Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology

by Azeem Azhar

In practical terms this has manifested through stagnating average wages and increases in inequality. Again, the most striking example comes from the US. Between the 1940s and the mid-1970s, economic productivity and workers’ pay rose in tandem: from 1948–1973, there was a 97 per cent increase in workers’ hourly pay, against a 91 per cent increase in economic productivity. Fair enough. But then, something surprising happened. The increase in wages tapered off – even as economic productivity continued to skyrocket. By 2018, US economic productivity was 255 per cent higher than it had been in 1948; but workers’ pay was only 125 per cent higher – barely a third more than it had been in 1973. In other words, the output of the US economy continued to rise – but the share workers received stagnated.76