I have been thinking about whether human productivity will ever increase again because since the 1970s it has been declining overall and Ray Dalio summarizes this shift in his writings. Today’s stock market returns from top companies make a strong case for using money rather than labor to create more money and this trend I believe widens the gap between the rich and the poor because the poor only have disposable human labor but no disposable money and while this may create billionaires and trillionaires in the short term it ultimately undermines the notion of capitalism as envisioned by Adam Smith.

Money does not endure pain or miss family time so can it truly work harder than humans and if we consider money as an intermediary and a store of value for the investor’s hard work then are investors working harder than the common folk toiling in obscurity. With the stark differences between employee and executive pay I wonder if we will even be able to maintain current productivity levels and some argue that productivity has not fallen but I see more and more children earning less than their parents and if that is not a loss of productivity I do not know what is. Remarkably during the pandemic year of 2020 the world’s billionaires saw their wealth surge by three point nine trillion dollars while secluded in their mansions while millions of essential workers faced economic hardship despite laboring on the frontlines.

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