Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
I actually think the biggest reason income inequality has changed so much is due to technology. A waitress today serves the same amount of tables as before. A banker can evaluate many more loans because they can pull credit, etc on computers. A lawyer can do way more work because they can electronically access documents instead of getting them from a library. An engineer can do way more with CAD/other software than doing calculations by hand.
Since pay always follows productivity, those who use technology have seen their incomes increase.
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This. Wages are tied to the amount of money your job generates (and O/G generates a ton) or the skill/education and responsibility required to do the job. There has been a huge increase in the number of these high paying jobs due to the economy going global, ratcheting up the number of customers and the profits.
At the other end of the scale the jobs haven't changed much, they are still generally unskilled or low skilled jobs that require little education and therefore there hasn't been a jump in wages.
I'm not advocating that this is a good thing, because in the long run it causes social unrest and this is a time of huge economic change.
We've seen this before, during the Industrial Revolution and at the start of the 20th century. The economic pressures had large parts to play in big social upheavals that eventually benefited the poor and working classes (suffragettes, unions etc).
The downside is that these factors also contributed to 60 years of major wars and other upheavals (which also affect those at the bottom end of the income scale in a disproportionate way since they supply the bulk of the soldiers.).
Let's hope that this transition is smooth and let's fractious than previous periods of such major economic change and that the income levels of the poor and middle class can improve.