By now you may have spotted the problem. When workers improve their skills it doesn’t entitle them to more pay, or ensure them more pay — it merely enables companies to pay more. And given the option, companies would rather not pay you more.

Employers like to talk about the “skills gap,” but there is a permanent and unbridgeable divide between the supply of and demand for skilled labor. Business owners want a flood of applicants for every position, who are so well-qualified that they require no training — and they want that flood of competition to allow them to offer lower pay. Workers, on the other hand, want to get paid as much as possible, preferably without having to apply for 100 gigs at a time, or spend a decade and tens of thousands of dollars developing their skills.

The idea that these two sets of interests could ever come into a happy balance is a myth perpetuated by factory owners looking for ways to save money.