Tim Worstall said it better than I ever could: https://www.timworstall.com/2011/03/peter-wilby-really-really-doesnt-get-economics-at-all/ https://www.timworsta

Tim Worstall said it better than I ever could: https://www.timworstall.com/2011/03/peter-wilby-really-really-doesnt-get-economics-at-all/ https://www.timworstall.com/2011/03/peter-wilby-really-reall... snippets: Average wages in an economy are determined by the average productivity in that economy. Individual wages are not set by what that individual does: but by the wages paid by the next possible alternative use of that individual’s labour. . . . Finally, as Marx pointed out, wages rise to meet average productivity, not wages falling as cheaper labour becomes more productive. This happens because capitalists compete for access to the profits that can be extracted from that labour. As the labour becomes more productive more profits can be extracted and the competition means that wages are bid up. . . . All of the things that we consume, now being made by these cheaper providers of labour, become cheaper, thus our real incomes rise. Their wages, now that they are becoming more productive, rise. Our wages on average, determined by our average level of productivity, move in step with our productivity, not the changes in the productivity of others. And our labour can go off and do those other things which will satisfy yet more human desires and wants: another way that we get richer of course, for satisfying two or three needs and desires instead of only one means that we are of course richer as long as we define wealth in any rational sense at all.