But instead, we decided to make a very small number of people extremely rich.

Here's the thing. We could have that right now, today, we're there, they're right. Computers and just useful software (fuck AI) alone have increased productivity so much that one guy with fancy Excel can do the work of what used to take 98 people (7 banks x 14 person abacus teams). And that's just one regional bank. Before email, corporations had internal mailing departments, now there's dirt cheap and super convenient email. There are untold numbers of shell scripts out there quietly replacing whole ass departments of people. Soft automation alone, no robots needed, has increased human productivity to an absolutely bonkers degree since these statements were written. Thanks to the Friedman doctrine and Reagan and Thatcher and their ilk, all the benefits of that productivity got turned into a benefits for the asset holding class, while the middle and lower classes got lectures on the morality of hard work.

As a kid, my dad used to tell me stuff like that. He believed it too. He worked 2 jobs 6 days a week all his life to die in relative poverty.

People make wealth issues generational. It's not. It's a narrative to divide and conquer.

It's the rich vs the poor. It's always been.

damn this sounds like a lovely world where republicans ceased to exist since 1967

By the year 2040, you'll eat bugs on your way into your 16 hour job making 13 Bezos bucks an hour and you'll love it because the serotonin patches and nightly dream implants (implant so that you dot wake up while your frontal cortex is being used to mine doge coin).

Interesting predictions from the 60s.

It turns out that in the early 70s, “we” decided to give everything to corporations and those already wealthy instead. Productivity did indeed continue to skyrocket, but wages have stagnated since then. For 50+ years we’ve been getting robbed.

Billionaires and bastard corporations: Yoink

They're right.

We could do this.

We just don't.

This would have happened if Reagan hadn't sunk that ship. Now realistically, if it hadn't been him it would've been someone else. Politicians are cheap.

The timeline where Reagan didn't fucking gut the unions.

To be fair, these were good predictions. All of this is actually possible. It's just capitalism being the problem it usually is..

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

More like depressing, given how the current era turned out to be.

Hey they were close! We make 30-40k in (2024 Dollars)

This is so uniquely depressing. They were accurate on my annual wage in 2024 yet they assumed I’d be working less than 40 hours 😭

"HAHAHA...no"

– Capitalists

This is what it was like when the people of the country worked together to make the future better for everyone. Not self improvement, not local; it was understood across the country that people should plant trees without expecting to sit in its shade. Plan for the future and give the next generation the best chance.

Those articles were written in the 60s. At the very least each author was born 18 years prior, part of the silent generation. The future they hoped, expected, and built was for boomers.

A generation of greed has killed almost all hope for future generations. It only took one to fuck it up for everyone else.

For reference, $30,000.00 in 1966 would equate to over ~$285,000.00 in 2024's USD.

I'd say in a given week I do maybe fifteen minutes of real, actual work - Peter Gibbons

If only this picture had the next paragraph...

"There are some who gloomily expect a society run by a small elected elite, presiding over a mindless multitude kept happy by drugs and circuses, much as in Huxley's Brave New World. But most futurists believe that work will still be the only way to gain responsibility and power."

https://time.com/vault/issue/1966-02-25/page/35/

:(

I would encourage almost any American to get a remote job (or three) and move abroad to a country that has a visa for remote workers and good healthcare. It might be the only way some workers will be able to save and retire some day.

Well, in Germany we have legal Holdiays at least...

Man it's amazing how they didn't understand capitalism at all. Of course I don't think many people do now that I think about it.

The naivete is hilarious.

Not incorrect, Jeff Bezos is working fewer than 4 days a week and fewer than 8 hours on a workday.