You are reversing cause and effect. Productivity is rarely affected by bottom level employees to a significant extent these days. That is why there is no pressure for wages to keep up. Your own graph proves productivity is going up despite your claim of unmotivated employees.
everyone below the owner is incentivised to help the owner increase productivity since the owner ultimately decides if they are fired or get raises and bonuses
I’m addressing this claim here. If increased productivity doesn’t increase compensation, then there’s no incentive to help the owner increase productivity. This year in particular we saw a lot of layoffs by profitable businesses! The productivity increases we have seen can be more easily attributed to technological advancement than increasingly motivated employees.
Imagine how much more productive we’d be if everyone actually had any reason to give a shit about their company. Because most of us certainly do not.
Imagine how much more productive we’d be if everyone actually had any reason to give a shit about their company.
First of all, this is very questionable, since data from companies that overpaid/indulged their employees like Google and other tech companies in the past did not really see much increase in productivity as far as I can tell.
Second of all, pressure on wages is different. Hence my referral to minimal wages etc. In a sense, a boss is indeed not incentivised to increase productivity if all the gains go to employees anyway, but this is one special edge case. As you say, a majority of productivity gains come from automation improvements and other kinds of innovation and process optimization, where the incentives do apply.
You are reversing cause and effect. Productivity is rarely affected by bottom level employees to a significant extent these days. That is why there is no pressure for wages to keep up. Your own graph proves productivity is going up despite your claim of unmotivated employees.
I’m addressing this claim here. If increased productivity doesn’t increase compensation, then there’s no incentive to help the owner increase productivity. This year in particular we saw a lot of layoffs by profitable businesses! The productivity increases we have seen can be more easily attributed to technological advancement than increasingly motivated employees.
Imagine how much more productive we’d be if everyone actually had any reason to give a shit about their company. Because most of us certainly do not.
First of all, this is very questionable, since data from companies that overpaid/indulged their employees like Google and other tech companies in the past did not really see much increase in productivity as far as I can tell.
Second of all, pressure on wages is different. Hence my referral to minimal wages etc. In a sense, a boss is indeed not incentivised to increase productivity if all the gains go to employees anyway, but this is one special edge case. As you say, a majority of productivity gains come from automation improvements and other kinds of innovation and process optimization, where the incentives do apply.