On May Day, and with the UK General Election just a few days away, some thoughts on the role technology plays (or could play) in making the world a better (or worse) place.

Owen Jones in his Guardian piece, Don’t Blame Rising Inequality on Technological Change (Wednesday 8^th April, 2015) makes short work of dismissing the ridiculous arguments that the widening gap between rich and poor is an unavoidable product of technological advancement. As he points out …

“Professor Anthony Atkinson is a pioneer of the study of the economics of poverty and inequality. His latest work, Inequality: What can be done?, is an uncomfortable affront to our reigning triumphalists. His premise is straightforward: inequality is not unavoidable, a fact of life like the weather, but the product of conscious human behaviour. The explosion of inequality as a result of intentional policy decisions has been rather spectacular. Take the US, which became steadily more equal from the end of the second world war to the late 1970s. By 2012, the top 1% had more than doubled the share of national income they enjoyed in 1979, and now receive a fifth of gross US income.”

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