So far, its impact on labor markets and wealth inequality have been far more ambiguous. As Brynjolfsson and McAfee point out in The Second Machine Age, over the past thirty years, the United States has seen steady growth in worker productivity but stagnant growth in median income and employment. Brynjolfsson and McAfee call this “the great decoupling.” After decades when productivity, wages, and jobs rose in almost lockstep fashion, that once tightly woven thread has begun to fray. While productivity has continued to shoot upward, wages and jobs have flatlined or fallen.
