I do not agree with the following:

> But those profits will not be shared. Human productivity has exploded in the last 120 years, yet we are working longer hours for less pay.

I am, however, criticizing this in isolation — that is, my goal is not to invalidate (nor validate, for that matter) the rest of your text; only this specific point.

So, I do not agree. We are clearly working a lot less hours than 120 or even 60 years ago, and we are getting a lot more back for it.

The problem I have with this is that the framing is often wrong — whether some number on a paycheck goes up or down is completely irrelevant at the end of the day.

The only relevant question boils down to this: how many hours of hardship do I have to put in, in order to get X?

And X can be many different things. Like, say, a steak, or a refill at the gas station, or a bread.

Now, I do not have very good data at hand right here and right now, but if my memory and my gut feeling serves me right, the difference is significant, often even dramatic.

For example, for one kilogram of beef, the average German worker needs to toil about 36 minutes nowadays.

In 1970, it was twice as much time that needed to be worked before the same amount of beef could be afforded.

In the seventies, Germans needed to work 145 hours to be able to afford a washing machine.

Today, it’s less than 20 hours!

And that’s not even taking into account the amount of „more progress“ we can afford today, with less toil.

While one can imagine that in 1970, I could theoretically have something resembling a smartphone or a lane- and distance-keeping car getting produced for me (by NASA, probably), I can’t even begin to imagine how many hours, if not millennia, I would have needed to work in order to receive a paycheck that would have paid for it.

We get SO much more for our monthly paycheck today, and so many more people do (billions actually), it’s not even funny.