Why AI brings longer hours and lower pay in Spain

Tech promised leisure; instead, it tightened the noose

The promise was simple: computing, robotics, and now artificial intelligence would free up time and boost paychecks. Instead, working hours are stretching while wages shrink, failing to cover housing or a decent life. This analysis asks why technical pogre isn't translating into well-being. The answer, drawn from various diagnoses, offers little comfort and reveals structural issues.

Surplus never reaches the worker

The first explanation is almost archaeological. Since the Neolithic era, resource surpluses have been used to sustain castes, clans, and extractive networks rather than improve ordinary people's lives. Technology also originates in military and industrial sectors because it is a control instrument before being a domestic gift. Under this logic, the system adjusts to calibrate how much pressure it can apply: it grants crumbs—votes, phones, cars, the illusion of family—and charges for them. In this reading, "society" is just an elegant term for bleeding dry.

AI cheapens professionals and raises living costs

The second blow comes from supply and demand. When anyone can design a building with an algorithm, architects become less scarce, and their salaries plummet. Being a qualified yet poor professional is becoming the norm, not the exception. Add global competition: if others produce cheaper, local living standards adjust downward. Those who believe they can maintain their position against more hardworking economies are living in an illusion.

Currency that impoverishes workers

There is a third front: monetary. Fiat currency creates inflation and erodes real wages, while those close to money creation accumulate assets and grow rich. Combined with extractive taxation, the result resembles unnamed feudalism. Demographics, with globally falling birth rates, add further pressure to the system.

Distribution and competition as scapegoats

Some focus on migration pressure regarding rents and jobs, or on a poorly distributed world where wealth concentrates at the top. These diagnoses circulate, are attributed, and debated, but rarely tested against data. What nearly all readings share is the uncomfortable conclusion: technical pogre does not redistribute wealth by itself. Someone must do it, and that someone is absent.

The unsettling fact is not economic but calendrical: complaints about returning to the Middle Ages coexist with the certainty that machines already capable of replacing this writer exist. If pogre doesn't pay the bill, perhaps the problem isn't the tool.