"...how is the value created shared among the people in the economy? ...Technological progress allows concentration of power in the one who holds the capital..."
Capital as the term is usually used is getting a severe beating right along with labor. Goods used to be much more capital-intensive than they are now. Look at the rotting carcasses of factories in Detroit.
And I am sorry - but you immediately switched from "wealth" to "power" and in a service economy, those are disjoint - perhaps in-opposition - things.
Buildings are built to the aesthetics of rich people - in the "mount the TV over the fireplace" style. There's a critic who tears apart crappy McMansion aesthetics all day long. Things like strip malls are an artifact of incentives in real estate development. And good quality food is plentiful and in cases, quite cheap.
Quality food is cheap? Have you ever lived in a big city?
If you come to Europe, you'll see that building a nice house wasn't reserved to the rich. And anyway, if we believe GDP figures, a rich man 200 years ago had the purchasing power of a middle-class american living in a McMansion.
Capital can depreciate, of course. It did, and wealth went from the rustbelt to the techies and financiers who own the algorithms.
> Capital as the term is usually used is getting a severe beating right along with labor. Goods used to be much more capital-intensive than they are now. Look at the rotting carcasses of factories in Detroit.
What the heck are you talking about? Those factories didn't shutter because you don't need a factory to make cars anymore.
Capital as the term is usually used is getting a severe beating right along with labor. Goods used to be much more capital-intensive than they are now. Look at the rotting carcasses of factories in Detroit.
And I am sorry - but you immediately switched from "wealth" to "power" and in a service economy, those are disjoint - perhaps in-opposition - things.
Buildings are built to the aesthetics of rich people - in the "mount the TV over the fireplace" style. There's a critic who tears apart crappy McMansion aesthetics all day long. Things like strip malls are an artifact of incentives in real estate development. And good quality food is plentiful and in cases, quite cheap.