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Comment by robinhoode | Hacker News Reader

> This is a bad deal. Capital makes the marginal worker more productive, not less.

Why should workers care about being more productive if they do not reap the rewards in terms of wages?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_of_wages_from_produ...

Total compensation involves more than just wages. Providing benefits such as healthcare coverage is inherently expensive, since productivity gains in healthcare have been limited.

At least in the United States we are not getting this benefit.

If AI does begin to really crater the job market, only owners of AI (yes including shareholders) will benefit but most folks do not own stock - or at least do not own any significant amount of stock.

The point still remains, it's not like I get double the healthcare if I increase productivity.

A bad-faith argument.

Workers do not benefit in increased compensation of any sort when AI increases company productivity.

That's not such an ironclad argument lmao. If we are to believe Baumol's cost disease, rising productivity in other sectors is partly responsible for healthcare cost increase.

Obviously I don't seriously believe we should depress productivity so that nurses make less money and hospital stays are cheaper. But, you know, it doesn't make it untrue.

This concept has been thoroughly debunked. Wages and productivity track each other very very well.

That has not been true since the early 70s. Increases in productivity are multiples of the increase in wages since then.

World Economic Forum: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/11/productivity-workfor...

This is misinformation and has been debunked at length. The graph compares median wage to mean productivity which is nonsensical.

Isn't that the whole point? That as total productivity has increased (represented by the mean), the wage increase has gone to the top.

That’s because most of the productivity increases come from the top as well.

Compare like to like. Mean productivity increase tracks mean wage increase super well, same for median productivity increase vs median wage increase.

The people you are replying to are trying to have a meaningful discussion by providing references and some basic argumentation. Can you add some link or arguments that explain more strongly your point of view instead of using strong affirmations ('misinformation', 'debunked', 'nonsensical') without any trace of argumentation and no reference at all ?

I’d recommend reading my comment more carefully. The argument is pretty clear and straightforward.

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