What is strange is, technology is supposed to reduce inequality

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The Digital Revolution That Wasn’t

http://harpers.org/archive/2014/01/the-digital-revolution-that-wasnt/

 

Where did you get the idea that technology is supposed to reduce inequality? Technology is supposed to make some people rich, make some people poor as their skills become obsolete, and increase productivity. So, it does what it is supposed to do.

 

I'm not sure technology is supposed to reduce inequality....

It makes everyone materialistically richer.

 

I hadn't heard that one before either.

 

There exists a body of evidence that 'technology' actually contributes to income inequality. See "Schempeterian Growth Theory and the Dynamics of Income Inequality" by Philip Agnion et. al., 2001...delivered at the Walrus Bowley Lecture at the North American meeting of the Econometrics Society in Madison Wisconsin in 1999.

The tortured souls who work with statistics in the questionable belief that evidence for some objective truth can be discerned from ever more complicated regressing sorts of flawed and often fantastically fabricated data sets seem to be accepting that technological benefits accue to those who hold on to them through law, culture and the prudent keeping of secrets.

Wealth accrues to societies who increase thier rate of innovation and develop "Skills Base Technical Change" (SBTC), "as the relative supply of skilled labor increases so does the monopoly rents of an innovation that would be targetted at the skilled intermediate sector, thereby resulting in an increase in the relative productivity in the skilled sector and therefore in an increase in the skill premium" over the unskilled wage.

General Purpose Technology (GTP) driven change, change that effects the entire economic system, is rare...and takes longer than you would think to actually spread out...talking Steam Engine...or most recent example of GTP...Fracking.

Outsize profits accrue to the innovators as well as to the general societal benefit that drives the innovators rent. There are many seconday innovators. It is the rate of the innovation that defines the change in societal 'wealth.' The rate of innovation is impacted by how the society rewards innovation. The reward for innovation is proportional to the expected discounted profits associated with the discovery of new products."

This is what societal growth and increased standard of living is all about...rate of innovation...and such innovation creates income inquality at the same time it advances aggregate social benefits.

If you want a society of general income equality all you have to do is repress all innovation...take away the innovators profit...return to a feudal system on the way back to hunter gatherer...then kill the spear maker.

 

I read another Point of view.. John gray's book Straw dogs.
in which he says. it could be possible that. technology makes us totally redundant.. there will be a billion balconies facing the sun.

http://urania-josegalisifilho.blogspot.com/2012/04/billion-balconies-facing-sun-john-grays.html

but the trend is.. as we know.. the gap between haves and have nots is increasing..

If i were to side with the poor, i would say . that rich people can only get rich by exploiting labor, skimming or selling stuff to the poor people.

if I were to side with the rich, i would say, I dont need any poor people anymore.as I have my robots.!!

point i am making is, in the future, just because you are born as a citizen of a country, that doesnt entitle you to a slice of the pie.
the rich will come up with many ways to pull barriers. and wont tolerate equalizing or re distributing wealth..

 

The inequality in the US has risen with the growth of government. The total of all the public sector's annual budgets are more than half the GNP. The taxes to pay that are at every level of production of everything we buy. That is why it takes two incomes to have a household when it only took one when government was smaller.

There is a whole parasite class that gets that tax money including all the Democrat leadership and all their cronies. So yes, our mothers work themselves to death to pay for parasites while we pontificate on Marxist principles... Machines replace jobs, so the answer is more government? LOL