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Company size drops too though. Enough automation and every person has the abilities that took hundreds of people in their parents' day. Sure, the wealthiest will be able to leverage their gains the furthest - that's just how capital works - but it's also reducing people's dependency on these big firms and enabling them to personally capture the gains from the drastically-improved means of production. If and when communities are able to self-sufficiently produce most of what they need with just a few people and some AI tools, the game changes. Sure, at that point the rich would already be building death stars and wealth inequality would be even more laughable than it is today, but it'd at least still be a step-up in quality of life from the current regime.

> Higher education tuition increases for public universities is directly tied to cuts in government support for said government institutions.

Government spending on higher education has gone up dramatically.

Most of the increase there is probably attributable to student loan subsidies and the inability of borrowers to default. Make it possible for anyone to borrow an obscene amount of money to bid on status goods like elite degrees and the consequence isn't that hard to predict.

> But let’s get back to the topic at hand, whether or not benefits of productivity increases are felt by workers, or if it’s primarily concentrated with the already wealthy.

> The answer is clear. The benefits are concentrated with the few. Sure prices drop, but so do wages and overall wealth by the majority. This isn’t even a controversial take. Government statistics have been tracking this for 40 years.

What you've failed to establish is any link between the productivity improvements and the concentration of wealth. Why has capital captured the higher share? TFA provided the answer. Market concentration as a consequence of regulatory capture.

Consider the result if we had this degree of market concentration without the efficiency improvements from automation.

A significant part of productivity gains went to workers up until 1999. There is no universal law that says productivity gains are inherently captured by shareholders. Of course if this is a possible option capitalists will choose it. I think this is a consequence of government policy where monopsony power prevents labour from getting a fair price due to only a handful of monopolists having the things that improve productivity.