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Nope, I'm talking about people working 4 days but paid at the same amount they currently are. Yes, this means an across the board payrise per hour worked for everyone, which is affordable because AI is going to increase the productivity of everyone and rather than this boon being given to those who give people jobs (by e.g. them getting the same company output with half as many employees saving them payroll costs leading to more profit for them) we cut down the hours worked for ordinary people so the benefits of the productivity increase goes to them (by giving them an extra free day of their lives).
Now yes there are some jobs where a 4 day week isn't going to be possible so for them yes due to Baumol's Costs Disease they're going to end up getting paid more per current 5 day week than they are at the moment, for the exact same reason why the same coffee today costs more in Sweden than Turkey.
What does your favorite macroeconomic model say would happen if you raised everyone's wage 25% across the board? It can't be good for prices, either directly or via inflation.
There is a secret third option, which is that profit and wages both remain fixed, and the cost of the good/service provided goes down. This helps ordinary people* as they pay less for what they buy.
Indeed, in a competitive market, productivity gains spread through industries, and the same pressure pushes profit back down.
My favourite macroeconomic model requires competitive markets without monopolies trying to maintain their influence over the rest of society by restricting who gets to benefit from the latest tech advantages and at what price. Our current society is nowhere near my favourite macroeconomic model and we're not getting there any time soon.
It's like the Coase theorem when it says it doesn't matter for societal welfare who is given ownership over goods and services so long as transaction costs don't exist. In real life though transactional costs are very real and somebody trying to rely on Coase to justify why the boon from AI should be handed disproportionately to the owners of current capital would miss the point completely.
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