Inequality in the second machine age: The need for a social democratic digital society

Abstract

The current travails of Europe's social democratic parties can only worsen if they fail to respond to the digital revolution's impacts on the labour market, society, and even their core values. Henning Meyer discusses how new approaches to policy can ensure that human freedom, justice and solidarity can thrive alongside the robots.

In Favour of Machines (But Not Forgetting the Workers): Some Considerations on the Fourth Industrial Revolution

“…This proposal not only is very burdensome for the state but also could be insufficient to guarantee some basic goods and services to everybody, such as health and education (McAfee and Brynjolfsson 2016;Colin and Palier 2015). In principle, it could be financed by dismantling the welfare state-but this solution is politically unsustainable, especially in European countries, which are based on an extensive and well-established welfare system (Meyer 2016)-or by a strong redistribution of the income gained by the owners of the machines.…”