But it does mean that the people who were formerly knitters now have more material wealth than a lot of the upperclass people of their day. In order to buy a pair of shoes, that knitter would have had to work months if not a full year to save enough money. Now even some of the poorest people among us only need to spend a fraction of their weekly income to buy a new pair of very serviceable shoes that are probably much better made and more comfortable than the cheapest pair a local cobbler could have made by hand.
I believe that means in a very real sense that the time saved has gone back to workers. We all already share in that collective productivity increase.
… which for many is all eaten up by runaway inflation in certain key constrained areas like housing.
This is why in the US there are hordes of homeless people with smart phones and why the poor generally have no problem having houses full of appliances and giant TVs. Gadgets have indeed gotten radically cheaper.
The things that are hard to make cheaper for structural or physical reasons like housing, health care, tuition, and child care tend to inflate so as to eat the surplus. Housing is the worst culprit in many markets.
Not sure about other countries, but the US also made this worse by encouraging people to use housing as an investment and retirement vehicle, so you have a lot of people who really don't want housing to get cheaper because it means their retirement savings or investment will be worth less.
That's a very different and much more recent development, two interconnected ones actually. Housing is now an investment for money that should be able to be used in more productive pursuits. Part of the reason for that is the inflationary economy compels you to invest your money in something that will provide a consistent return. Those two things have very little to do with industrial efficiency.
The implication here is that if you simply want to meet your basic needs you can do so with relatively little work compared to the past. The good thing about consumption is that it motivates innovation in manufacturing which we all continue to benefit from. Barring any major upset, I think we're still on track for an abundant future.
> Especially since it's going against everything we did since the invention of the steam engine
Much earlier. Special skills and inventions giving you business, military or social advantages have been a thing since special skills and inventions have been a thing.
Like yes in a perfect world time saved would go back to workers, it doesn't though.
A machine could do in a minute what a knitter would do in a day, it doesn't mean knitters got a 7 minute work week