If wage growth went up at the same rate as GDP, one part time worker could support multiple elderly people
Then prices would have to go up at the same rate, and one part time worker would not be able to support multiple elderly people at a reasonable quality of life. It’s not about money; under capitalism money is a shorthand for how much power one has in and over society and isn’t directly convertible into useful goods at a constant rate. What you need to be looking at is total productivity, because that’s the bottleneck here. If X working people can only make Y things a day and X+Z people need 2Y things a day to survive then a society with X working people and Z non-working people can’t survive.
I get what you’re saying, but I feel like you are ignoring how much automation has allowed one person to do the work of many in the recent past. If allowed, this should continue to improve.
Then prices would have to go up at the same rate, and one part time worker would not be able to support multiple elderly people at a reasonable quality of life. It’s not about money; under capitalism money is a shorthand for how much power one has in and over society and isn’t directly convertible into useful goods at a constant rate. What you need to be looking at is total productivity, because that’s the bottleneck here. If X working people can only make Y things a day and X+Z people need 2Y things a day to survive then a society with X working people and Z non-working people can’t survive.
I get what you’re saying, but I feel like you are ignoring how much automation has allowed one person to do the work of many in the recent past. If allowed, this should continue to improve.
Edit: by recent past I mean the last 50-80 years.