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The technology revolution has delivered Google searches, Facebook friends, iPhone apps, Twitter rants and shopping for almost anything on Amazon, all in the past decade and a half.
What it hasn't delivered are many jobs. Google's Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. had at the end of last year a total of 74,505 employees, about one-third fewer than Microsoft Corp. even though their combined stock-market value is twice as big. Photo-sharing service Instagram had 13 employees when it was acquired for $1 billion by Facebook in 2012.
Hiring in the computer and chip sectors dove after companies shifted hardware production outside the U.S., and the newest tech giants needed relatively few workers. The number of technology startups fizzled. Growth in productivity and wages slowed, and income inequality rose as machines replaced routine, low- and middle-income, human-powered work.
This outcome is a far cry from what many political leaders, tech entrepreneurs and economists predicted about a generation ago. In 2000, President Bill Clinton said in his last State of the Union address: "America will lead the world toward shared peace and prosperity and the far frontiers of science and technology." His economic team trumpeted "the ferment of rapid technological change" as one of the U.S. economy's "principal engines" of growth.
The gap between what the tech boom promised and then delivered is another source of the rumbling national discontent that powered the rise this year of political outsiders Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
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Eventually there'll be only decent jobs for maybe 20% of the population: What economic system is needed for that??
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 17 2016, @04:08PM
What's the message supposed to be here? I was replying to a comment that advocated making banking state-controlled. Now we have an example of a state-controlled bank extorting a weaker state. Is that supposed to be a benefit of state-controlled banks?
You wrote:
This was arranged by a state-controlled bank
Ok, what's not clear cut about it? You just agreed that's exactly what happened. Let's look at your "but":
but only because they were effectively blackmailed by private banks saying that they'd go out of business if Greece defaulted and this would have serious knock-on consequences for the relevant economies
Blackmail doesn't mean that for starters. And why should the rest of the EU prioritize Greek fools over their own banks? It's a traditional exercise of state power furthering self-interest. Moving on, you wrote:
The solution is probably to split up the banks and make sure that central banks have enough capital to bail out individuals when a bank fails.
Not a word about Greece just failing to deliver on its obligations? What other obligations can a state just ignore? Public pensions? Health care systems? National defense?