alt Hacker News> What kind of illusion must one be under to believe that employers would ever pay you the same amount of money to do less work?
Because supposedly, the new tooling (in this case, AI) allows them to produce the same or greater output despite doing less work. Workers are under the perennial illusion that they'll ever benefit from productivity gains, but that hasn't been the case since the 1970s.
Replies
jlarocco • today at 3:23 PM
1970s? More like the 1800s with the industrial revolution. Workers have almost never seen increased pay from more efficient production - it's the business owners and investors who benefit every time.
People can argue that the workers benefit from buying cheaper stuff, but that's on the other side of the equation.
> Workers are under the perennial illusion that they'll ever benefit from productivity gains, but that hasn't been the case since the 1970s.
Agreed, except that workers have never benefited from productivity gains, those always accrue to the employer.
The wage growth before the 1970s was mostly from the postwar boom, before jobs started to be moved out of the country. After that there was downward pressure on wages.