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IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

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Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#51

Post by richardknop »

JamesBarney wrote: post #32
ageek123 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people will claim you can get both innovation and equality if you just throw in enough redistribution, but this is completely delusional.

Yeah only pinko hippies like the IMF believe that :) https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2014/sdn1402.pdf

You know IMF is not infallible? For example they were one of the architects of the Greek debt crisis. Even after the initial outbreak of Greek debt problem when it was clear to everybody Greece cannot ever repay their debt and it will have to be restructured, they recommended further and further bailouts in order to protect German / French banks, effectively bailing out big banks with EU taxpayer money.

Take a look at Greece today and see how IMF policies are working out. Actually you can take a look at the entire Southern Europe which is the end result of policies of IMF/ECB/Council, the so called Troika.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#52

Post by madengr »

contingencies wrote: post #17
paulus_magnus2 wrote: post #8

Noah Chomsky says technology is neutral: it can be used to empower companies, automate jobs away (as it's the case right now). It also could be used to empower employees (into super craftsmen??) but so far this direction isn't pursued.

Makerspaces are sort-of empowering supercraftspeople.

I don't know. Anyone who I'd consider a supercraftsperson usually has their own shop & tools. Most of the stuff coming out of maker spaces are trinkets. You won't find there the old man who builds 1/10 models of steam locomotives.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#53

Post by coldtea »

logicchains wrote: post #45
igravious wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The severely disabled, we should provide zero social supports for them and their families so? It's nobody's fault that they're garbage people. Luck of the lottery.

>The severely disabled, we should provide zero social supports for them and their families so? If "we" want to provide support to any group, it can be done through charity. I'd argue this way is more moral: it's more of a good deed to be generous with one's own money than with other peoples', and it's not much of a good deed to give money if one's only doing so due to threat of imprisonment for failing to comply. The…

>If "we" want to provide support to any group, it can be done through charity.

Charity implies voluntarily providing support, leaving it to the benevolence (or lack thereof) of each individual. In the end, it teaches people that being uncharitable is OK and an acceptable trait, just like being charitable.

I want a society that mandates that support -- and even more so, one where everybody is OK with that.

In other words, instead of pushing out the disabled, in my society I'd rather push out (as useless scum) those that don't wont want society to help the disabled.

>I'd argue this way is more moral: it's more of a good deed to be generous with one's own money than with other peoples'

Then, since everybody will be using their own money to pay the "help the disabled" tax, it's a good deed to mandate by law that everybody has to fork out.

>it's not much of a good deed to give money if one's only doing so due to threat of imprisonment for failing to comply.

That would be irrelevant if the desired outcome is to effectively help the disabled, rather than to test honesty of people's charity.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#54

Post by jokoon »

Yeah, I was kind of afraid to say this, but software is getting really efficient at so many things, so free markets just decided to reward software.

Just like everything, once there is an evolution, if you're out of it, you're obsolete and you matter less.

Just made me think about this article where those few indispensable engineers that get a high pay.

In a capitalist environment, technological improvement goes fast (although technology was also developed under soviet russia), and the reward gets very concentrated. Property means that innovation is not really shared, only sold.

One could endlessly talk about how IT seeds from the internet technologies being developed from DARPA and made public. Hard to say if markets really improved what DARPA developed, IMHO I'd say no.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#56

Post by myreggaereggae »

acchow wrote: post #5

Serious question: if technology makes everyone better off but increases inequality, is that a bad outcome? Why or why not?

On one dimension, health, there is a body of research suggesting that increasing income inequality is associated with poorer health outcomes at a population level. Here is a recent-ish review by two researchers who have spent a lot of time on this topic:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953614...

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#57

Post by empath75 »

kartan wrote: post #48
nippples wrote: post #29

I really thought it was corrupt politicians giving away public resources to private mega corporations, irresponsible financing systems, wall street selling lel bonds, the undermining of the national working class, bogus copyright laws that are designed to squish small and upcoming competition, and people purchasing garbage degrees instead of useful ones with money they don't have guaranteeing they'll be indebted for…

Yes. I work in IT and I'm rich, aren't you rich like the rest on engineers that read Hacker News? Not like the poor people at finance institutions, they create so much value and get so few in return...

They're also enabled by IT.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#58

Post by ddxxdd »

zerebubuth wrote: post #42
m12k wrote: post #18

Here's another possibility: The highly increased value of intellectual property that comes from IT has made transfer pricing a much more efficient means of tax avoidance for companies, who are free to move almost all their profits to the Cayman Islands and other tax havens. Expecting our tax authorities to judge whether a trade between two subsidiaries of a multinational is at 'fair market value' makes sense if they'…

The authors of the paper identify a trend of "growth that began in the 1970's", and say that correlates with the emergence of IT firms being able to erect barriers to competition. It might be coincidence, but the late 1970s is also when: 1. The US Copyright Act of 1976 extended copyright from a fixed term of 28 years (with opt-in 28 year extension) to the life of the author plus 70 years. 2. The Patent Cooperation Tr…

I'm just going to throw this out there as well, but 1973 was when the Great Stagnation began (http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/2011/02/great-stagnat...), and it coincides quite closely to when Richard Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system and allows the value of the American dollar to float relative to other currencies.

In other words, globalization is a huge factor that the authors of the paper don't seem to be accounting for.

In fact, after Ctrl+F'ing "foreign", I get:

>By December 2015 holdings of liquid assets by foreign subsidiaries rose to $2.4 Trillion (see Whalen and McCoy (2016)) while domestic holdings of liquid assets rose since 2008 by about $1.9 Trillion. These foreign assets increased due to a legal provision that allows Indefinitely Reinvested Foreign Earnings to be free of US income tax. Hence, $2.4 Trillion are kept abroad not out of productive needs but rather as a device to save income tax hence not necessary for productive capacity

...so maybe American companies are using IT to store wealth abroad, but maybe American companies are being taken over by foreign entities? That would explain how our trade deficit has persisted for several decades.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#59

Post by youdontknowtho »

The rise in inequality also corresponds to the availability of "cheap" personal credit.

The availability of credit also corresponds to a decreased rate of rise in wages.

It's almost like the two are linked. Stop paying people more and give them loans instead.

Re: IT is the cause of rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s [pdf]

#60

Post by youdontknowtho »

jstanley wrote: post #12
coldtea wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: who says it "makes everyone better off"? Fancy new technology is not of much comfort to people who back in the day could buy a house and send their kids to college with a single blue collar income-earner and now can hardly find a job (and can't even dream of sending their kids to college with their puny earnings). > if technology makes everyone better off but increases inequality, is that a bad outc…

If you can't keep up, that's not other people's fault for being better than you.

I disagree with you, but people shouldn't downvote you just because they don't like what you said.

In fact, it's important to remember that people do actually think what you wrote. They just don't say it aloud.

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