Ah, the ol' "blame the robots" gambit. They took our money! Except nothing about this story flies: first, the microprocessor did not produce some magically mor

Ah, the ol' "blame the robots" gambit. They took our money! Except nothing about this story flies: first, the microprocessor did not produce some magically more productive economy. First look here: http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/chart_content/chart-graph/gdp_world_capita.png http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/default/files/image... You can see that world real GDP per capita did not suddenly increase after the 70s, in fact growth actually slowed a bit. The story also doesn't agree with common sense - microprocessors didn't reinvent the economy, they couldn't even deliver the "paperless office" we were promised (something particularly close to their domain). The fact is that productivity has been growing at basically the same boring pace, and microprocessors are just another boring form of automation, not a game-changer. Finally, believing this story requires us to ignore all of the other things we know about - the introduction of fiat currency, the Fed's shift to aggressive inflation-squashing (read: preventing full employment), massive consolidation of corporate ownership, financialization of the economy, enormous tax cuts for the wealthy, trade policies designed to reduce worker bargaining power, etc., etc. Are we to believe that none of these changes had an effect?