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> The average person now is far wealthier in terms of actual purchasing power than the average person 100 years ago

access to housing is incredibly expensive. Measuring their purchasing power for how many scented candles they can buy is pretty meaningless when they are much closer to homelessness than ever before.

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This is actually _because_ automation has been so effective.

It's called Baumol's cost disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

Land is one thing you can't automate the production of, and construction still consists mostly of manual skilled labor. But I think despite that you'll find housing today still compares very favorably to housing 100 years ago (in terms of median square footage, safety, amenities, etc).

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