If productivity grows primarily because of enabling capital, the proceeds from this growth will accrue more to the owner of capital than the laborer, roughly proportional to the contribution of each.
The problem is that human capital has saturated for many people. This is borne out by stagnating gains in education.
If productivity gains occur mostly because of technology with little human input, then that further bifurcates society between owners of that technology and everyone else. This does not help alleviate the modern malaise.
People are quick to point out the dropping of the gold standard, the end of cheap fossil fuels, the neoliberal economic changes, etc. that all occurred during the 1970s, and those all matter. But there's another factor which is that educational outcomes began to stagnate.
I don't think returning productivity growth to the postwar rate would have as much of an effect as it did then, because more of the productivity growth would be because of technology with concentrated ownership rather than broad gains in human ability.
Tech and automation alone will not work. You'll need to change the laws to cater for the redistribution because the jobs will dry up while the capitalists reap the benefits and only give conditional, token sums.
The problem is that human capital has saturated for many people. This is borne out by stagnating gains in education.
If productivity gains occur mostly because of technology with little human input, then that further bifurcates society between owners of that technology and everyone else. This does not help alleviate the modern malaise.
People are quick to point out the dropping of the gold standard, the end of cheap fossil fuels, the neoliberal economic changes, etc. that all occurred during the 1970s, and those all matter. But there's another factor which is that educational outcomes began to stagnate.
I don't think returning productivity growth to the postwar rate would have as much of an effect as it did then, because more of the productivity growth would be because of technology with concentrated ownership rather than broad gains in human ability.