But why should management then expect to see increases in revenues? If labor is not going to see increased wages, then why are they now doing more work?

What do you mean "more work"? It's the same amount of work, just with more results.

The fair market wage for a worker operating the "old lawnomatic" that can mow one lawn per hour is not meaningfully affected by the value of the mowed lawn but by how cheaply the company can find a different worker to do the same thing. If there's another potential worker waiting to do the job for $x/hour, then $x/hour is the ceiling of what you can ask for the job, no matter how much value that job produces (assuming that there are some barriers to entry and you can't just compete with the company directly).

If the "new lawnomatic" can mow two lawns per hour, but is as easy to operate (i.e. the company could still hire the same currently unemployed person for $x/hour) then the workers have no leverage to get increased wages.

If anything, the new lawnomatic can result in lower wages. If there aren't any more customers, then mowing lawns needs half as many employees - so the company can ask which employees would be still willing to work for x-1 dollars per hour; if half of them say yes and half say no, well, they just fire the expensive ones and keep those who are more desperate/vulnerable.

>But why should management then expect to see increases in revenues?

There's no universal answer, but in the canonical example of better machines, then part of the higher productivity is likely due to the judgment in recognizing where machines could be deployed, which is managerial labor.

>If labor is not going to see increased wages, then why are they now doing more work?

I'm not sure what you mean, but I was just explaining why we shouldn't expect higher total output to mean proportionally higher wages; it all depends on the cause of the productivity. If the worker is pushing the same buttons and the machine is doing more, wages should not be expected to increase and there's no mystery. If the productivity is from workers becoming more versatile and able to handle a bigger variety of situations with the same capital, then we should expect higher wages without a higher return to capital.

"There's no universal answer, but in the canonical example of better machines, then part of the higher productivity is likely due to the judgment in recognizing where machines could be deployed, which is managerial labor."

And using those machines was labor labor.

"but I was just explaining why we shouldn't expect higher total output to mean proportionally higher wages"

But why not?

"If the worker is pushing the same buttons and the machine is doing more, wages should not be expected to increase and there's no mystery."

Why not? The company is doing better; why shouldn't those who contributed, including the workers who made the widgets, share in that?

"If the productivity is from workers becoming more versatile and able to handle a bigger variety of situations with the same capital, then we should expect higher wages without a higher return to capital."

That is almost never seen.

>And using those machines was labor labor.

And I just explained why (what you're unhelpfully calling) "labor labor" did not add more value than before, while managerial labor did.

>>but I was just explaining why we shouldn't expect higher total output to mean proportionally higher wages

>But why not?

For the reason I just implied by analogy: pushing a button is just as easy before and after, but finding the productivity improvement was non-trivial.

>Why not? The company is doing better; why shouldn't those who contributed, including the workers who made the widgets, share in that?

For the same reason (if it's not clear from the analogy) why Target shouldn't pay more for boxes of cereal from wholesalers if they have a better year than Walmart.

"And I just explained why (what you're unhelpfully calling) "labor labor" did not add more value than before, while managerial labor did."

But you didn't. You claimed they didn't add anything, without backing it up. More work was done, more widgets were produced. You need to justify why labor should not share in that.

And saying "labor labor" is no more unhelpful than you talking about "managerial labor."

"For the reason I just implied by analogy: pushing a button is just as easy before and after, but finding the productivity improvement was non-trivial.

You've not proven that, however. And, again, the labor is producing more, thus helping the company to be more successful. Without them, the company wouldn't be able to do any of that.

"For the same reason (if it's not clear from the analogy) why Target shouldn't pay more for boxes of cereal from wholesalers if they have a better year than Walmart."

That's not the same situation at all. In your situation, Target is paying the same amount of money, and getting the same amount of goods in return as they were before. Not at all applicable to the current situation.