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Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#101

Post by kylecordes »

throw8383833jj wrote: post #60
nebula8804 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US and other developed countries have been loosing ever greater amounts of wealth. Wealth per capita has decreased dramatically over the last 50 years. The causes are too numerous to go into, but there are MANY. Don't leave us hanging throw8383833jj, where did the wealth go?

The biggest drop in wealth is Shelter and Medical. 50 years ago land was much cheaper. A 300K house (non-land cost) costs 310K (maybe 10k for the land). Whereas today, in states where much job creation happens (i won't name names), a 300K house costs 600K or more. You could say, the previous land owner made all that money and it's true. But, it's just a one time wealth transfer from the latest generation to previous…

The challenge with shelter is that it is fundamentally a positional good. Everyone wants to be within the x% most convenient, which is say, desirable, places to live. So as there are more and more people with more money to chase those limited "slots", they get more expensive. Making everyone worse off.

The solution is to massively build many more new good places to live; but there are also enormous forces against that.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#102

Post by throw8383833jj »

uejfiweun wrote: post #66
throw8383833jj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds plausible: all the benefits have gone to the rich. So, I set out to see what a world would be like if we "redistributed" all those "benefits". So, simply take the entire wealth of every billionaire in the US and divide it by the number of citizens and number of years required to acquire that wealth. It's a relatively simply equation: Billionaire wealth / Citizens / 30 Years = Yearly Redistribution 4T / 300…

It's not that I advocate for wealth redistribution, quite the opposite in fact. But I certainly wish that these leaders would just, y'know, RAISE WAGES. Rent is skyrocketing, housing is skyrocketing, medical expenses are skyrocketing, car prices are skyrocketing, and after 40 years of this, it's finally just now that wages are starting to catch up a tiny bit. Meanwhile, CEO pay has risen >30% since the pandemic alone…

Right, rising wages is what most people demand of politicians.

But, there's two ways to get more of what you want:

1) rising wages

2) lowering costs.

#1 -> it would be nice but you can only squeeze so much blood from a turnip.

#2 has gotten far too little attention and has a lot of potential to do good, if we start pursuing it in a way that increases overall prosperity, not decreasing propsperity

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#103

Post by dahart »

throw8383833jj wrote: post #65
dahart wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, if you stole every last dollar from every last billionaire in the US and redistributed it for the last 30 years, each person would only get 500$ per year. Loaded use of the world “stole” there. This is a faulty analysis. It’s well studied and well known, for example, that the top 10% of people income wise have ~70% of the wealth in the US. Similar patterns exist globally. This has been reproduced many ways by m…

"stole" or redistribute. the math works out the same in the end. the reason I used "stole" is because if you "redistribute" every ounce of someone's wealth, I imagine you might get some push back. You can re-apply this formula to various top N% but you get similar numbers: both for income redistribution and wealth redistribution. The reason all those articles of top 10% have 70% of the wealth seem so impressive is no…

Let’s frame it differently. If you redistributed all wealth from just the top 1% today to all us citizens, each person would get 40T / 300M = $133K, which would make a real (and massive) difference in most people’s lives. Redistribute the top 10%, and everyone gets $320k in savings. This would be an average of 30x more savings for the bottom half than they’d have otherwise.

The biggest problem with your calculation is the arbitrary line of billionaires, which leaves out all the millionaires. The top 1% have wealth exceeding 40T, while the bottom 50% have sum total wealth less than the 4T you used for billionaires.

Another problem is dividing by 30, that’s not well justified. Half of all us wealth was gained in the last 10 years. Your calculation implicitly assumes you would redistribute slowly, but since you’re using a hypothetical, why would you do that? Why not redistribute all of it today and see if the sum is meaningful? It doesn’t make sense to redistribute slowly, regardless of how long it took to accumulate.

A third problem is leaving out income from the summary, since wealth is savings and the lower class has little. You conclude that $500/year sounds small but glossed over the fact that it represent savings not income, and that it would add up to a lot even in your setup.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#104

Post by xmprt »

uejfiweun wrote: post #66
throw8383833jj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds plausible: all the benefits have gone to the rich. So, I set out to see what a world would be like if we "redistributed" all those "benefits". So, simply take the entire wealth of every billionaire in the US and divide it by the number of citizens and number of years required to acquire that wealth. It's a relatively simply equation: Billionaire wealth / Citizens / 30 Years = Yearly Redistribution 4T / 300…

