It’s crazy. I’ve read in a few books (fiction, of course) that mention, in passing, that the 40 hour workweek was now replaced by a 32 hour workweek, or something similar.
When do we get to reap the benefits of all of these boosts to productivity?
“Worker productivity” has been going up for 50 years, but compensation hasn’t been. That extra money goes into the pockets of the board and shareholders and CEOs.
80 years ago, the average CEO pay was about 20x the lowest pay in his company. Now, instead, we have billionaires.
We have had ultra-rich people and major wealth inequality for most of American history. Rockefeller (1838-1937) amassed a fortune in the 1800s in excess of $400B inflation adjusted dollars. By most measures, he was the richest American of all time.
The second richest American of all time is up for debate but contenders include Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), Henry Ford (1863-1947), or Bill Gates (1955-present).
Wealth inequality has obviously grown over the past 50 years but it’s worth noting that wealth inequality in general is not a uniquely modern problem. It is also exaggerated by comparing to the 1970s, where wealth inequality was at a historical low point (see graph below)
I’m not talking about the single outliers at the top, but about the “billionaire class” in general, it’s a pretty modern concept. There’s a reason I said “Average” and not “Richest”
Yes, if we go back to before 1900 the wealthiest people had more of the pie, but this is largely a product of the bottom of society having, essentially, nothing. 1800s societies were capable of producing enough for (most people) to survive, and there wasn’t much excess “wealth” to go around. While the rich collected most of that, the difference is in the scale of “available resources.” It’s not a comparable system when most of your population are serfs.
I don’t find it encouraging to say “oh well, this isn’t unique, look it used to be like this 100 years ago!” when 100 years ago the quality of life for regular people was abysmal.
The fact that your graphs show wealth inequality steadily growing is the major concern. We had a more equitable society in the 1970s by a long shot. Our current state isn’t inevitable, it’s a result of the policies we’ve implemented. With current trends, do we want our society to return to those dynamics of the1800s? In a world where we’ve so much automation and wealth in the world that we could care for everyone why do people still have to work 40+ hours a week just to get by?
Funny you should say “we” and “American History” though :) Maybe the American model is the problem here.
There were some fairly major studies in the UK last year, across many companies and multiple industries, where they reduced the 5 day workweek to a 4 day workweek, whilst keeping the compensation of workers the same overall (i.e. salaried workers got the same salary, hourly workers got 25% more per hour)
The majority of companies involved in the study found that their workers were significantly healthier and happier after adjusting to the new schedule… and as a result significantly more “productive”. Profits even went up despite the reduced working time. Most of them elected to keep with the new system once the study ended.
Obviously you can’t do this with every industry, certain industries need 24/7 coverage or the like… you can’t run an ER 4 days out of 7 - but the takeaway is that it’d be better to employ more people for less time and pay them well - you’ll get better results than you will with an exhausted and depressed workforce
In many ways, we have been. The average person has casual access to goods and services that would have been immensely inaccessible without industrialization. Consider the average car for example. The engine alone has hundreds of tightly toleranced parts working in a mechanical dance to harness thousands of controlled explosions per second. That doesn’t even touch on the complex support systems required for engine management or chassis/suspension. I can buy a well running used car for less than the cost of a month’s rent.
Compare that to the pre-industrial era, when a simple shirt would have taken a single person 500-600 hours in manual labor to make starting from raw wool. That’s more than three months’ work with a 40 hour work week.
It’s truly amazing that any minimum wage worker in the USA can buy multiple used cars, a monumentally complex piece of machinery by any historical standard, for less labor than it would take to get a new shirt a few hundred years ago.
That said, I do believe we have the capacity to get these benefits PLUS reduced work hours. We will see that when we demand better worker protections from lawmakers and stop equating a human’s value to society with the number of hours they work each week.
I’ve seen this argument before.
Maybe if you shill for billionaires a bit harder they’ll give you one of their yachts.
If you think we are materially worse off now than we were before the introduction of automation you are either pushing hardcore propaganda or absolutely delusional.
Real median middle class income has stayed effectively constant since the 1980s. However, with automation the variety of goods available at that income level have dramatically improved. This is the benefit that the consumer sees and pretending it’s not a real benefit is disingenuous at best.
Maybe if you shill for billionaires a bit harder they’ll give you one of their yachts.
You really think so? That would be amazing
My dude, this is pretty uncontroversial, mainstream economics and sociology, which is being backed up by actual data. You are so terminally online, you are literally rejecting any message which isn’t wrapped in populist fan service. Do better. Touch grass.
Can you provide a single metric which demonstrates that modern humans are worse off than they were 200, 100, 50, 20 years ago?
When we hit peak population. This will be the next historical epoch which dramatically changes the fabric of society, because it will lay bare the finite nature of surplus labor, as well as dramatically skew the ratio of workers to retirees. It won’t completely eliminate capitalism, but it will largely be the end of consumption driven economics, and will force more and more of this surplus productivity to go towards supporting populations instead of enriching a privileged few.
There will simply be no other option. In some places this will happen violently, but in many places it will be a slow but peaceful transition.
