The Jetsons was a House Age cartoon sitcom set within the yr 2062. It premiered in 1962 playfully imagining all of the futuristic gizmos and devices of an everyman 100 years sooner or later. Within the present, House Dad George Jetson works simply two days every week— for one hour every day—within the workplace — supporting his household of 4, affording a robotic maid and paying a mortgage on a flying duplex in Orbit Metropolis.
Catching a re-run late one night time, I had a revelation and a disappointment –
Revelation — George Jetson was born July 31, 2022 making him older than my new child son —The Future is Close to!
Disappointment — If the long run is so shut, why isn’t society effectively on its method in direction of 2 hour work weeks which might help center class households?
George works for Spacely Sprockets as a “digital index operator.” This includes him pushing buttons to take care of an atomic supercomputer named RUDI (quick for “Referential Common Digital Indexer”).
In essence, George’s job is to prune and handle datasets used to feed an AI supercomputer. He then displays and stories the workloads being carried out by RUDI. This sounds identical to a job which can exist within the subsequent 10-15 years. Chief AI Officer and his merry band of digital index operators.
On this universe, George’s output in simply 1 hour of labor is the same as 20x the output of right now’s employee as a result of RUDI handles the brunt of the “work”. Additionally on this universe, George will get PAID 20x the wages of right now’s employee as a result of his compensation matches his productiveness.
Should be good, George. Should. be. good. Whereas it looks like we’re inching nearer to a world with AI supercomputers and jobs to handle the coaching knowledge inputs, most fulltime jobs are nonetheless 40 hours per week minimal.
It’s straightforward to see why the creators of the The Jetsons would assume work weeks proceed getting shorter and compensation rise over time although.
Within the 1st half of the twentieth century, productiveness and hourly compensation had been nonetheless HIGHLY correlated. In a linear extrapolation 100 years into the long run, individuals would solely must work 2 hours per week to earn a powerful and secure center class wage.
But, it wasn’t meant to be. Over the previous 50 years, the quantity labor has been compensated for his or her productiveness has lagged significantly. This is called the Productiveness-Compensation Hole
Even normalizing for inflation and innovation, all excessive talent white collar jobs really path their early-to-mid twentieth century equal labor charges.
So why did this hole emerge and the way do employees reverse course to reclaim the wage premium for productiveness? These are questions for an additional day.
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