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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Digital technology has been a fantastic creator of economic wealth, particularly in the twenty years since the Internet and World Wide Web were unveiled to the masses. And with non-trivial applications of artificial intelligence (such as Apple's Siri) finally reaching the mainstream consumer market, one is tempted to agree with pundits asserting that the Second Machine Age is just getting underway.

But Yale ethicist Wendell Wallach argues that growth in wealth has been accompanied by an equally dramatic rise in income inequality; for example, stock ownership is now concentrated in the hands of a relative few (though greater than 1 percent). The increase in GDP has not led to an increase in wages, nor in median inflation-adjusted income. Furthermore, Wallach says technology is a leading cause of this shift, as it displaces workers in occupation after occupation more quickly than new career opportunities arise.

This piece led to the latest iteration of the 'will robots take all of our jobs' debate, this time on Business Insider, with Jim Edwards arguing that the jobs lost tended to be of the mindless and repetitive variety, while the increase in productive capacity has led to the creation of many new positions. This repeated earlier cycles of the industrial revolution and will be accelerated in the decades ahead. Edwards illustrated his point with a chart of UK unemployment with a trend line (note: drawn by Edwards) in a pronounced downward direction over the past 30 years. John Tamny made a similar point in Forbes last month.