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
“Real median middle class income has stayed effectively constant since the 1980s”
That’s the entire point that was being made in the first place! Productivity has increased massively, income has “stayed constant” - So, we’re working harder and producing more for the sole benefit of the rich.
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?
Sure. Let’s take 20 years.
Healthcare outcomes are worse. Healthcare is more expensive. Life expectancy is lower. Fewer people can afford to buy a home. Fewer people can afford to retire. Commutes are longer. People have to work more hours in a week to get by. A higher percentage of people are living paycheck to paycheck. Infrastructure is collapsing. Towns are in more debt. Higher education is VASTLY more expensive. Literacy rates have decreased. A vastly higher percentage of people work two jobs to make ends meet A vastly higher percentage of households require two working adults, rather than one working adult, to pay bills.
But sure go off about how it’s so great we have the Apple Vision Pro now.
