Don't Blame Technology For Shrinking Middle Class

By Dean Baker

July 9, 2012 - 3:13pm ET 

Thomas Edsall devoted his blog post today to several economists who claim that the upward redistribution we have seen over the last three decades is a result of revolutions in technology and that it will be difficult to reverse this development. In fact, much of this economic analysis is quite sloppy and it is easy to show that many of the factors leading to upward redistribution had nothing to do with technology.

For example, the post features a graph that shows for the first time a sustained decline in the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) even as output has continued to rise. While the graph is accurate, it is wrong to imply that this demonstrates any new impact of technology.