to compare inflation-adjusted figures over decades is perilous because even small errors in producing "equivalent" classes of goods to compare will compound over time: This is the "cars are safer / houses are bigger / phones are now SciFI devices" argument ...
- novok 6y ago
  The basics of life that consume the expenses of most people you had in the 1960s was significantly more affordable back then, and many would wish they could get that. You can't easily today, especially in health care. In the past, college, room & board was payable with the part time work of a college student working low end jobs. You cannot do that today. Single income households were a common occurrence, since dual income households competing for housing were not out competing single income houses. And I don't mean this in a crypto conservative way, even Elizabeth Warren wrote a book about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap Could you buy a 1970s level of service health plan today and expect a similar cost profile? No. The non-essential extras that didn't consume much of the budget in the past anyway being nicer or cheaper, such as clothing, entertainment and so on? Cold comfort. After you have 10 shirts, 10 more cheap t-shirts have little utility. HD video is nicer, but TBH, old SD TVs also give you %80 of the entertainment value. 2500 sqft of house is nice, but 1500 sqft of house is still giving you %80 of the benefit and so on. There is diminishing marginal value to these improvements.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
deevolution 6y ago
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
scotty79 6y ago
1 + 2 means that just less workers are needed to produce the same amount of value. That doesn't mean that those remaining workers should get more value. No more than capitalist that managed to stay in business do. What about the workers that are no longer needed? Should they get nothing while their peers that managed to cling to their jobs get way more?
- stetrain 6y ago
  I'm not suggesting a specific single solution here. It's evidence of an imbalance between overall economic productivity and what we are paying hourly workers to support that productivity. Improving base pay and benefits could help, but it also doesn't help if there's no specific wage-paying job for every potential worker anymore.

saddlerustle 6y ago

> Greater and greater value is being generated in the economy due to these increasing efficiencies. This is very unclear and it depends on what measurements you look at. Lots of economists claim we've had historically low productivity growth in the last two decades - eg Total-Factor Productivity growth has been very low (~0.5%/year) every year since ~2005.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
The little device in everyone’s pocket can do is much that required other people’s time and labor. Purchasing travel, researching real estate markets, checking into a hotel, comparing prices, obtaining product information and reviews, etc. If I need to find something at Home Depot or Target or Lowes, I don’t need a person to help me anymore. I go to their website and it tells me exactly where the item is. All of these little efficiencies add up to me needing fewer other people to help me.
- saddlerustle 6y ago
  Improvements in consumer technology is arguably offset by lots of areas of the economy becoming less efficient every year. Consider infrastructure, health care and education - those sectors require more labor now to produce the same or less output than they use to.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Declining real wages for decades are my evidence that supply curves are ahead of demand curves. I don’t see why education needs more labor, the number of children will be declining for the foreseeable future. More importantly, the buyers of that labor (government) are famously stingy and with budgets already strained with pension and other debt, I doubt they’re going to give up any extra wage gains.
    - maerF0x0 6y ago
      not that we should go back, but it's worth noting that women entering the workforce probably greatly increased the supply side of the equation. Concurrently we're needing less and less people whilst also trying to figure out what to do with all this new supply introduced.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Yes, that was also a huge factor.
- asdff 6y ago
  And yet, people are still helpful. I go to the lowes search bar and draw a total blank. I can describe a part I need to another human, but I sure as hell don't know its archaic catalog name, and will probably buy the wrong part if I order online. As a result, even in a pandemic, all the hardware stores by me have lines wrapped around the parking lot because brick and mortar is just better from a consumer perspective. I've been fleeced buying junk online, from amazon or even less shady places, too many times for whatever price efficiencies online offers to work itself above actually handling the product before you put money down and own it. Running to fedex to print and ship my amazon return is a cost to bear if you have a busy life.
xiler 6y ago
Another measure is major sector labor productivity (labor inputs vs outputs): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workforce_productivity#/media/File:US_productivity_and_real_wages.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workforce_productivity#/media/...
samstave 6y ago
But now the economy has shrunk by at least 30% according NPR...
- samstave 6y ago
  OK cool you brilliant a-hole: tell me the GDP impact of a 30% GDP implosion, not even considering the fact that they are not even stating the actual numbers across a ll industries, which means, the GDP is F* and that the economy is WAY LESS
  - samstave 6y ago
    he deleted his reply.... so it looks like I an=m replyingg to my self

hindsightbias 6y ago

There seems to be some dichotomy between what Americans as workers and Americans as consumers want. And they just want corporations to figure it out and fix it. This is not how socially ethical societies operate.

