Nope. Worker productivity has increased many fold over the last 50 years, meaning each person can produce many times more goods.

Wages have been stagnant and cost of living is through the roof, despite all of this increased efficiency, productivity, fewer workers and much cheaper operating costs.

We're fucked lol

Are you discovering capitalism now?

As soon as we finish swimming...

Your first mistake was thinking large companies care about customers - you’re just an obstacle to your wallet

Otherwise this will mean that they are doing this just to increase their profit margins and please their shareholders and don't care about their customers or workforce.

Oh my sweet summer child... that's exactly what it means. Always has.

Yeah economics is about "how do I maximize profit and never reduce prices." Then they just lie about how supply and demand works or how productivity increases and mergers will help prices go down. Prices only ever go up.

NO COMPANY WILL WILLINGLY GIVE UP MORE PROFIT.

Otherwise this will mean that they are doing this just to increase their profit margins and please their shareholders and don't care about their customers or workforce.

All for profit business moves are always in the direction of lowering the cost to maximise the profit.

There have been instances where shareholders have removed executive officers because they wanted to go down that path but that goes against the priorities of the shareholders.

It just means billionaires can do another few victory laps around the Earth in their private jets while the world burns. We need to eliminate them and institute universal basic income

In the pockets of investors?

The core thing the rich left out when they invented "Trickle Down Economics" was that it's not money that trickles down onto us.

Same goes for efficiency or productivity improvements. Those haven't done to the US workers since Nixon, and definitely not since Regan.

Why the hell would they do that when their customers are already willing to pay the current prices?

Suppose you make widgets at a cost of $50 and sell them online for $100 each. Through the use of AI, you were able to fire half of your employees and now the cost of producing a widget is down to $30, a net saving of $20.

Why would you choose to lower the price of the widget from $100 to $80 instead of continuing to sell the widget at $100 and pocketing the $20 for yourself? What incentive have you got to reduce your price?

It may sound cold and cruel, because it is, but this is just how capitalism works. It is not in their economic interest to reduce their prices.

Often companies don't charge based on productions costs, they charge based on what they can get people to pay. If every competitor in an industry agrees to do the same there's no incentive to lower selling price. The company doesn't have to worry about customers leaving for a meaningfully cheaper competitor because everyone is charging as much as consumers will bear. Without that "best/cheapest" outside pressure any efficiency increases can be put into lowering costs like labor and thus increasing profits. It's why prices don't drop and suddenly there's a lot more people within a few missed paychecks of serious trouble (the economy being roughly tuned to keep the most people possible paying as much as they can sustain).

Disclaimer: this is just my two cents, with some research but admittedly not a lot and no formal economics education. Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong.

Those extortionate licensing fees are not going to pay themselves!

I never heard of any company promising price cuts due to AI and layoffs. Even if they had, I wouldn't have believed it one bit.

They are doing this just to increase their profit margins and please their shareholders and don’t care about their customers or workforce

When a company saves money they almost never pass it on to the customer. Just a sad reality.

No no, the value proposition is not that it's cheaper. It's more consistent. 24/7, same output, no sick days or vacation, no own opinion... It does what you tell it, to the T.

The cost is the same and paid by the companies to the ai suppliers. Same as with the medication that cured hepatitis. The pharmaceutical company calculated the total cost of care for a terminal hepC patiënt, and then set the price of the medication to 80% of that.. it's cheaper so we're the good guys.

Corporations will charge what the market will bare.