March 13, 2026
More apps, thinner wallets
Why Technology Makes Us More Productive but Not Richer
Tech got faster, paychecks didn’t — comment war over who’s getting rich
TLDR: The post argues tech boosts efficiency but mostly shifts money from workers to companies, pointing to a huge yearly transfer from wages to profits. Commenters split: some blame monopolies for hoarding gains, others slam the writing and argue tech clearly expanded human prosperity, sparking a spicy style-vs-substance brawl.
Tech makes everything faster and cheaper, yet most people don’t feel richer — that’s the thesis of the post. The author says we’ve hit a consumption ceiling (you only have 24 hours and one stomach), so tech mostly reshuffles who gets paid. Their big mic drop: the workers’ slice of the economy (the “labor share”) has shrunk since 1980, shifting roughly $1.7 trillion a year from paychecks to company owners and investors. Cue the Amazon example: the same $100 book sale now sends a lot more to infrastructure and profit, and far less to wages.
The comments? Absolute fireworks. One camp goes full “follow the money”: “it’s the oligarchy,” says one, nodding to monopolies and market power. Another camp torches the writing style first, ideas second — calling it “LLM-generated” and “vapid” — while a heavyweight rebuttal insists tech obviously grows the pie: “we have 8 billion people because of it.” Meanwhile, a math-minded critic pokes at the logic behind spending shares, and the author jumps in to defend the data, saying the labor-share drop stunned even them. For comic relief, someone tallied 27 em dashes and the thread turned it into a meme. It’s part econ lesson, part roast, all drama.
Key Points
- •The article posits a paradox: technological efficiency has risen while average real GDP growth slowed from about 4.5% (1960s) to roughly 2.4% (2010s–2020s).
- •It argues for a consumption ceiling: US consumer spending’s share of GDP rose modestly (≈61% in 1980 to ≈68% today) and plateaued since 2010, implying tech mainly redistributes spending.
- •Examples (Netflix, Uber, Spotify) show substitution rather than expanded consumption, shifting which firms capture existing spend.
- •A bookstore-to-Amazon comparison suggests labor’s share of a $100 sale fell while capital/infrastructure share rose; nationally, labor’s share of US GDP declined from ≈64% (1980) to ≈58% today, implying ≈$1.7T/year shifted to capital.
- •The article introduces four reasons prices haven’t fallen more, beginning with monopoly power limiting pass-through of cost savings. (Other mechanisms not detailed in the excerpt.)