Re:Share of Income Gains by Quintile - Great Depression til Now
by _delirium on Friday September 09, 2011 @08:21PM
(#2980333)
I find the lack of increase in (inflation-adjusted) median wages to be the more interesting headline, not the distribution of wages per se. In effect, the average person has not seen any improvement in prosperity from the large productivity improvements that technology has brought us. I think that's problematic, in part because it makes it harder to argue that the tech sector's growth will bring prosperity to the average person (rather than just to us techies).
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Re:Share of Income Gains by Quintile - Great Depression til Now
by Gormo on Friday September 09, 2011 @10:42PM
(#2980627)
Perhaps the earlier "jobs are obsolete" argument is right, and people aren't reaping the benefits of technology as much as they might because the productivity improvements that it creates inhere in an economic abstraction layer that they're not participating in to the extent that they might.
If we imagined the way modern technologies might be applied to the productive capacity of a family homestead, for example, the improvement that technology brings to the homesteader's quality of life should be directly apparent, without the need to rely on macro-level metrics at all.
Re:Share of Income Gains by Quintile - Great Depression til Now
by sparkycollier on Saturday September 10, 2011 @08:14AM
(#2981439)
They may not have more money in their pocket, but they have an iPhone or android in there which I think qualifies as a pretty amazing form of "participation" in the amazing gains driven by technology.