aeternum 6y ago
Both are a form of supply and demand. 1) Consumers want the product which provides them with the most value given the item's cost. 2) Workers and companies want the most value per their capital expenditure (whether personal labor or funds). I don't see any problem with that, both can be maximized at the same time and work as a balance. One issue is that we've become much better at optimizing #1, and have become worse at optimizing especially the worker part of #2. Workers still relatively rarely switch jobs, which eliminates a good amount of upward pressure on wages. Stuff like the employer-paid health insurance tax deduction is detrimental to this liquidity. Give the deduction to individuals, not employers.
DeonPenny 6y ago
Thats exactly how a ethical society operate if they know givin the idea that large government programs natural shift towards tyranny and that bad things are inevitable and trying to legislate them out typically works out terribly. I don't think americans want corporations to solve this either I think they want people to have the ability for people to solve it for themselves for better or worse.
- andrekandre 6y ago
  > I don't think americans want corporations to solve this either I think they want people to have the ability for people to solve it for themselves for better or worse. i think ideally, this is what everyone wants, but like with anything 1. you can only do as well as the system lets you (fairness, opportunity, education, livelyhood, available free-time, paperwork, insurance, healthcare etc) 2. some people can cope with things better than others... these are personality traits, physical issues (endurance, headaches, anxiety, digestive issues etc) (1 and 2) can be helped with more universal access to (to help them stand on thier own) such as heathcare, transportation, job opportunites for when the economy goes down, minimal sheltering, cheap postal services (free even for those who dont have an address), free counceling services etc

twoodfin 6y ago

Your second link is not real wages per capita, it's average real wages for workers (and only non-supervisory workers at that!). A true per capita figure would have to count wages of non-workers as 0. The distinction is important: One reason real individual wages haven't grown with GDP is that a much larger fraction of women are now working than in 1970, and basic microeconomics suggests that as supply (of workers) grows, prices (wages) drop. There are a bunch of other problems with the implied claim that workers are no better off today than in the 1970's: There have been major demographic shifts. Non-wage benefits make up a much larger fraction of total compensation today. Comparing against the mid-'70s is effectively cherry-picking due to the massive (and unseen since) run-up in inflation over the next decade. Trying to compare inflation-adjusted figures over decades is perilous because even small errors in producing "equivalent" classes of goods to compare will compound over time: This is the "cars are safer / houses are bigger / phones are now SciFI devices" argument ...

novok 6y ago
The basics of life that consume the expenses of most people you had in the 1960s was significantly more affordable back then, and many would wish they could get that. You can't easily today, especially in health care. In the past, college, room & board was payable with the part time work of a college student working low end jobs. You cannot do that today. Single income households were a common occurrence, since dual income households competing for housing were not out competing single income houses. And I don't mean this in a crypto conservative way, even Elizabeth Warren wrote a book about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap Could you buy a 1970s level of service health plan today and expect a similar cost profile? No. The non-essential extras that didn't consume much of the budget in the past anyway being nicer or cheaper, such as clothing, entertainment and so on? Cold comfort. After you have 10 shirts, 10 more cheap t-shirts have little utility. HD video is nicer, but TBH, old SD TVs also give you %80 of the entertainment value. 2500 sqft of house is nice, but 1500 sqft of house is still giving you %80 of the benefit and so on. There is diminishing marginal value to these improvements.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago

deevolution 6y ago

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

scotty79 6y ago

1 + 2 means that just less workers are needed to produce the same amount of value. That doesn't mean that those remaining workers should get more value. No more than capitalist that managed to stay in business do. What about the workers that are no longer needed? Should they get nothing while their peers that managed to cling to their jobs get way more?

stetrain 6y ago
I'm not suggesting a specific single solution here. It's evidence of an imbalance between overall economic productivity and what we are paying hourly workers to support that productivity. Improving base pay and benefits could help, but it also doesn't help if there's no specific wage-paying job for every potential worker anymore.