It's not that I advocate for wealth redistribution, quite the opposite in fact. But I certainly wish that these leaders would just, y'know, RAISE WAGES. Rent is skyrocketing, housing is skyrocketing, medical expenses are skyrocketing, car prices are skyrocketing, and after 40 years of this, it's finally just now that wages are starting to catch up a tiny bit. Meanwhile, CEO pay has risen >30% since the pandemic alone…

I don't know if raising wages alone will help. Increased wages will just make cost of production more expensive and raise prices or allow landlords to charge more for rent. What's more important is solving housing, transportation, and healthcare issues so people can satisfy those needs cheaply. Build more houses, improve urban planning and public transit, and create national healthcare.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#106

Post by mbrameld »

throw8383833jj wrote: post #60
nebula8804 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US and other developed countries have been loosing ever greater amounts of wealth. Wealth per capita has decreased dramatically over the last 50 years. The causes are too numerous to go into, but there are MANY. Don't leave us hanging throw8383833jj, where did the wealth go?

The biggest drop in wealth is Shelter and Medical. 50 years ago land was much cheaper. A 300K house (non-land cost) costs 310K (maybe 10k for the land). Whereas today, in states where much job creation happens (i won't name names), a 300K house costs 600K or more. You could say, the previous land owner made all that money and it's true. But, it's just a one time wealth transfer from the latest generation to previous…

If all you want is a shack on some land you own, you could do that for much less than 80,000 man hours. Land in NE Arizona sells for a few hundred dollars an acre. There's no zoning and very little in the way of regulation.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#107

Post by _oghd »

Marx had a lot to say about this over 150 years ago...

the answer lies in that technology absolutely does make us more productive.

the benefits of that reduction in cost, however, tend to move upward rather than downward, at least when it comes to labor value.

this is basically chapter 1 from das kapital.

of course, these kind of articles serve as propaganda by comflating ideas and watering down the critical analysis.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#108

Post by kylecordes »

tobr wrote: post #29
ALittleLight wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the non-super rich see a lot of advantages from the modern economy. As an example, just yesterday, I was picking up an order at Walmart. The guy who brought the bags to my car had Airpods in. The existence of Airpods (and phones, Internet, Bluetooth, streaming services, etc) may not have made this guy more productive, but it probably improves his life somewhat.

Am I missing something, or is this like the first time you see a guy with AirPods? What’s the significance?

One significant thing here: this is a piece of technology which no one in the entire world, at any level of wealth, had a couple decades ago. But today a person in a relatively low-ranked job carrying orders out at Walmart... casually has this technology for fun.

This does not measure as a productivity improvement, but it’s pretty great.

Most non-positional goods are like this. You getting Airpods doesn't make mine any worse. Statistically, you getting Airpods makes mine better, because it increases the chances of there being more content I like.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#109

Post by marcosdumay »

FredPret wrote: post #27

Have a look at our GDP per capita graph and tell me again we're not more productive. We're working less and less and making more and more. Some of it is commercial and social innovation, but a lot is technology as well. I work as a specific type of tech consultant to medium-sized companies, and it's wondrous to behold how easy we can make many aspects of business. Critical functions that took multiple handshakes, pap…

Well, for the lazy, there's a nice summary here:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

I've pre-selected a few lines because the problem is supposed to exist on the data of rich countries. You can deselect them at the blue bar at the top of the page (it's not obvious).

I couldn't cut the data in any way that showed the issue ever existed. There is an half decade long decrease on the wealth of the poorer countries but nothing else on this graph.

Anyway, "productivity" isn't GDP per capta. It's close to the GDP divided by the total worked hours. The fact that the GDP per capta is increasing (I didn't expect this) really puts the productivity problem in an entirely new light.

Re: Why isn’t new technology making us more productive?

#110

Post by samatman »

gumby wrote: post #71
ebiester wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently, with my husband's work, I saw three one-hour meetings turn into over 200 emails because someone doing the work refused to get on the phone and misunderstood the written word. I am skeptical that email is that much more productive for many people.

Although I've been using networked email as a primary communications channel for my entire computing life (since ~1978), I did work for a couple of large companies before it was widely adopted and you simply cannot imagine the amount of infrastructure required to produce and move physical paper documents around, not to mention disseminating mass communications. Moving that all online was a massive improvement, even w…

The cliche of 'started in the mailroom' is expired by now but it was there for a reason. Businesses had a whole division whose job was to collect, shuffle, and deliver manila envelopes. Someone would come around with a push cart and drop them in the inbox.

Working in the mailroom was an entry-level, menial job, but one which rewarded intelligence and afforded a unique view into the function of the company.

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