It’s consumerism and society being shaped for profit. It doesn’t actually cost much money for everyone to have a place to live and food to eat, but our economy (in the US) is considered healthy when people are shopping a lot and spending money on relative luxuries. Paying big mortgages on houses built by real estate developers to maximize profit. It should be a lot easier to live on not much money than it is. We exalted the “middle class” and their spending. That seems like part of it, at least.
I can’t believe people still repeat the old “productivity” canard from economists. There was this idea that technology makes workers more productive, raising wages, which hasn’t been true since the 1970s, because it’s just wrong. Technology makes companies more productive, and the workers make the same. Economists hold their wrong theory above reality and act like this gap is some kind of mysterious “dark matter” that defies the known laws of the universe. As I always say, when a company upgrades their copy machine to one that is twice as fast, they don’t pay the person who makes the copies twice as much. Also, without unions, and with an abundance of people to do the unskilled work needed, there is no force pushing wages up.
I can’t believe people still repeat the old “productivity” canard from economists. There was this idea that technology makes workers more productive, raising wages, which hasn’t been true since the 1970s, because it’s just wrong. Technology makes companies more productive, and the workers make the same. Economists hold their wrong theory above reality and act like this gap is some kind of mysterious “dark matter” that defies the known laws of the universe. As I always say, when a company upgrades their copy machine to one that is twice as fast, they don’t pay the person who makes the copies twice as much. Also, without unions, and with an abundance of people to do the unskilled work needed, there is no force pushing wages up.