The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century

by Ryan Avent

Overview

None of us has ever lived through a genuine industrial revolution. Until now.

Digital technology is transforming every corner of the economy, fundamentally altering the way things are done, who does them, and what they earn for their efforts. In The Wealth of Humans, Economist editor Ryan Avent brings up-to-the-minute research and reporting to bear on the major economic question of our time: can the modern world manage technological changes every bit as disruptive as those that shook the socioeconomic landscape of the 19th century?

Traveling from Shenzhen, to Gothenburg, to Mumbai, to Silicon Valley, Avent investigates the meaning of work in the twenty-first century: how technology is upending time-tested business models and thrusting workers of all kinds into a world wholly unlike that of a generation ago. It's a world in which the relationships between capital and labor and between rich and poor have been overturned.

Past revolutions required rewriting the social contract: this one is unlikely to demand anything less. Avent looks to the history of the Industrial Revolution and the work of numerous experts for lessons in reordering society. The future needn't be bleak, but as The Wealth of Humans explains, we can't expect to restructure the world without a wrenching rethinking of what an economy should be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250075802
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/20/2016
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

RYAN AVENT is an economics correspondent for the Economist. He's also the primary contributor to its Free Exchange blog and a contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Atlantic, and The Guardian, among other publications. He is the author of a Kindle Single: The Gated City, which analyzes migration from American cities. Avent was previously an economic consultant and an industry analyst for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He lives in London, England. The Wealth of Humans is his first book.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The Digital Revolution and the Abundance of Labour

1 The General-Purpose Technology 29

2 Managing the Labour Glut 45

3 In Search of a Better Sponge 64

2 Dynamics of the Digital Economy

4 The Virtues of Scarcity 81

5 The Firm as an Information-Processing Organism 97

6 Social Capital in the Twenty-First Century 118

3 The Digital Economy Goes Wrong

7 Playgrounds of the 1 per cent 147

8 Hyperglobalization and the Never-Developing World 162

9 The Scourge of Secular Stagnation 179

4 From Abundance to Prosperity

10 Why Higher Wages are so Economically Elusive 197

11 The Politics of Labour Abundance 213

12 Human Wealth 230

Epilogue 241

Notes 243

Further Reading 257

Acknowledgements 261

Index 263

Editorial Reviews

Ryan Avent is a superb writer. I am confident that his book will be very successful.”—Thomas Piketty

“Ryan Avent is one of the sharpest and most intelligent writers around. Nobody is better placed to tell us how technology is shaping our economy and our lives.”—Tim Harford

“Many of the world's top economists read, engage with, and debate Ryan Avent on a regular basis, including on labor markets and technology.” —Tyler Cowen

“An ambitious, insightful and provocative book...Avent ranges widely through the often insular silos of economics, blending microeconomics with macro, industrial organization with international trade, labor economics with financial, economic history with economic geography. In the best Economist tradition, this book is both accessible and sophisticated, one that raises all the right questions.”—Washington Post

From the Publisher

09/15/2016
There's much in today's world that Scottish philosopher and political economist Adam Smith didn't have to contend with when writing The Wealth of Nations in 1776, including the digital economy, negative interest rates, and the "rise of the robots." In this update of Smith's work for the 21st century, Economist columnist Avent takes on these and other modern-day economic woes, focusing on the human side of the equation. He begins by providing background on global issues such as wage stagnation, labor oversupply, and the sharp increase in income inequality, and then presents intelligent discussion about possible remedies. There's cogent, thoughtful, and nonpartisan coverage of the cases for more open borders, income redistribution, a guaranteed basic income, and increasing infrastructure spending, among other ideas. Alas, there are no easy answers, and Avent is scrupulous in supplying both pros and cons. Scholarly without being overly academic, this work offers an excellent high-level summation of the difficulties of the current U.S. and international labor economies, with a very slight whiff of hopefulness at the end. VERDICT A provocative, accessible, nonpolemical, and nonpolitical take on difficult topics. Recommended for academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, 10/19/15.]—Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

Library Journal

Narrator Scott Merriman would do well as moderator of a debate between political opponents: His tone is authoritative but eminently reasonable and restrained. That quality makes him an ideal narrator for this thoughtful audio. Ryan Avent, who grew up in North Carolina and now writes for THE ECONOMIST in London, has a sensibility that will be refreshing to listeners accustomed to American bipartisanship. A capitalist with a conscience, he argues unsentimentally that the digital revolution will inevitably lead to job destruction but also that we can, and must, find ways to reduce income inequality and share the fruits of our growing wealth. Merriman is comfortable with both the economics jargon and the warmer personal anecdotes that Avent shares as he builds his argument. D.B. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2016 - AudioFile