Almost all of us count as customers of the machines and we benefit from goods and services that are cheaper than they would otherwise be. There's other direct value captured by shareholders as you note, but this isn't homogenous. The workless joy Plodder would like to get from the machines is basically dependent on building up enough passive income before official retirement age, and this is hard. It is achievable for more people than who perhaps realise it though, but it requires financial self education and a lot of frugality.Woodchopper wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 9:55 amHitherto, when machines have been introduced throughout the economy the population has benefitted in aggregate* from the improved productivity. The money gets spread around (eg gets distributed to shareholders as dividends, spent by the newly rich, or paid in tax and then spent by government). Though, as you write, very profitable multinational corporations that pay little or no tax are a problem.sheldrake wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 9:31 amBecause the economic benefit of the machines goes mainly to the customers of what they produce and to the machine's owners. If you do not own shares in machine-using companies, you are not fully in on the action.plodder wrote: ↑Sat Sep 18, 2021 6:52 amIf the (small) amount of value added by these roles was mechanised I’m not sure my role shouldn’t become proportionately more easy as a result. It’s never been clear to me why mechanisation etc continually means people have to work harder, longer hours etc when the exact opposite should be true.
*See the above qualification.
Rebalancing tax rates by stopping the current large-scale machine owners from evading vast amounts of tax and lowering ours would go some way to helping Plodder save his way to freedom. Because of who I work for this might mean my own pre-tax pay had to go down quite a bit, but I could live with it (and my own direct taxation might be reduced)