&gt; What&#x27;s your explanation for the much-observed fact that most of the productivity gains of the last thirty years haven&#x27;t trickled down to most of the workforce?<p>Because much of the productivity gains of the last 30 years have less to do with extra labor done by workers, and more to do with the fact that we&#x27;ve had personal computing advances, industry-specialized software, etc., etc.<p>It used to take our accounts payable team two weeks to process an expense reimbursement, because I had to give them the paper receipts, mail it in, they would record the data by hand into a ledger, validate it by phone, and then cut me a paper check.  Now, I can take a photo of the receipt, submit it digitally, and it&#x27;s automatically recorded and validated by TriNet expense software, and the payment is programmatically added to our accounting software.  All someone has to do is click &quot;Approve&quot; or &quot;Disapprove&quot;.<p>It used to take me a couple hours to write a pen-pal, and a few days worth of travel time in the mail before they would receive the letter.  Now I can send them an email, a Facebook message, an SMS, a tweet, etc., etc.