nut shell version:
"Many commentators seem to believe that the growing gap between rich and poor is an inevitable byproduct of increasing globalization and technology. In their view, governments will need to intervene radically in markets to restore social balance.
I disagree....... the past is not necessarily prologue: given the remarkable flexibility of market forces, it would be foolish, if not dangerous, to infer rising inequality in relative incomes in the coming decades by extrapolating from recent trends."
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long form:
"Until now, the relentless march of technology and globalization has played out hugely in favor of high-skilled labor, helping to fuel record-high levels of income and wealth inequality around the world."
okay
but simple point right there
china and india can are now and will in the future build minds with these marketable high skill sets cheaper by far then norte amigo
and that puts aside this issue :
how true this proposition anyway ??
after a proper sorting out of income sources here in america
first we remove property income and talent or positional rents hey ??
artificial society constructed relative scarcity unrelated to "supply price "
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the professional class may indeed have opened a bigger spread between its median
and say
the median income of the unskilled
but a clean set of numbers i've not seen ...which of course isn't saying it doesn't exist
only that it gets little mass media broadcasting
at any rate back to the ken doll of harvard econ con
" Will the endgame be renewed class warfare, with populist governments coming to power, stretching the limits of income redistribution, and asserting greater state control over economic life?"
provoked fans ??
"There is no doubt that income inequality is the single biggest threat to social stability around the world, whether it is in the United States, the European periphery, or China. "
nonsense the threat is crisis and break down o0f the various national market based hi fi fueled social production systems
because of the "contradictions" inside a fully cross border financialized
multi national corporation dominated global economy
"Yet it is easy to forget that market forces, if allowed to play out, might eventually exert a stabilizing role. "
"Simply put, the greater the premium for highly skilled workers, the greater the incentive to find ways to economize on employing their talents."
fine
examples follow from his "world" ie competitive chess and grading papers .
then this:
"Expert computer systems are also gaining traction in medicine, law, finance, and even entertainment. "
that comrades is lovely
"Given these developments, there is every reason to believe that technological innovation will lead ultimately to commoditization of many skills that now seem very precious and unique."
good show kenny
then he comes in with this hay maker :
".. once studied the relative price movements of a number of goods over a 700-year period. ...
found that the relative prices of grains, metals, and many other basic goods tended to revert to a central mean tendency over sufficiently long periods. "
"...conjectured that even though random discoveries, weather events, and technologies might dramatically shift relative values for certain periods, the resulting price differentials would create incentives for innovators to concentrate more attention on goods whose prices had risen dramatically."
" people are not goods, but the same principles apply. As skilled labor becomes increasingly expensive relative to unskilled labor, firms and businesses have a greater incentive to find ways to “cheat” by using substitutes for high-price inputs. The shift might take many decades, but it also might come much faster as artificial intelligence fuels the next wave of innovation."
"Perhaps skilled workers will try to band together to get governments to pass laws and regulations making it more difficult for firms to make their jobs obsolete. But if the global trading system remains open to competition, skilled workers’ ability to forestall labor-saving technology indefinitely should prove little more successful than such attempts by unskilled workers in the past."
"The next generation of technological advances could also promote greater income equality by leveling the playing field in education. ..... If the commoditization of education eventually extends to at least lower-level college courses, the impact on income inequality could be profound."
conclusion offered from a nice private office near the flexing grays and steel blues of the charles basin
.
"we need genuinely progressive tax systems, respect for workers’ rights, and generous aid policies on the part of rich countries"
". But the past is not necessarily prologue: given the remarkable flexibility of market forces, it would be foolish, if not dangerous, to infer rising inequality in relative incomes in the coming decades by extrapolating from recent trends."
dangerous ???
