Yes, that's what strikes me as well. Where is the productivity gains going? Why are we still working 40 hour weeks, and possibly even for many more years?
If I remember correctly, Denmark even removed a holiday recently. So work more days a year as well.
That's the problem here. That a few people reap all the benefits of this, while the rest of us toil.
I have no specific figures to back this up, but my assumption is that as we become more productive, more credit is made available, which leads to bigger debts and asset price inflation. Because of the asset price inflation, the debt is not necessarily used for productive purchases but, for example, to pay more for existing things - the obvious one being a home. The productivity gains are therefore claimed by creditors.
It would be interesting to see how well productivity increases and debt growth (esp. private) correlate.
I wonder what a good answer would be here. Intuitively we are increasing productivity in activities that does not increase social welfare. Take corporate lawyering, marketing as an example.
The rising wealth inequality is a blunt answer. Similarly saying that we are increasing productivity in activities that protect interest of the rich.
It seems that significant amount of productivity gains are lost because of activities that profit from deception and counter activities that accounts for them.
Its an intrinsically anti-human system thats starting to need less and less people. How these surplus people are dealt with isn't going to be pretty... Hopefully it results in the actors, being human and all, having a social revolution and pivoting away from it.
If I remember correctly, Denmark even removed a holiday recently. So work more days a year as well.
That's the problem here. That a few people reap all the benefits of this, while the rest of us toil.