Technological Progress and Unemployment: Luddism and Beyond

Adam Koronowski

Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, 2016, issue 4, 5-22

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to reconsider the role that technological progress plays in bringing about growing economic inequality and "secular stagnation." The main part of this paper is a theoretical analysis of the impact that technological innovation has on income distribution. The author argues that standard assumptions related to the production function, though seemingly neutral, have far-reaching consequences for economic reasoning concerning income distribution. Wages and employment are not subject to precise solutions resulting from economic optimization reflecting the technical properties of the production process, but are a result of an interplay of social and political factors at any level of employment. Moreover, technological innovations are labor-economizing in nature and eliminate any grassroots competition due to advantages of scale. As a consequence, the share of labor income declines. The second step of the analysis concerns the consequences of evolving income patterns for aggregate spending. Along the lines of reasoning typical for Kalecki, the author argues that the declining share of labor income gives rise to stagnation and persistent unemployment. As a whole, the analysis helps explain the "secular stagnation" and persistent unemployment combined with high profits, a process that breeds confusion in contemporary economics. Finally, the author reconsiders possible corrective policy measures. Globalization shows to be a major obstacle to any action that an individual government might decide to undertake with respect to the problem at hand.

Keywords: technology; unemployment; income distribution; economic policy; globalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E25 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.journalssystem.com/gna/pdf-100757-33149 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sgh:gosnar:y:2016:i:4:p:5-22

Access Statistics for this article

Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics is currently edited by Marek Gruszczyński, Grzegorz Konat

More articles in Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics from Warsaw School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Grzegorz Konat ().