[_Algernon_]

We've gone from a single person being able to buy a house and feed a family, to two salaries in many cases not being sufficient in the past 50 years. While you're right that mass unemployment didn't happen, wage stagnation certainly did.

[true_religion]

This seems like a very American perspective. So may I suggest that wage stagnation came from no longer having a underclass of women and people of color to be underpaid for their labor, and frozen out from the general market? Additionally, the US went from being one of the few industrial nations to not have bombed our factories and streets to having competition from other countries. Americas golden age is not really a time with conditions that are easy to replicate.

[FirmwareBurner]

>So may I suggest that wage stagnation came from no longer having a underclass of women and people of color to be underpaid for their labor, and frozen out from the general market?

Wage stagnation is everywhere in the west, even more than in the US, and Europe didn't have an underclass of women and people of color 50 years ago in the prosperous times when a factory worker could buy an apartment and support a family, so let's not point the fingers there.

Wage stagnation exists because all the fruits of increased productivity gains in workers' labor from the last decades have been skimmed at the top instead of trickled down to the workers in the trenches.

Secondly, it exists because of the last 30+ years of corporate mergers and acquisitions have a concentrated a large piece of the pie of certain industries into the hands of only a few ultra-large players who get to dictate the global market in terms of wages and prices, due to the lack of competition, meaning workers have less bargaining power for wages and consumers less bargaining power for prices.

Thirdly, globalization and lifting of trade barriers, meant that those few ultra-large players left after mergers and acquisitions, could tap into places that offered the lowest wages, lowest taxes, and lowest regulations in terms of environment and labor, enjoying all those benefits simultaneously instead of having to compromise, meaning they could have their cake and eat it too, resulting in massive more profits for them and a global race to the bottom for most of those working for them.

>Americas golden age is not really a time with conditions that are easy to replicate.

America is still living a golden age, due to being the world reserve currency, dominating the finance sector, the software sector (the only one with major growth and the most profitable), being land, energy and resource abundant, having no enemies at its borders, having the worlds biggest and most power-projecting military, and its citizens enjoy one of the highest purchasing power in the world.

Is that not a golden age or what? Most countries would be happy to tick just one of those boxes, let alone all of them combined. I think some Americans often forget just how privileged they are compared to the vast majority of the world.

[leansensei]

When the demand for labor continuously drops but the supply increases, what happens to the ability of labor to price higher?

[RetroTechie]

That view shows how drenched our society is with laissez-faire capitalism as if it's the only thing in existence.

'Free' markets, supply & demand, governments interfering in those markets here & there, is just 1 of several options.

Some kind of UBI, "social credits" that everyone simply receives (as depicted in 2nd part of Manna) + some practical limits on resource consumption, is another option.

There are other options. And like another poster said: choice between those is one of political will. This relies on some conditions though:

1) A significant fraction (if not majority) of the population sharing a similar vision.

2) A functioning democracy.

3) Elites, corporations etc not powerful enough to subvert politics enough to prevent that vision from becoming implemented.

And

4) Absense of external forces big enough to undo progress. Effects of climate change, a huge meteor hitting Earth, aliens showing up that are out to exterminate us, another pandemic, etc, etc, etc.

So don't hold your breath. Much is possible but our odds of reaching some kind of utopia aren't great.