[EarthAmbassador]

Utter nonsense. Productivity gains of the last 40 years have been captured by shareholders and top elites. Working class wages have been flat all of that time despite that gain.

In 2012, Musk was worth $2 billion. He’s now worth 223 times that yet the minimum wage has barely budged in the last 12 years as productivity rises.

[palmfacehn]

>>Productivity gains increase the standard of living for everyone.

>Productivity gains of the last 40 years have been captured by shareholders and top elites. Working class wages have been flat...

Wages do not determine the standard of living. The products and services purchased with wages determine the standard of living. "Top elites" in 1984 could already afford cellular phones, such as the Motorola DynaTAC:

>A full charge took roughly 10 hours, and it offered 30 minutes of talk time. It also offered an LED display for dialing or recall of one of 30 phone numbers. It was priced at US$3,995 in 1984, its commercial release year, equivalent to $11,716 in 2023.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_DynaTAC

Unfortunately, touch screen phones with gigabytes of ram were not available for the masses 40 years ago.

[DAGdug]

What a patently absurd POV! A phone doesn’t compensate for the inability to solve for basic needs - housing, healthy food, healthcare. Or being unable to invest in skill development for themselves or their offspring, save for retirement.

[antihipocrat]

Loans for phones are very common in the developing world.

Rather than a luxury, they've become an expensive interest bearing necessity for billions of human beings.

[kelseyfrog]

Please do this but with college education, medical, and childcare costs, otherwise it's just cherry picking.