this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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The main thrust of my argument is simply, and throughout, has been this:
In the last 50 years, "worker productivity" has increased dramatically. compensation has not. The increased wealth that we are all generating is not making our lives better - it's going into the pockets of billionaires.
As you put it "the real median wage has not changed since 1980". As you showed with the graph you posted, the increased wealth that is being generated is increasingly going to the wealthiest people. This is all the data we need to support my argument, and they're both claims you have made.
The "improved living conditions" from better technology and industrial processes do not REQUIRE us to be giving all the extra wealth we're generating to the wealthiest people. These would still exist if we were taxing billionaires and large companies more, enforcing better wages for regular people, and investing that wealth into social programs.
Yes I agree with most of this. If the original post I responded to had said this instead of misleading statistics and “now we have billionaires” like that class of people is a recent development I wouldn’t have said anything. We can make our arguments without those sort of rhetorical devices and people will take us more seriously if we do.
People like to look back with rose tinted glasses and act like things were so much better in the gold ole days. They weren’t and we are arguably better off now than in almost any other time in history. I see value in appreciating that fact.
That said, just because we have benefitted from automation and technology development doesn’t change that we could do better. I’d love to see more social safety nets, more affordable housing, reduced working hours, and so forth.