The future economy can create wealth, but what about work? — City Journal
With the impact that automation and robotics will soon have on manufacturing and retail, one can imagine all firms radically improving their productivity through technology. As businesses become more like Blackstone and less like General Motors, the economy will generate more and more wealth—and, many worry, less work. . . .
It may take a while—a generation?—for us to adapt ourselves to this new world of personal-service work, and some will have an easier time of it than others. The transition is likely to require decoupling social insurance from the employment relationship—so workers don’t have to depend on a large employer for essential benefits—but not from work. Our aim should be—as it long has been—an economy that produces wealth and work.
Low-income workers see their weekly pay increase more than other groups — WSJ
The widening rift between Big Tech and progressive activists — Axios
Declining competition and investment in the US — NBER
Abstract: The US business sector has under-invested relative to Tobin’s Q since the early 2000’s. We argue that declining competition is partly responsible for this phenomenon. We use a combination of natural experiments and instrumental variables to establish a causal relationship between competition and investment. Within manufacturing, we show that industry leaders invest and innovate more in response to exogenous changes in Chinese competition. Beyond manufacturing we show that excess entry in the late 1990’s, which is orthogonal to demand shocks in the 2000’s, predicts higher industry investment given Q. Finally, we provide some evidence that the increase in concentration can be explained by increasing regulations.
How land…