Monday, November 21, 2011

Is Technology the Culprit?




I quote from The Economist magazine:
THE rich world’s crisis of unemployment would be painful enough on its own, but it comes on the heels of a generation of labour-market stagnation. Growth in inflation-adjusted incomes in the rich world slowed sharply as early as the 1970s. In America, median household income has actually fallen since 1999. Economic growth continues, but not all see the rewards. By some estimates, the top 1% of American earners captured 58% of the country’s economic growth between 1976 and 2007. 
Scapegoats, from crony capitalists to foreign-currency manipulators, are in no short supply, but technology is increasingly fingered as a culprit. Some economists reckon the problem with technology is that there is too little of it.
Guns don't kill people, people do (all too often with guns). So too, technology doesn't screw up the economy and deprive the middle class of the ability to appropriate some of the benefits of growth to themselves, it is the policies that we allow our politicians to impose upon us.  The example is Japan's decision to give up the gun early after the introduction of firearms in that country.


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