The great tech leaps of the mid20th century resulted in huge material improvements for huge numbers of people. The worry is that the benefits will no longer spread. And the robots in particular have a century of being hollywood villains to overcome.
What makes you think benefits won’t spread? We’re on track to producing vaccines by the billions, the biggest mobilization and logistical effort in the history of mankind. Good luck buying a vaccine and cutting the line, even if you have $10k to spare.
I think the risk that the wealthiest few will rule the world is largely misplaced and overblown. We’ve lifted millions out of poverty and made tremendous progress in last few decades. And continue to do so. Yes, inequality has grown and accelerated due to the pandemic (Russell 2000 vs S&P500, retail is screwed but there is nothing we can do about it besides giving relief). We need to fix tax laws and corporate loop holes, not instituting marxism in our society.
Even prior to the pandemic, real wages were stagnant for decades. Wealth inequality has been a growing problem since before many of us have been alive, at this point.
We are definitely making progress in absolute terms, but there is plenty of good reason to be concerned about the benefits spreading in general, and particularly when we're talking about technologies to replace labor.
>Even prior to the pandemic, real wages were stagnant for decades.
This is not true from a global perspective. In addition, there has been significant immigration, where people are are entering the economy at the bottom (increasing inequality in a country, while they are making more than they would where they came from). This is not to say things couldn't be better, but the economy is global, and nationalistic perspectives presume a closed system.
Any data on this? It’s true for many individual countries, but global population growth has been dominated by poor countries for a while which should dramatically drag down wage percentiles.
In the last 30 years UK’s population for example is up 19% where India’s is up 58%.
Google “elephant graph” or go to ourworldindata and you should find it. Population growth has been dominated by income increases. The average person in China in particular got much richer.
Interesting that 0% growth at the 80th percentile and minimal growth at 90% is exactly the stagnation I was expecting.
Though, sub 50% growth from 1980-2016 for the 60th to 95th percentile is more interesting. With the top 1% capturing 26% of all growth and the top 0.01% having 200+% growth. It’s clear arbitrary starting and end points can shift these graphs around dramatically. Ending now is probably going to make a graph like this look really bad.
Agreed about fixing wages. I’m left-centrist and I find some of the extreme Marxism after the pandemic concerning. That’s what I’m rebutting against. I’m strongly against UBI, but I want high taxes for anyone making over $X. X is open for debate. I’d like temporary UBI (6 months, that’s what we have currently with unemployment benefits) + free apprenticeship like training so people can get back on employment. UBI is a bad idea IMO. Imagine losing your job as a waitress but you can learn electronics, perhaps get a technician job with government’s help.
And it'll make no difference, all these wealthy don't have salary to tax or often time even cash, it's quite often wrapped up in the companies they've started or made super successful. This is the point that seems so blatantly missed.
Increasing taxes shouldn't be the one jerk reaction because there is scant evidence that governments are remotely effective at using the money we already give them hand over fist. I suppose they do keep droves of civil servants employed, but make of that what you will.
During covid we should have made it far more easy for small businesses to survive by cutting they're tax burden, the healthy would have had a chance to flourish and the already weak businesses would still fall to the wayside. Instead we'll handed money out to people who will many times buy the next Samsung, Apple Amazon whatever feeding the big corps that everyone here loves to hate.
It's so obvious that this is what happens that i can't understand how so many can be wilfully blind to it.
Also the reason the poorer get taxed so disproportionately is because much of the tax system is regressive with elements like sales tax and stamp duty.
The government certainly has the power to fix this, but not by stealing more but fixing the blatantly broken system
> I think the risk that the wealthiest few will rule the world is largely misplaced and overblown.
This has literally been reality in every sense for all of history, and the point here is it's getting worse which a quick google will find you mounds of backing proof.
To me, the hallmark of this pandemic was people’s (and Americans’ in particular) unwillingness to act collectively and cooperatively for everyone’s benefit. It was a gigantic game of Prisoners Dilemma, where we could have won with everyone cooperating (masks and staying at home) but people instead chose to defect and go out protesting, refusing the masks, and buying khakis. Here we are a year later, hoping the vaccines will save us, and everyone is still out horsing around, spreading the disease everywhere.
How do you conclude that from that PDF? It shows almost all of the states in the US in yellow (low mask usage). While almost all of Europe (except for the UK and Scandinavia) in blue (medium mask usage)
There's even a special call-out in the PDF about the US being such an outlier:
"US states and Canada
stand out for their low levels
of mask usage compared to
many countries in Asia
and South America. "
I mostly agree with you. On the topic specifically of whether protests over the summer were a significant factor in spreading the virus, I haven’t seen evidence that’s true. This article is from August so practically ancient history now, but it describes an analysis concluding the protests weren’t a major factor. If there is evidence to the contrary I would love to see it.
If that's true, then why don't we start outdoor music festivals back up?
A good portion of my friends all lost their jobs because they work in event production. If that data is true, then they should go back to work tomorrow.
