Disclaimer: I don’t have a degree in economics. I read your post and I think I have countering points to make, but if you can rebut my points below specifically I’ll try to listen. (Also just want you to know I’m not the one who down-voted you since you seem to be arguing in good faith and I’m all about that. Sometimes I’m wrong.)
You talk about making things more cheaply and that resulting in a cheaper product. If companies agree to all charge the maximum they can get away with, it kills industry price competition (a foundational necessity of functional capitalism) and renders price elasticity a falsehood. If Coke and Pepsi both charge 1.50 for a can of cola, it doesn’t matter if increased productivity means Coke can make a can for 20 cents instead of 30 cents - the savings are just converted into extra profit. You can see this in record profits for many sectors as productivity has increased - the savings of needing fewer people to do the same work isn’t passed on to customers. As proof, here’s an article about how much more things cost today than in the 1970’s (adjusted for inflation). Yet we know that people are over 3x as productive per person over the same period, so clearly companies are not passing along savings in the form of cheaper goods. I know more than productivity affects price, but those factors would have to be overwhelmingly more costly to justify the increase and I don’t think things like shipping are that much more expensive.
Inelastic demand for necessary products like fuel, utilities, food, health care, etc also means that in many industries increased productivity does not need to translate to savings. Pharmaceutical companies, either as an industry of multiple providers or where they hold exclusive patents, will raise prices of products to whatever they can get away with because people will either pay or die. So again cheaper products and competition is a myth.
Speaking of getting fewer people to do the same work, companies lay off people all the time when individual productivity or automation goes up. You talk about employing 1/5th the Bobcat workers and net lost 4 workers being forced to find other work. This may make economic sense but it’s terrible societal sense. It results in financial insecurity and homelessness among educated, capable people with all the associated national problems like mental health, crime, drug addiction, etc.
As US economics function now, companies do not pass along the value of increased productivity to their customers in savings, nor to their employees in increased wages, shorter work weeks, or stable employment (re: layoffs). Instead they maintain or raise prices depending on what they can get away with and employ as few people as possible to maximize profit. This has the societal consequences we’re seeing now, such as in OP’s article.