[immibis]

It's not productivity itself; it's the decoupling of productivity from wages. If I'm creating 3 times as much value as my equivalent in 1970, why aren't I getting paid 3 times as much inflation-adjusted money, hmm? It's not even unfair to shareholders - they'd also get 3 times as much as in 1970. But instead they get 10 times as much and I get 0.7 times as much, or something like that. What's the deal?

[seneca]

> If I'm creating 3 times as much value as my equivalent in 1970, why aren't I getting paid 3 times as much inflation-adjusted money, hmm?

Because that increase in productivity comes almost entirely from technology owned by your employer.

To look at it in a contrived example, let's take textiles. There is a textile factory employing weavers who weave fabric by hand, and the factory owners buys a new automated weaving machine that makes the weavers each 3 times more productive. The maker of the machine created the technology, and is paid for it, the owner of the factory made the investment to bring the technology, and profits from it.

This is basically exactly what has happened to modern productivity.

[com2kid]

Except in technology where the gains come from my personal investment in skills. I'm spending hours every week keeping up with the field of software engineering. I've been investing in learning my craft since I was 14 or so.

I'd argue the same goes for many types of digital creators, artists, video editors, animators, and so forth.

[seneca]

> Except in technology where the gains come from my personal investment in skills.

Not really. That's essentially a weaver learning to use the new automated weaving machine. That is what you do to remain qualified for the job. Now, if you were a framework or key system creator, building the underlying platforms that get adopted throughout the industry, I would agree. But just learning to use the tooling the the industry creates isn't that different, other than the rate of change you have to keep up with.

[immibis]

A weaver who knows how to use an automated weaving machine produces 3 times as much cloth as one who doesn't, so why don't they get paid 3 times as much? This is the problem of the decoupling of productivity and wages. It started happening at precisely the moment the gold standard was ended - weird.

[seneca]

> A weaver who knows how to use an automated weaving machine produces 3 times as much cloth as one who doesn't, so why don't they get paid 3 times as much?

An automatic weaving machine, operated by a capable operator, produces 3 times as much as a manual weaver. The productivity increase is the machine, not the operator. That's my entire point.

The owner of the machine reaps the surplus, not its operator.

> This is the problem of the decoupling of productivity and wages. It started happening at precisely the moment the gold standard was ended - weird.

You'll get no argument from me about the ills caused by the financialization of the economy, but I don't think that's what's going on here.

[immibis]

>>A weaver who knows how to use an automated weaving machine produces 3 times as much cloth as one who doesn't, so why don't they get paid 3 times as much?

> An automatic weaving machine, operated by a capable operator, produces 3 times as much as a manual weaver. The productivity increase is the machine, not the operator. That's my entire point.

An automatic weaving machine operator, operating a capable machine, produces 3 times as much as the lack of a machine operator. The productivity increase is the operator, not the machine. That's my entire point.

What's different between what I just said and what you just said? Nothing. In fact they can both be true. Both parties can get 3 times as much money as they did previously. Why don't they? Why does one party get 10x and the other party get 0.7x?

If productivity increase is entirely caused by machines, why did it take until 1971 for wages to decouple? The reality is that both workers and owners would like their share to be as high as possible. In 1971, however, owners seized control of the money printer and they never let it go since then.

[CrazyStat]

Ok, but that’s not what the post I replied to was saying.