Distributing Our Technological Inheritance
by Gar Alperovitz
Copyright 1994, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alumni Association.
Technology Review (October 1994) Vol. 97, No. 7: 30-36.

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Toward a New Economic System

At the federal level, both Republicans and Democrats support an expensive measure that acknowledges the inequity of the U.S. economy's traditional mechanisms for allocating income. The system of earned-income tax credits, recently expanded by Congress, provides direct payments--cash--to working families who do not earn a livable wage. By 1996 families with two or more children making less than $ 27,000 will receive up to $ 3,370, with smaller families earning lesser amounts also receiving payments. Overall the program is projected to distribute $ 24.7 billion to 15 million families and 4.5 million childless workers by 1997. Raising these payments, unlike those distributed under welfare and other "charitable" programs, was one of the least contentious features of last year's budget bill.

Like the other proposals and experiments now on the table or under way, this ta credit does not squarely confront the irrationality of our present economic system or try to determine exactly what portion of current production stems fro the free legacy our society receives from the work and ideas of previous generations versus the small amount individuals add today.

Yet each initiative begins to challenge the once-hallowed notion that ownership of property or current labor should confer primary title to our technological inheritance. Such experiments could eventually challenge the principles at the heart of both traditional capitalism and traditional socialism, perhaps one day spawning a new economic system based on the notion of common inheritance.

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