-
ITT: people saying "blame automation" as if that means it's not a problem.
-
Automation
-
No one has good answers? It's obviously because workers had very little to do with the rise in productivity...
-
4 RepliesAssuming you should be paid for the total value of your services (which isn't feasible for most companies). Also, this probably doesnt take into account tips and bonuses which make up a considerable chunk of income now.
-
I am curious as to how the study classified “Compensation”. Was it cash only, or did it include non-cash benefits? Were these intangible benefits, if included, measured fairly? If this study was done measuring individual output to individual compensation, How is that quantified in something like HR or Accounting? Or did the study measure the company’s total output and total wages earned and simply divided the two? Does output include Work-In-Process that were sold, or only finished goods? Was overhead taken into consideration? Clearly it’s related to output (indirectly), so how did they chart that aspect? The graph is deceptively simple.
-
What is this measured in, exactly?
-
3 RepliesWell, whether the chart is truly accurate or not if there’s one thing AP stats taught me, it’s that you can manipulate data to say whatever you wish... so I can’t trust any graphs any more... I feel betrayed
-
Edited by OLDBOYvicious: 12/7/2017 7:07:31 AMThis isnt a "good" answer, but this is the true answer, to the point that it is at least a major contributing factor to the issue: The human body has not evolved significantly since the period of industrialization. This means that a skilled worker from a hundred years ago, is limited by the same setbacks of being human as a worker of today. Human beings have not become significantly more efficient, more skilled, or more capable for centuries. A person who was taught the skill of typing, assembling parts, painting, etc. Would be held to the skill limits that were afforded to them by the training methods and tools available. So industries have researched and created tools that help human workers become more efficient, but it is not the humans themselves that increase productivity. Humans are the least productive part of most labor systems. A staff of workers who perform their job at 100% of their human capacity (which never happens, because their minds will wander, they may need extra bathroom breaks, they may get sick and need time off, or they may just work below their capability out of boredom), will never exceed the capability of the non-human elements of a system. An assembly line for example, which combines automated and human working mechanics, can improve the automated side to be faster, but the human side will always work at a maximum of 100% human efficiency. So for a company to increase productivity, it must put a more significant portion of it's resources into improving the automated systems to be more efficient in a way that accommodates the worker. Since humans are becoming less of a factor in increasing production, and thus less of a factor in what creates profit, the humans receive less of the company profits in proportion to their contribution. TL;DR- If your personal work creates .01% of the profits, don't expect more than .01% of those profits to go back into your pocket.
-
This graph looks made up
-
4 RepliesMay I refer you to a very good song by Dropkick Murphys? It’s title is Workers Song.
-
well as you become more productive jew make more money
-
6 RepliesI know why. When you raise the minimum wage a business is forced to lay off some of their employees. BUT the amount of work to be done doesn't change. Therefore fewer people have to be more productive. Raising the minimum wage is [i]bad[/i] for [i]everyone[/i].
-
1 ReplyI see the thread already dug into industrialization and people not really working much harder to increase output, so I won't repeat that whole point. Here's another question, though; since productivity has gone way up, why haven't we yet embraced a 30-hour work week? That's what a fair number of countries did with their increased productivity, but not here.
-
4 RepliesHere’s another chart. Can’t wait for that trickle down economics to start kicking in.
-
"I want to work at McDonald's for the rest of my life." - said no one ever
-
15 RepliesWell, I'm certainly not one to normally defend corporate America, however.. I believe what this graph shows is the increase of industrialization and technology over time, and just how unimportant general labor is becoming. The whole thing equates to people doing more with less time and effort. Therefore the company has to make a choice. Hire fewer people, pay more people, but less money, or raise prices to the consumer to compensate. Continuous price increases piss off the consumer, so most try to avoid that to some capacity. At least on the scale it would take to compensate for "fair pay". So some companies choose to hire less people, which creates more people looking for work, which leads to companies getting labor at a lower cost.. which leads us to the same result in the graph. Other companies choose to pay less overall. Which leads to other companies following suit to stay within "fair value" of what other people in the industry are paying employees, because.. why would Burger King pay employees $20 an hour if McDonald's has plenty of labor for $12? And once again we end up with the same result. Productivity is only going to increase over time. There's no denying that. And if companies continued to pay based on productivity there would eventually be a point that companies could simply no longer keep up, or the prices of our goods and services would rise exponentially to cover it. Basically a "damned if you do, damned if you don't " situation. And one of the few times I can't blame it on corporate greed. It's a product of industrialization. And it's never going away. We need to rethink the job market.
-
14 RepliesBoth are rising, that's good
-
14 RepliesThe gap keeps widening too.
-
Purchasing power is what you should focus on. I'd be pointing towards the real cause rather than the symptom. Central banking and central power
-
62 RepliesEdited by JS5218: 12/6/2017 7:38:57 PMTax cuts are going to make it worse too. CEOs are not going to create jobs with the savings. CEOs are going to buy back company stock which will send stock prices soaring. This will make the rich richer. Meanwhile everyone working will see the same stagnate wages.
-
Consider that technology has also drastically increased the productivity of most jobs, with much less work actually required. Quite a lot within the last hundred years. It makes that figure seem more understandable.
-
Any seasoned worker knows to dogfu[b][/b]ck at work.
-
6 RepliesIt’s almost like things like automated production line, computers, and the internet had something to do with that increase in productivity, but that would just be crazy. Really Max, I can see the effects of technology on my productivity in just my 15 years in the work force. Am I working harder? No, I can just do things faster. Simple things like sending an e-mail from the field has gone from opening up a slow laptop, connecting to a aircard on a slow edge network, and sending to pulling my phone out of my pocket, typing, and hitting send. Don’t even get me start on my actual equipment.
-
It's the typical example of rich get richer and the poorer get poorer!