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This is the most important thing I’ve ever published, and I’ve been a technology journalist for more than a decade.
(thread
) https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
(thread
) https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
People with a high school degree or less in the US — that is about half of all Americans — have seen their real wages decline for the past 30 years. And the median wage of all workers has stagnated. But why?
Here are some answers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
Here are some answers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
Many economists, Piketty among them, pin the blame for economic inequality on politics and the way power protects itself.
They’re not wrong.
But this emphasis obscures the underlying forces of technological change that disrupt the lives of workers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
They’re not wrong.
But this emphasis obscures the underlying forces of technological change that disrupt the lives of workers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
You may think you’ve heard this story before, a tale as old as automation, but things are different now.
Automation is more capable, because machines have been wedded to computers.
So it’s both replacing humans in and making humans more interchangeable.
You see it in the data.
Automation is more capable, because machines have been wedded to computers.
So it’s both replacing humans in and making humans more interchangeable.
You see it in the data.
This is the most important chart you’ve never seen before. If it’s correct, it should be in textbooks — heck, it should be on t-shirts.
It shows how, especially in the U.S., we tax human labor but subsidize automation.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
It shows how, especially in the U.S., we tax human labor but subsidize automation.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
What’s more, research indicates that because automation is more capable than ever, the old equation of “when companies have more money, they hire more workers” is inverted.
Now they just spend it on more automation. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
Now they just spend it on more automation. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
The result of outsourcing and automation, boosted by laws hostile to organized labor, outsize focus on shareholder value, and unchecked impulses of management, is an economy in which a very few control most of the capital, and a great many are rendered as superfluous as possible.
The most important point of all is that this distortion of the engine of our civilization — our machines and capital — is in no way inevitable. But those solutions will have to wait for a future piece.
In the meantime, the pandemic accelerates all of it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
In the meantime, the pandemic accelerates all of it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-is-dividing-the-american-worker-11598068859
