Paying People Like It's 1970

US wages and productivity grew at the same rate in the post WW2 economy era, then diverged in the "neoliberal" era, aka the era of financial theft. It's not some huge mystery why it happened. The system is setup to do exactly that. The guy who just assassinated the United HealthCare CEO maybe will end up being the shot heard 'round the western world.

In the era of at least a nominal gold standard, money was essentially a token of productivity, or represented a share of the whole economy. In the funny money neoliberal era, the people who get money first benefit most from it, then its value declines every time it changes hands basically because there's always brand new monopoly money spewing into the system and acquiring ownership of corporations or property, or whatever.

The people who run this system want to transform what's nominally a "free market" (it's really not because of the monopoly money) into a command and control, two tier dictatorship, which is basically already is.

In the US, it's pretty obvious the system is breaking down. I see it in my day to day life. The local parks district now does a bad job grooming the ski trails--they used to do a good job just five or ten years ago. Why is that? The parks can't afford to pay people, I guess, so they get inexperienced crew members and can't keep them, and maybe can't find help in the first place.

To get competent people to do some job like putting shingles on a roof costs a lot today. Not all that long ago it was maybe $5000 to redo a house like mine, now it's more like $15-20,000. 

Unfortunately, there's no way to fix this system. Who's going to wait 50 years for the neoliberal system to be "reformed" gradually? Why would someone in his 20s sign up for a series of shit jobs to make slave wages, not afford a home, etc...? To that person the USD is already valueless. When a new car costs $40,000--plus the car sucks because the car makers can't afford to hire any good people to build them and dealers won't pay anyone to maintain them, the $40,000 is already trash.

The idea that robots and AI are going to magically fix the economy is sci fi retardation. I think the pie in the sky automation concepts will actually turbocharge the clusterfuck scenario.