alt Hacker News> Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share.
I highly doubt automation and robots are a meaningful factor here, but IP and outsourcing have the exact same as automation.
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boelboel • yesterday at 5:57 PM
New factories use very few people, part of the reason why it's difficult for many countries to industrialize like South Korea or China did (climbing manufacturing ladder).
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9x39 • yesterday at 9:44 PM
Automation isn't foreign to the topic. There's some discussion here that refrains from estimating too hard, but I think it's closer to outsourcing's effect:
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/jun/worker-sc...
Outsourcing and automation both reduce worker leverage, which reduces wages, which could explain reduced labor share. I'm not sure how one would weight it all.
There’s plenty of papers showing exactly this. What do you think has driven productivity? People simply bring smarter?
The fact is capital expenditure from company or investors has bought machinery, compute, pipelines, transport, and massive investment to make those workers more productive for decades. As such, the returns to capital as a share has increased. Those places able to deploy capital to add productivity win over those that don’t.
And real total remuneration across all quintiles has increased significantly. BLS among others has all historical data to check.
If/when there’s a period where there isn’t more gains to be had by more investment per worker, and workers become more productive via their own skill (education, diet, genetic implants,…), then more returns will flow that direction.
This is all well known, and easily checked.