Part of the issue is that the green and yellow circles are converging, but not due to wages going up. People aren’t adding as much value as they used to, and on some level may realize that, leading to a certain level of despair, where they don’t expect their pay to ever go up, so they get mad at having to pay taxes instead.
In the auto industry (it’s what I’m most familiar with, so I’ll use it as an example), manufacturing automation has gotten to the point where minimum wage humans aren’t even the cheapest way to do a given operation. The skilled work has all been taken away, and people are only used for situations where variability makes automation unreliable (ie picking up parts out of a bin and loading them into a fixture). We can (and do) automate that process, but if something happens, it’s harder to fix. Better to just pay someone minimum wage than risk OEM fines for causing downtime.
I’m saying it: automation leads to less demand for human labor, and by the rule of the market that leads to lower prices (wages) for human labor. that trend is not gonna revert, unless humanity finds a totally new field in which economic growth can happen (which, at least on planet earth, is unlikely). that’s why jobs don’t pay living wages anymore, and people need universal basic income. there is no alternative. tax the rich to pay for it, as they become the only ones who can afford it.
People aren’t adding as much value as they used to
That’s simply not true. Skilled creative problem solving work is the largest percentage of jobs today as it ever has been in history.
And those same worker’s outputs is augmented by automation, collaboration, and various kinds of advanced science, to the greatest amount it has been, in history.
The value added by each median individual worker is the highest it has ever been.
Counterintuitively, this also causes the rate of profit to fall for corporations. Most of their profit comes from the surplus labor value of the employees, so with less employees to exploit, profits go down.
Part of the issue is that the green and yellow circles are converging, but not due to wages going up. People aren’t adding as much value as they used to, and on some level may realize that, leading to a certain level of despair, where they don’t expect their pay to ever go up, so they get mad at having to pay taxes instead.
In the auto industry (it’s what I’m most familiar with, so I’ll use it as an example), manufacturing automation has gotten to the point where minimum wage humans aren’t even the cheapest way to do a given operation. The skilled work has all been taken away, and people are only used for situations where variability makes automation unreliable (ie picking up parts out of a bin and loading them into a fixture). We can (and do) automate that process, but if something happens, it’s harder to fix. Better to just pay someone minimum wage than risk OEM fines for causing downtime.
I’m saying it: automation leads to less demand for human labor, and by the rule of the market that leads to lower prices (wages) for human labor. that trend is not gonna revert, unless humanity finds a totally new field in which economic growth can happen (which, at least on planet earth, is unlikely). that’s why jobs don’t pay living wages anymore, and people need universal basic income. there is no alternative. tax the rich to pay for it, as they become the only ones who can afford it.
That’s simply not true. Skilled creative problem solving work is the largest percentage of jobs today as it ever has been in history.
And those same worker’s outputs is augmented by automation, collaboration, and various kinds of advanced science, to the greatest amount it has been, in history.
The value added by each median individual worker is the highest it has ever been.
Counterintuitively, this also causes the rate of profit to fall for corporations. Most of their profit comes from the surplus labor value of the employees, so with less employees to exploit, profits go down.
Wikipedia: tendency for the rate of profit to fall