Robotic Nation Evidence

Robots and Compensation

Productivity's profits bypass American workers

From the article:

During the last eight years an enormous gap has opened between the growth of employee productivity -- measured by the value of employee output per hour -- and the growth of employee compensation, measured by the value of hourly wages and benefits.

Economists like increases in productivity because the gains can improve the earnings and living standards of working Americans. But an economy that fails to distribute the fruits of rising productivity to those who have helped create it is as flawed as an economy that delivers little or no productivity increases at all. Yet this is exactly what has been happening in the United States.

Even in the technology-driven boom of 1995 to 2000, the average annual growth of employee compensation was a dismal 0.7 percent, while worker productivity grew more than three times faster at 2.48 percent. The latest data show no narrowing of the gap.

The concentration of wealth that this article talks about -- where productivity grows but employees see little of the benefit -- is discussed in Robotic Freedom.

The author gives an example of why this is happening:

The call-center industry, which employs up to 6 million Americans, provides a compelling example of the new type of assembly line at work. In the industry's heartland of Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, there are thousands of workplaces where managers peer into employees' computers with their own, govern their every utterance with prepackaged digital scripts, listen in on their telephone conversations, and time every facet of their work to the nearest second.

For too many Americans the white-collar assembly line has become a harsh, unstable workplace where their skills are devalued, where they have little job security, no say in the restructuring constantly going on around them and no refuge from the electronic monitor's relentless gaze. They are not well placed to press the boss for a raise, particularly since fewer of them enjoy the backing of labor unions. Nor are they enjoying the fruits of the increased productivity that they helped create. They are victims of what I call the new ruthless economy.

This sounds exactly like Manna.