Technological progress should cause increasing economic inequality, because the bottom end of the scale is firmly anchored at zero (someone taking a vacation), while technology gives the top end ever more powerful levers.
What "scale" are we talking about, and why ever would it be "firmly anchored at zero?" It's perfectly possible to have a negative net worth, a negative cash flow, a negative effect on the wealth and well-being of the society in which you live, etc.
What technology does "the top end" have access to that others don't today? Cell phones? Web servers? Technology has always been influential in proportion to its cheapness. And it's all really cheap now.
If a vacation works and recharges your batteries, it's not, in the grand scheme, a zero-productivity interval, is it?
I think the key to the answer is the large corporation. The period of flattening coincides with the heyday of the large corporation.
Large corporations are still around and arguably more powerful than ever. Yet the difference in pay between the top executives and average workers in those corporations is one way the growing gap between the rich and the not-rich is illustrated and measured.
I remember the transition quite clearly. When I was a little kid, in the early 70s, the most impressive thing you could do was to work for a large corporation. It was the era of conglomerates in shiny office towers. By 1980 we were starting to see a glimpse of the world we now live in, where the ambitious people are all free agents.
I think this says a lot more about how children's view of the world around them evolves as they grow up than about actual changes in the American business landscape. America has been the land of entrepreneur-worship for a long time. John D. Rockefeller was working for himself from the start.
What "scale" are we talking about, and why ever would it be "firmly anchored at zero?" It's perfectly possible to have a negative net worth, a negative cash flow, a negative effect on the wealth and well-being of the society in which you live, etc.
What technology does "the top end" have access to that others don't today? Cell phones? Web servers? Technology has always been influential in proportion to its cheapness. And it's all really cheap now.
If a vacation works and recharges your batteries, it's not, in the grand scheme, a zero-productivity interval, is it?
I think the key to the answer is the large corporation. The period of flattening coincides with the heyday of the large corporation.
Large corporations are still around and arguably more powerful than ever. Yet the difference in pay between the top executives and average workers in those corporations is one way the growing gap between the rich and the not-rich is illustrated and measured.
I remember the transition quite clearly. When I was a little kid, in the early 70s, the most impressive thing you could do was to work for a large corporation. It was the era of conglomerates in shiny office towers. By 1980 we were starting to see a glimpse of the world we now live in, where the ambitious people are all free agents.
I think this says a lot more about how children's view of the world around them evolves as they grow up than about actual changes in the American business landscape. America has been the land of entrepreneur-worship for a long time. John D. Rockefeller was working for himself from the start.