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Comment by NewJazz | Hacker News Reader

FYI I know Nadella said he wasn't an economist, and I'm not either, but you only need an econ minor to know that labor productivity growth is only one function of "economic growth". For two, there is GDP and real wages to consider (which are often substantially though partially linked to labor productivity growth). Gini coefficient may be hard to contend with for people like tech CEOs, but they can't ignore it. And then the "215 lb" elephant in the room -- the evaporation of previously earned global gains from trade liberalization.

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I only took one economics class so I'm not familiar with this dieting elephant?

The Wedge

https://reclaimtheamericandream.org/2016/03/campaign-2016-th...

In the USA, globalization boosted aggregate measures but it traded exports, which employed middle / lower class Americans, for capital inflows, which didn't. On average it was brilliant, in median it was a tragedy. There were left wing plans and right wing plans to address this problem (tax and spend vs trickle down) but the experiment has been run and they didn't deliver. If you want the more fleshed-out argument backed by data and an actual economist, read "Trade Wars are Class Wars" by Michael Pettis.

Notably, solving this problem isn't as simple as returning to mercantilism: China is the mercantilist inverse of the neoliberal USA in this drama, but they have a different set of policies to keep the poor in line and arguably manage it better than the USA. The common thread that links the mirror policies is the thesis and title of the book I mentioned: trade wars are class wars.

But returning to AI, it has very obvious implications on the balance between labor and capital. If it achieves anything close to its vision, capital pumps to the moon and labor gets thrown in the ditch. That's you and I and everyone we care about. Not a nice thought.

Hmm, the story with the wedge graph on that article is well known, the wedge began with the 1973 end of Bretton Woods, and essentially median hourly wage has different meaning on either side of it. This is also why this happened in many countries, not just the USA.

There's no "going back" to Bretton Woods, its design failed, it wasn't just a political decision. Generally though, what I don't like about Hacker News is that when you reply to something that makes space for fringe or pithy explanations for things, it's impossible to sound grounded, so people interested in this can start with a succinct article here: https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/about-the-riksbank/history/his...

This is a terrible conundrum. The nations that sink resources into improving aggregate economic measures are the most competitive and quite possibly even the most likely to triumph in armed conflicts. The average per capita GDP will be enormous, but the median per capita GDP will be incredibly small.

The vast majority of voters would vote for the shittier economy, which in fact is what we are seeing right now? And who ends up being the winners? Presumably dictatorships that can sink capital into things like automation while simply not giving a shit about the desires of the citizenry...

The elephant is the guy starting the trade war(s).

Ah, then that is a strange way to partially switch over to the metric system.

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