'Exciting times'? Changes in technology can boost inequality, authors say

The Labor MP Jim Chalmers was at a town hall meeting in Eagleby, Queensland this week when an older couple approached him. They were part of a crowd that turned up to see Bill Shorten's "Bill Bus", Labor's resurrected campaign bus from last year's election, on its way from Queensland to New South Wales as part of a two-week tour. Eagleby had been devastated by recent flooding, a painful hit for a suburb that only five years ago had twice the rate of unemployment than the state average. Chalmers said the couple wanted to talk about "the kids" – not their own necessarily, just young people. In a suburb where, according to the 2011 census, close to 50% of the workforce comprised labourers, tradesmen, technicians, machinery operators and drivers, where were the jobs going to come from when everything was getting automated?