Nobel-Prize Special | Daron Acemoglu on Why We Should Celebrate Humanity

Daron Acemoglu has been awarded the 2024 Nobel-prize for Economic Science. This is a great testament to his impressive career. But the award was given for his early work on global inequality, together with Johnson and Robinson. The Swedish Riksbank did not pay attention to his new work on inequality within rich countries. Should we? And is his new theory even consistent with the old?

I got to ask this from Acemoglu during our 2023 interview. I thought this would be a good time to re-post his answer. In this highlight, we also discuss:

• The hidden tragedy behind growing wages
• Is automation the problem?
• Why we need a more "pro-human" direction of technology
• Lessons from (an imperfect) Germany
• Why fixing the economy starts from celebrating humanity

If you want to enjoy the full show, head to episode 26 of this feed.

You can also read my essay breakdown of Acemoglu's theory here. Get these and other resources at ⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠.

Thank you to all the patrons who make On Humans possible! You can join the club at Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can get in touch for other ways to support at ⁠makela.ilari@outlook.com⁠⁠⁠.

KEYWORDS

Economics | economic history | wage-stagnation | wage growth | inequality | economic inequality | automation | AI | robotics | US economy | German economy | Nobel-prize | labour unions | worker power | Elon Musk | Tesla | car manufacturing | co-determination | humanity