The disparity between the rich and everyone else is larger than ever in the United States and increasing in much of Europe. Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The signs of the gap\u2014really, a chasm\u2014between the poor and the super-rich are hard to miss in Silicon Valley. On a bustling morning in downtown Palo Alto, the center of today\u2019s technology boom, apparently homeless people and their meager belongings occupy almost every available public bench. Twenty minutes away in San Jose, the largest city in the Valley, a camp of homeless people known as the Jungle\u2014reputed to be the largest in the country\u2014has taken root along a creek within walking distance of Adobe\u2019s headquarters and the gleaming, ultramodern city hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The homeless are the most visible signs of poverty in the region. But the numbers back up first impressions. Median income in Silicon Valley reached $94,000 in 2013, far above the national median of around $53,000. Yet an estimated 31 percent of jobs pay $16 per hour or less, below what is needed to support a family in an area with notoriously expensive housing. The poverty rate in Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, is around 19 percent, according to calculations that factor in the high cost of living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even some of the area\u2019s biggest technology boosters are appalled. \u201cYou have people begging in the street on University Avenue [Palo Alto\u2019s main street],\u201d says Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford University\u2019s Rock Center for Corporate Governance and at Singularity University, an education corporation in Moffett Field with ties to the elites in Silicon Valley. \u201cIt\u2019s like what you see in India,\u201d adds Wadhwa, who was born in Delhi. \u201cSilicon Valley is a look at the future we\u2019re creating, and it\u2019s really disturbing.\u201d Many of those made rich by the recent technology boom, he adds, don\u2019t seem to care about \u201cthe mess they\u2019re creating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wealth generated in Silicon Valley is \u201cas prodigious as it has ever been,\u201d says Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a nonprofit group that promotes regional development. \u201cBut when we used to have booms in the tech sector, it would lift all boats. That\u2019s not how it works anymore. And suddenly you\u2019re seeing a backlash and people are upset.\u201d Indeed, people are stoning buses transporting Google employees to work from their homes in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The anger in Northern California and elsewhere in the United States springs from an increasingly obvious reality: the rich are getting richer while many other people are struggling. It\u2019s hard not to wonder whether Silicon Valley, rather than just exemplifying this growing inequality, is actually contributing to it, by producing digital technologies that eliminate the need for many middle-class jobs. Here, technology is arguably evolving faster than anywhere else in the world. Does the region really portend a future, as Wadhwa would have it, in which a few very rich people leave the rest of us hopelessly behind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Analysis:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This article points out many issues with the continuous transition to digital processes. For one, it is replacing lower and middle-class jobs with technological processes that lower business costs and keep the rich getting richer and leaving many people to struggle. In addition, it is allowing for those who can afford technology to have a more efficient lifestyle, while leaving those who can’t afford it with nowhere to go. This issue is a question of morality and ethics, I believe it is simply not justifiable to live in a world where there is such wealth disparity, a world that is making the issues worse through so-called “innovation.” I am not saying that technology is a bad thing, but when we create new technology, it should be our responsibility to better include all groups in the process, not just those who are young and wealthy. In terms of banking, I question how we can make the technology used in services and processes more accessible for customers, so they are not left to fend for themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Citation:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rotman, D. (2020, April 2). Technology and Inequality<\/em>. MIT Technology Review. https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2014\/10\/21\/170679\/technology-and-inequality\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The disparity between the rich and everyone else is larger than ever in the United States and increasing in much of Europe. Why? The signs of the gap\u2014really, a chasm\u2014between the poor and the super-rich are hard to miss in Silicon Valley. On a bustling morning in downtown Palo Alto, the center of today\u2019s technology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":15856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-focus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15862,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15854\/revisions\/15862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}