Just something to think about……………..
It struck me recently when I looked at the way our lives are changing and wonder if the things we rail against are in fact here to stay.
I first note that this is a movement political process and not the usual establishment apparatus. The TEA party and Occupy Wall St came after the 2008 financial crash. The Black Lives matter, the Gay equality movement and others sprung up, as did the Republican Party contestants for the Presidential nomination along with Bernie Sanders of the Democrats. Even the migration from Syria following a severe drought (similar to what led to the Darfur violence – climate change anyone?) plus the obvious civil war is a movement.
Then you hear of the suits against Uber in Europe; drones making deliveries (no, not of weapons) by Amazon; Airbnb and the sharing economy. Even unions, necessary in the early stages of industrialization, seem headed for the scrap heap the way the iPod shoved the Walkman to its grave.
Then came the inequality movement. It seems that it is the natural order for today's economy has to have inequality. There will be $8 an hour jobs and then $200 an hour with nothing in between, other than the people with intellectual property making thousands an hour.
I can now place my Starbucks order before entering the store to pick it up - no more order taker. I can also pay for it before walking in the store - no more cash register person. I can buy stuff at kiosks all over the place (type on a keypad and the mechanical arms deliver it on a tray- no more staff required.
It's a sharing economy - share your apartment (Airbnb), share your car (Uber) - more to come. Get used to it; we will live in a 3-day workweek and cars will drive us and not the other way around; and there will be fewer accidents. Your surgeon is operating on you thousands of miles away. Accountants will soon be a dying breed as automated processes and algorithms take over number crunching and qualitative analysis. The guy who won the Nobel prize for economics got it for using data and well defined algorithms to apply human behavior to economic outcomes.
I think of 100 acres of land being owned by one guy – economies, R&D for better crops and crop yields, efficient use of machinery and of course procurement of capital equipment – versus 100 farmers each with 1 acre, and you say, inequality is a better deal in this instance. Wall St makes more money in an obscene way with financial engineering but does not make anything tangible but the City of New York cannot do with the tax revenues from Wall St. The person who makes something gets paid thousands of times less than the Broadway actor, the Hip Hop artist, the Hollywood star or the guy who dunks a basketball. Inequality of values you say?