Após lançar Capital au XXIe siècle em 2013, o economista Thomas Piketty tornou-se o pesquisador sobre desigualdade mais conhecido no mundo. Pois ainda que muitas críticas tenham sido dirigidas a pontos teóricos da sua obra, houve, em geral, consideração positiva pelo volumoso trabalho empírico do autor, que incorreu em grande esforço para tratar dados sobre renda e propriedade oriundos de diversos países, e apresentou claros indícios de pioras distributivas em nações centrais ao sistema capitalista pelo menos desde a década de 1980.
This article develops a critical assessment of the literature correlating the technological advances of Industry 4.0 to worsening conditions in unemployment and wage inequality. Some of the limits and inconsistencies of this literature are highlighted, particularly its inadequacy to explain contemporary movements of manufacturing and its social consequences. We then argue that an analysis based on post-Keynesian political economy seems more appropriate to studying the topic, since it underlines the importance of effective demand and political and international contexts in the determination of employment and wages. The article concludes by rejecting the mainstream hypothesis that correlates unemployment and/or inequality with technological progress.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.