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> At the same time, multiple new industries have sprung up and computer/ai-aided workers are vastly more productive than ever. I used to believe this but the r
by monkeydreams 5y ago
> At the same time, multiple new industries have sprung up and computer/ai-aided workers are vastly more productive than ever.
I used to believe this but the reality appears completely the opposite. If the US economy was vastly more productive then we should see capital investment in areas with huge unmet needs. Take healthcare as an example, one of the shining beacons of AI-assisted efficiency, a colossal failure to actually address healthcare needs cheaply and effectively. Real estate is another; here we are in a world of telecommuting and automated brick-laying machines - and prices are sky-rocketing in many areas despite apparent "urban exoduses". We have high quality printing for cheap, yet the art market has reached such peaks that it has spawned a market in owning an exclusive "token" that links you (the purchaser) to an artwork in an essentially ineffective way except as a speculative asset. Exclusivity is the name of the game, and those who afford to pay for it will pay through the nose.
Unskilled labour is cheap because there are a lot of skilled people also competing for it. They are competing for those low wages because the success of monetary policy has led to a situation where there is a greater return selling exclusivity and limitation than there is actually producing products to sell to everyone. Capital investment has become so overrun with cash we treat it as an expense (subscription, everything-as-a-service, etc) or as a bet in the hopes we hit a unicorn (PACS, bitcoin, etc).
The slow march back to fiscal policy will, hopefully, deflate a lot of this inefficiency. One might hope that we end up in the fertile lands between the territories of the fiscal and monetary hawks, but life isn't like that.