The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
More of the same will just produce more of the same: less competitiveness, less growth, fewer jobs.
A permanent division of labor inevitably creates occupational and class inequality and conflict.
At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.
Increased jobs are the consequence of increased trade. Increasing jobs more than output implies a fall in productivity and standards of living. That surely cannot be our goal.
But a rise in the wages of labour would not equally affect commodities produced with machinery quickly consumed, and commodities produced with machinery slowly consumed.
With the rather stable ratio of labor force to total population, a high rate of increase in per capita product means a high rate of increase in product per worker; and, with average hours of work declining, it means still higher growth rates in product per man-hour.
Many of the technologies that are now racing ahead most rapidly, replacing human workers in factories and offices with machines, making stockholders richer and workers poorer, are indeed tending to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth.
Economists of a classical bent lay a large part of the decline of employment, and thus lagging output, to a contraction of labour supply.
The social system grows rigid but the productive forces continue to expand, and conflict ensues between the forces of production and the social conditions of production.
The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.
No opposing quotes found.