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>If the not-working : working ratio increases, that leads to work being more valuable. A billionaire can have a pile of gold to make Smaug envious, but if you h
by logicchains 3y ago
>If the not-working : working ratio increases, that leads to work being more valuable. A billionaire can have a pile of gold to make Smaug envious, but if you have 10 billionaires and just 1 person willing to wipe their ass, then they're going to be outbidding each other.
What happens is where before you had e.g 3 working people for every non-working (retired person), now you have 1 working person for every retired person, but productivity has not improved much, so the working person has to spend 3x more of what they produce supporting retired people than before, leaving them less. Everyone's standard of living is worse because you have less overall production (due to fewer people working) to support the same population.
It's not hard to understand that a society with 10 people working to support 50 people has worse living standards than a society with 50 people working to support 10 people, assuming the same level of technological development in both.
- tcfhgj 3y agoProductivity of work has increased extremely in all the years though, which easily could compensate for that if it wouldnt be wasted for less important things: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-productivity-growth-since-1990-Annual-growth-rates_fig4_321062057 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-productivity-grow...
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI do not see how one can easily make that claim. The amount of healthcare, and other services that someone can consume while not being able to work, is massive and has not been automated away. From daily things like cooking, feeding, bathing, etc to healthcare providers providing physical therapy, massages, consultations, to work around the residence like plumbing and electrical and otherwise swinging a hammer. I do not see automation picking up these tasks in the near future, and the number of man hours demanded for them seem to be getting larger my whole life (more old people, living longer, and more healthcare options).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- midasuni 3y agoThe elderly will have it worse. And it’s about time. You make things demonstratively worse for your Imagine a high school leaver being able to live in a 4 bed suburbia with a couple of cars, stay at home spouse and 3 kids. That was the norm in the 70s. Not today. Money has been taken from the workers and given to the parasites for the last 30 years, it’s about time it flipped back the other way.