
We Americans long enjoyed the world’s highest material standard of living, and we were told that was because of the superior productivity of American industry. That sounds like common sense. If you want more, you need to produce more. Obviously.

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But about 30 or so years ago, this changed. Our productivity continued to increase, but our wages and salaries didn’t increase along with it.
Why?
Some say that the problem is technology. Automation means that fewer wage-earners are needed, and our work had less value. So naturally there are fewer jobs, and employers generally don’t have to pay as much to find people to take these jobs.
Fewer wage earners are needed. Needed by whom? Our work has less value. Value to whom?
They are less needed, and of less value, to the corporate boards and wealthy stockholders who own the technology. Or, to put it another way: Capitalists, not workers, own the means of production.

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It’s true that the average factory worker or retail clerk did not personally create the technological innovations that made it possible for them to do more with the same amount of work. But neither did the average corporate executive or corporate stockholder.
If technology is owned and controlled by a small financial elite, then the applications of technology will be such to benefit that elite.
It is possible that, in acting in their own interest, the elite will do things that are good for society as a whole. It also is possible that they will do things that are bad for society as a whole.

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When that happens, we the people need to understand that their power and ownership is not based on divine right or impersonal economic laws. It is the result of corporate structures and legal rights established by law, and laws can be changed.
Some radical thinkers, such as Stanley Aronowitz, David Graeber, Richard D. Wolff and Gar Alperovitz, are reviving the idea of worker ownership and public ownership of the means of production, which is not the same thing as government ownership.
More moderate reformers think it is just necessary to change the balance of power within society.
The important thing, as I see it, is to stop letting priorities be determined by the “job creators,” the ones who own the machinery, the research laboratories and the so-called intellectual property. The question is not whether they need us. The question is whether we need them.
LINKS
Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit by David Graeber for The Baffler.
Why Wages Won’t Rise by Robert Reich.
The Great Decoupling of the U.S. Economy by Andrew McAfee on his blog.
Global lessons on inclusive growth by Jason Furman for Policy Network.
The Most Important Economic Chart by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi for House of Debt.
The wedges between productivity and median compensation growth by Lawrence Mishel for the Economic Policy Institute.