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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where is worker productivity on that graph exactly?
Why does that matter? According to you, productivity is not what leads to increases in wages. You claimed that wages only ever go up with a worker uprising. I showed that worker wages went up starting in 1995. According to you, there must have been a worker uprising to explain that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where is worker productivity on that graph exactly?
Why does that matter? According to you, productivity is not what leads to increases in wages. You claimed that wages only ever go up with a worker uprising. I showed that worker wages went up starting in 1995. According to you, there must have been a worker uprising to explain that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where is worker productivity on that graph exactly?
Why does that matter? According to you, productivity is not what leads to increases in wages. You claimed that wages only ever go up with a worker uprising. I showed that worker wages went up starting in 1995. According to you, there must have been a worker uprising to explain that.
I'm not sure you really understood my original post. I never said or meant to imply that wages never grow ever
I was talking about how increases in productivity do not lead to proportionally increased wages
Look, here's an example. Let's say I'm a worker producing Widgets for $20/hour by hand, and I can produce 10 widgets an hour. The company sells widgets for $10 each
In one hour I have produced $100 worth of widgets. The company pays me $20, the company keeps $80
Now the company buys a WidgetMachine. Using the WidgetMachine I can now produce 20 widgets an hour
I now produce $200 worth of Widgets per hour. The company still pays me $20, the company has now earned $180
My productivity has doubled, but my wage hasn't
So next year inflation is $5. The company increases my income to $25, starts charging a couple of cents more per Widget so they can absorb my wage increase without any change to their bottom line
My wage matches inflation, it still "grows" but it is completely divorced from my productivity
More importantly, my wage growing to match inflation doesn't help my buying power even remotely. If my wage only goes up to match exactly inflation then all I'm ever doing is treading water. At best all I can do is keep the exact same standard of living and lifestyle
Increases in "real wages" should have "real" impact on your life, it should let you have a better life than before
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Productivity per capita is dramatically up since the 1970s. Wages are flat. Employers are greedy and short sighted. Employers would rather pay more to hire someone new who doesn't know their business than give a raise to an existing employee who's doing well. They're not going to pay someone more because they're more productive, they'll pay them the same and punish anyone who can't meet the new quota.
This is not true. Wages did stagnate from about the mid 70s until about the mid 90s, but median, real wages have been increasing steadily since then [0] [0] https://x.com/LettieriDC/status/1922704140834099370
Capital earn more than Work since the 90s-2000s(depending on the country).
Why look at five years and say "everything is gonna be fine in five years, thus, everything is gonna be fine and we should keep this AI thing going"? It's early days and nobody knows how things will go, but to me it looks that in the next century or so humans are going the way of the horse, at least when it comes to jobs. And if our society doesn't change radically, let's remember that the only way most people have o…
I’m not sure. I think we can extrapolate that repetitive knowledge work will require much less labor. For actual AGI capable of applying rigor, I don’t think it clear that the computational requirements are achievable without a massive breakthrough. Also for general purpose physical tasks, humans are still pretty dang efficient at ~100watts and self maintaining.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does that matter? According to you, productivity is not what leads to increases in wages. You claimed that wages only ever go up with a worker uprising. I showed that worker wages went up starting in 1995. According to you, there must have been a worker uprising to explain that.
I don’t have a strong opinion on the topic, but bluefirebrand did not claim that wages only go up because of worker uprisings.
Sustained rates of increase _require_ increasing productivity. So no, they didn't explicitly state it, what they explicitly said was that productivity only results in increased wages if a worker uprising forces it. But that's the logical requirement of that statement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does that matter? According to you, productivity is not what leads to increases in wages. You claimed that wages only ever go up with a worker uprising. I showed that worker wages went up starting in 1995. According to you, there must have been a worker uprising to explain that.
> You claimed that wages only ever go up with a worker uprising. I'm not sure you really understood my original post. I never said or meant to imply that wages never grow ever I was talking about how increases in productivity do not lead to proportionally increased wages Look, here's an example. Let's say I'm a worker producing Widgets for $20/hour by hand, and I can produce 10 widgets an hour. The company sells widg…
So I showed you an increase in worker wages. If there is not corresponding worker uprising, your original claim is false.
And,again, you keep ignoring that the plot I showed is already inflation adjusted. It is a real increase, not a nominal increase.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For the same reasons that, on average and in general, increases in productivity have lead to increases in wages across history Historically, increased productivity has almost literally never increased wages or benefits without worker uprisings Seriously look into the history of labor and automation
Cool. What worker uprising occurred in the US in 1995? I (and basically every economist) disagree with your interpretation of historical events. https://x.com/LettieriDC/status/1922704140834099370
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
Change 1979q4–2025q1:
Productivity +86.0%
Hourly pay +32.0%
Productivity has grown 2.7x as much as pay
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a massive offshoring of software jobs Where have I heard this before? The drawbacks of offshoring are well known by now and AI does not really mitigate them to any extent.
So many of the drawbacks have been mitigated at this point too. Offshore teams are well organized, have their own managers, orgs, the offshore talent has really grown in ths last few decades with many excellent engineers, and remote/async work has become a first class citizen now. Despite offshore getting way better, the US jobs market in IT has not collapsed.
AI should improve code quality for these offshore teams. That leaves time zone issues, which may or may not be a problem. If it is, offshore to Latin America.
Finally gave Claude a go after trying OpenAI a while and feeling pretty _meh_ about the coding ability... Wow, it's a whole other level or two ahead, at least for my daily flavor which is PowerShell. No way a double-digit amount of jobs aren't at stake. This stuff feels like it is really starting to take off. Incredible time to be in tech, but you gotta be clever and work hard every day to stay on the ride. Many folk…
Yup, Claude Code is the real deal. It's a massive force multiplier for me. I run a small SaaS startup. I've gotten more done in the last month than the previous 3 months or more combined. Not just code, but also emails, proposals, planning, legal etc. I feel like working in slo-mo when Claude is down (which unfortunately happens every couple of days). I believe that tools like Claude code will help smaller companies…