• Tango@piefed.ca
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    4 days ago

    Anyone who believes Bezos clearly doesn’t understand how capitalism works. AI will allow rich people who already own the companies to increase productivity with fewer employees. Meaning, they will gain more money and have less reason to spend it. Without a drastically higher wealth tax which funds social programs, how are the working (read: redundant) class going to GET access to money? With what jobs?

    Let me ask you this: back in more chauvinistic times, a family was expected to subsist entirely on a single salary: the husband’s. Since women’s lib doubled the workforce, have families become more or less able to afford necessities like housing? The economy doesn’t adjust to make things easier for people. If the average household income doubles, households don’t become more able to afford things. Prices just go up.

    The people who already possess resources like property aren’t gonna suddenly stop asking have-not newcomers for as much money as they can squeeze out of them. There’s absolutely no aspect of capitalism that will ever lead to that outcome.

    So if rich people who own businesses can make those businesses function with fewer employees, then they’re not gonna just say “hey guys, I’m gonna pay you the same wages for only working 3 days, doubling my workforce and the amount I have to pay it”. There’s no reason for them to do so. None. Poor people will, instead, go jobless and be allowed to slowly die of any of many poverty-related causes.

    Rich people only tolerate poor people because they need so many of us to do things for them. That’s about to change.