We might not care so much about these inequities if the digital revolution were reducing the costs of all the many things the typical household wants to buy, from steak dinners to adequate housing to a top-flight university education. But cost reductions have so far been highly uneven: massive for some things, such as digital entertainment; completely absent for others, such as homes in nice neighbourhoods.

And so stagnant wages end up mattering an awful lot. Low pay for the great mass of workers is distributionally unfair. It undermines support for the market-based economic system that enables sustained economic growth. Low pay also reduces the incentive to invest in technologies that boost the productivities of less-skilled workers, or which substitute [...] it is an enormous problem; continued productivity growth is ultimately the route to lives of greater comfort for all of humanity: it is how humanity contrives to produce more from less, so that all can have more.