“While corporations have been registering regular productivity gains, those gains have not, since 1980, registered any similar growth in wages, or even total compensation.”
Looking at only wages is looking at only one side of the coin. The other side is what you can buy today with those wages.
For example, today you can buy a magical device that you can hold in your hand for $100 that in 1980 didn’t exist and if it did you would need a big suitcase to carry it in and would have cost 100 grand. Another example is clothes. I’m constantly amazed at how unbelievably inexpensive they are today.
“Also, the “creation of new jobs”, as was seen during the onset of electrification, telecommunications, autos and commercial aircraft HAS NOT OCCURRED during the technology revolution in a manner of creating more new jobs than jobs lost.”
“Yes it - technology - does create all kinds of new work, and new jobs, but it has been at a much slower pace and volume than the jobs automation and computerization is doing away with.”
The tens of millions that hold those jobs in China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and here, would disagree with you.
“The tens of millions that hold those jobs in China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and here, would disagree with you.”
One could say that even there, productivity growth - especially Korea, Japan and Taiwan, has not translated to similar growth in either wages or jobs. China is a bit different, but an Intel exec friend of mine who goes in and out of China frequently on business - a Chinese American - says that you cannot accept the financial figures of Chinese companies or the government - their books are not trustworthy.
Or, taking your statement as fact, one could say any benefit of the productivity spurt from U.S. companies from the technological revolution was EXPORTED to China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan, with a “screw the American worker and domestic economy” stamp on it.
Yet, in both India and China, robotics & automation/computerization are beginning to slacken in terms of net job creation. The one advantage both countries have for maybe another twenty years is that infrastructure development is only high now because it needs to be to catch up with 100 years of higher infrastructure development in the west. Once they are built out as far as needed, that job engine will be much slower, robotics and automation will be even higher, with even slower job growth, for their 1 bil plus populations.