“The Post‑COVID Decline in the Labor Share” (by a group of Federal Reserve Bank economists) shows that, as the percentage of immigrants in the U.S. population increased (we opened our borders starting in 1965, but the effects were gradual at first), the percentage of income captured by labor decreased:
We’re informed that immigrants are better workers than native-born Americans and also that IQ has been falling in the U.S. for the past 25 years or so (closely coinciding with the slide in labor share).
Even if American IQ doesn’t continue to fall, if Americans continue to become relatively less capable than machines every year shouldn’t we expect the labor share to continue to fall? A robot or NVIDIA server is a capital investment, after all, and the fruits of the work by the robot/server would, absent a heroic transferist government, ordinarily end up primarily in the hands of the investors who paid for it.
Llosely related…