>If that were true why do people still work 40+ hour weeks when they could be earning enough to live on just 15?
There are all sorts of practical reasons why it's difficult to work 15 hours every week, the biggest of which is employers don't want to hire you. If you're flipping burgers, sure, but it's pretty rare to find that arrangement for a professional job.
When everyone working 40 hours they are getting paid a lot more. They can afford high rents and mortgages. Even as a software engineer I struggle with rent and don't leave much for savings.
When a robot is doing low skilled jobs and education is insanely expensive like it is now, the gap is inevitable.
Capital buys AI allowing one person to do the work of many and reap the rewards of it. America is built on this very idea.
The fear is that capital will own all the means of production and services and what then of everyone else?
Hope UBI is implement?
Or perhaps become more self-sufficient? The hype around 3D printing seems to have died down. I guess a lot of grand visions weren't realised and a lot of cheap trinkets printed instead but it still contains an idea that should be nurtured: robotics and AI at the grass roots level. Don't let capital own all the means of sufficiency.
Sounds like a way forward. The current notion of wealth is toxic: an incongruent patchwork of ancient and modern ideas of what's valuable. It limits mankind's potential.
White collar/services jobs are a lot easier for robots to perform than blue collar ones (Moravec's paradox). The untapped potential of being able to sell "the one company that does every service task with a credit card form factor" will probably make it more profitable to attempt to outcompete the low-hanging fruit: higher-cost (so more likely to "go viral") and easier to implement professional jobs. It might just be AI that makes Marx's accelerationism a household term!
There are all sorts of practical reasons why it's difficult to work 15 hours every week, the biggest of which is employers don't want to hire you. If you're flipping burgers, sure, but it's pretty rare to find that arrangement for a professional job.