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The explanation is that increasing productivity necessitates the creation of "ancillary services" to keep people employed. This is what Kalecki called "overhead and ancillary wages".

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 4th, 2014 at 03:14:14 PM EST
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And let us not dwell on the increasingly large portion of gains from increased productivity that go to capital. People might get the wrong idea. As John Stuart Mill noted long ago, justifying capitalism on the basis of its ability to create wealth neither says nor implies anything about how that wealth is distributed. But the capitalists see it as a 'law of nature' that those who make the money get to decide how it is distributed, to the extent that it is distributed at all and regardless of the consequences of the distribution that they make.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Jun 4th, 2014 at 03:54:37 PM EST
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I suppose that the reason that there is no crushingly argued paper detailing just how "overhead and ancillary wages" ate up ALL of the gains in productivity for the bottom 80% of the workforce is that the prospect of being able to do so is laughable, even to 'Mainstream' economists. Best just to keep quiet about increasingly skewed income distribution - damn Pikittey!

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Jun 4th, 2014 at 05:23:00 PM EST
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