By Richard E Walrath

As a general rule, economic numbers are inflation adjusted when you see them.  If you are given "raw" numbers and don’t know what the inflation rate is, you don’t know what the increase or decrease is.

If your salary was $10,000 last year, and it’s $10,000 this year, right away you would know you’re not as well off.  But would you know how much worse off you are?

Without an increase in productivity, there is no increase in wages.  There isn’t even an argument about it because there is no way to pay for an increase.  As to how to divide productivity gains, there would be nothing produced at all without labor–not to mention nobody to buy the goods and services produced.  Millions of jobs in the last six years, alone, have been exported overseas.  The minimum wage stayed the same for nearly ten years. 

People in low  paying jobs don’t set their wages.  Those in the highest paid jobs have a lot to say about how much they’re going to be paid. Union membership is now down to 10% or less from a high of 35% thirty years ago.  

Somebody is always coming up with the idea of using robots to replace employees who expect to be paid, want benefits such as health insurance and pensions, and are likely to join unions. 

Henry Ford invented the automobile in 1903 and had the answer to this idea over one hundred years ago.

Who’s going to buy all the automobiles if all we have is robots making them?