"It should be added that wages going up and the emergence of a middle class was not a direct result of increased productivity. "

I fully agree that the labour movement was essential.

BUT - wages did definitely rise far before labour got going - and wages could not rise as they did without underlying productivity gains.

But yes - the labour movement was essential.

> ...wages could not rise as they did without underlying productivity gains

Absolutely. The challenge with automation is ensuring that the increased productivity benefits all of society (not necessarily equally). As useful as capitalism is, it doesn't really have a mechanism for doing this properly. The solution will always have to be political.

It's not like this is something far off. Wages have been frozen since 1980. And productivity has increased at a breakneck pace. From 1950-1980, when productivity gains were slow and incremental, the median wage rose by 75%. Between 1980 and 2010, it rose by 1% while companies posted record-breaking profits and the median income of the top 10% rose by 475%. The average wage increased alongside productivity gains, but due to the extremely skewed distribution, that hides the fact that the gains of computers and automation technology benefitted only the very top.

I think a large part of it has to do with how disruptive computers and software are. One person can walk in and write some software that makes an employee 50x as productive. How do you compensate that? They enabled your employee to create profoundly more value. If compensation is in any way tied to the value of the work being done, the compensation should obviously be similarly profound. You have to divorce value of work and compensation from one another completely to avoid ending up paying software creators very highly and practically creating a special class for them.