World Bank Says Internet Technology May Widen Inequality (nytimes.com)

HughPickens.com writes: Somini Sengupta writes in the NY Times that a new report from the World Bank concludes that the vast changes wrought by Internet technology have not expanded economic opportunities or improved access to basic public services but stand to widen inequalities and even hasten the hollowing out of middle-class employment. "Digital technologies are spreading rapidly, but digital dividends — growth, jobs and services — have lagged behind," says the bank in a news release announcing the report. "If people have the right skills, digital technology will help them become more efficient and productive, but if the right skills are lacking, you'll end up with a polarized labor market and more inequality," says Uwe Deichmann. Those who are already well-off and well-educated have been able to take advantage of the Internet economy, the report concludes pointedly, but despite the expansion of Internet access, 60 percent of humanity remains offline. According to the report, in developed countries and several large middle-income countries, technology is automating routine jobs, such as factory work, and some white-collar jobs. While some workers benefit, "a large share" of workers get pushed down to lower-paying jobs that cannot be automated. "What we're seeing is not so much a destruction of jobs but a reshuffling of jobs, what economists have been calling a hollowing out of the labor market. You see the share of mid-level jobs shrinking and lower-end jobs increasing."

The report adds that in the developing world digital technologies are not a shortcut to development, though they can accelerate it if used in the right way. "We see a lot of disappointment and wasted investments. It's actually quite shocking how many e-government projects fail," says Deichmann. "While technology can be extremely helpful in many ways, it's not going to help us circumvent the failures of development over the last couple of decades. You still have to get the basics right: education, business climate, and accountability in government."

Comments

And now for something really controversial

[MikeRT]

It is believed that modern society in the West developed by the upper-middle and upper classes' excess kids effectively outbreeding the lower classes over hundreds of years, resulting in gains in health, IQ and longer time preferences. That's a fusion of nature and nurture reinforcing one another.

What have we done for the last 2 generations? We've inverted it with the more intelligent having fewer and fewer kids. Now we have an economy where getting a good job increasingly depends on biological factors that are not being selected for in our reproductive habits as they once were, resulting in the virtuous cycle of the previous centuries becoming a vicious feedback cycle.

Re:And now for something really controversial

[swb]

I could mostly buy into the idea that this was something of a self-reinforcing process where the people who got into tribal leadership positions initially did so through some genetic advantages in health, strength, and intelligence.

The initial advantage (probably in hunting) gave them access to superior nutrition, increasing their own survival and increasing the likelihood of having offspring, and offspring that grew larger and healthier.

As cultures and roles solidified, these people were in a good place to claim leadership based on demonstrated attributes (leading more successful hunts, killing more enemies) as well as possessing some inherent personality traits that gave them more charisma or being able to defeat challengers from within their own ranks.

Over time this leadership group evolved into an aristocracy, whose superior access to food, shelter, selection of mates (IIRC, there have been cross-cultural studies of beauty that align with physical traits associated with childbearing) likely enabled their children significant advantages, warding off some of the endemic developmental problems of poor nutrition, disease exposure, and so on, in addition to situational advantages -- like being able to gain exposure to learning and teaching versus taking immediate risks (I would imagine being taught how to hunt dangerous game or fight in combat by someone skilled and successful at it would have some survival value versus doing it without much exposure to training).

I doubt it's a perfect long term system, as eventually the aristocracy can grow sclerotic and actual shelter the weak, in addition to inbreeding promoting genetic defects -- look at hemophilia among the European aristocracy.

As a side note, I've done some work at an extremely exclusive country club, and I'm always kind of surprised at how healthy and vigorous appearing the rich are. Slim, well-toned, attractive, few signs of any of the dietary-driven obesity of poor people or evidence of the chronic illnesses and development issues.

Using the excess of workforce

[Thanshin]

The problem now is that the brilliant minds that create entirely new occupations mostly focus that creativity on occupations that are directly dependent on the latest technology. This is natural, as where would you find new occupations easier than in new technologies?

However, we need a brilliant mind that finds new occupations that, while using the new technologies, don't depend on them. We need someone to find a way to use the excess workforce created by automatisation in such a way as to not require from that workforce the very fact that made it replaceable by automatisation.

The question that needs to be answered isn't "what new jobs are created by the new technological environnement" as the answer to that will make you fight for workers with every other innovator.

The question is "what new jobs can be done by those who the technological environnement made superfluous." So, essentially, what can I do with a million people whose previous occupation is automatisable?

I believe those new jobs will come in the form of "computer assisted individual aimed art.", like, for example, "painting pretty environnements and props for VR semi-custom games" or "supporting actors in personal movies in which the customer is the protagonist"

Re:Hoarding wealth

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of threats from a guy who spends his day playing WoW and facebooking on his Apple phone.

You'd never rise up because (a) you have it too good (b) you're easily manipulated by media (c) you're fundamentally lazy

Just look at China

[jonsmirl]

China is the top country for poor people moving into the middle class. A lot of that movement is from millions of people setting up mom and pop shops. Cell phones are very important to the functioning of this segment of the market and cell phone are a window into the Internet. So I'd say they have it backwards. They are focusing on the small number of tech lottery winners and ignoring the major improvement cell phones has had on ordinary people's lives.

Re:Myopic

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of social safety net? We have way too much net. There is so much safety net that people who are in the net can't get out because what they get is more then what they get if they try to get out.

I have seen people get a job, and ask to work less hours because they will lose government handouts. They make x amount, they then lose housing assistance and other assistance. The safety net is what traps people in poverty for most.

Re:Enablers always widen inequality

[sinij]

This is Utopian meritocratic feel-good outlook. I wish I could agree with you. Unfortunately, human condition gets in the way. Productive enables don't generally get rich, instead entrenched and corrupt power brokers do. Look at US in the last 50 years, less than a dozen of 'productive enablers' really made it, but metric f-ton of leeches golden parachuted into ridiculous wealth.