ROBOTICS

Virginia Tech physicists propose path to faster, more flexible robots

Virginia Tech physicists revealed a microscopic phenomenon that could greatly improve the performance of soft devices, such as agile flexible robots or microscopic capsules for drug delivery

Peer-Reviewed Publication

VIRGINIA TECH

 

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VIRGINIA TECH PHYSICIST C. NADIR KAPLAN (AT LEFT) AND DOCTORAL CANDIDATE CHINMAY KATKE (RIGHT) DISCOVERED A MICROSCOPIC PHENOMENON THAT COULD GREATLY IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF SOFT DEVICES, SUCH AS AGILE FLEXIBLE ROBOTS OR MICROSCOPIC CAPSULES FOR DRUG DELIVERY. PHOTO BY SPENCER COPPAGE FOR VIRGINIA TECH.

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CREDIT: PHOTO BY SPENCER COPPAGE FOR VIRGINIA TECH.

In a May 15 paper released in the journal Physical Review Letters, Virginia Tech physicists revealed a microscopic phenomenon that could greatly improve the performance of soft devices, such as agile flexible robots or microscopic capsules for drug delivery.

The paper, written by doctoral candidate Chinmay Katke, assistant professor C. Nadir Kaplan, and co-author Peter A. Korevaar from Radboud University in the Netherlands, proposes a new physical mechanism that could speed up the expansion and contraction of hydrogels. For one thing, this opens up the possibility for hydrogels to replace rubber-based materials used to make flexible robots—enabling these fabricated materials to perhaps move with a speed and dexterity close to that of human hands.

Soft robots are already being used in manufacturing, where a hand-like device is programmed to grab an item from a conveyer belt—picture a hot dog or piece of soap—and place it in a container to be packaged. But the ones in use now lean on hydraulics or pneumatics to change the shape of the “hand” to pick up the item.

Akin to our own body, hydrogels mostly contain water and are everywhere around us, e.g., food jelly and shaving gel. Katke, Korevaar, and Kaplan’s research appears to have found a method that allows hydrogels to swell and contract much more quickly, which would improve their flexibility and capability to function in different settings.

What did the Virginia Tech scientists do?

Living organisms use osmosis for such activities as bursting seed dispersing fruits in plants or absorbing water in the intestine. Normally, we think of osmosis as a flow of water moving through a membrane, with bigger molecules like polymers unable to move through. Such membranes are called semi-permeable membranes and were thought to be necessary to trigger osmosis.

Previously, Korevaar and Kaplan had done experiments by using a thin layer of hydrogel film comprised of polyacrylic acid. They had observed that even though the hydrogel film allows both water and ions to pass through and is not selective, the hydrogel rapidly swells due to osmosis when ions are released inside the hydrogel and shrinks back again.

Katke, Korevaar, and Kaplan developed a new theory to explain the above observation. This theory tells that microscopic interactions between ions and polyacrylic acid can make hydrogel swell when the released ions inside the hydrogel are unevenly spread out. They called this “diffusio-phoretic swelling of the hydrogels.” Furthermore, this newly discovered mechanism allows hydrogels to swell much faster than what has been previously possible.

Why is that change important?

Kaplan explained: Soft agile robots are currently made with rubber, which “does the job but their shapes are changed hydraulically or pneumatically. This is not desired because it is difficult to imprint a network of tubes into these robots to deliver air or fluid into them.”

Imagine, Kaplan said, how many different things you can do with your hand and how fast you can do them owing to your neural network and the motion of ions under your skin. Because the rubber and hydraulics are not as versatile as your biological tissues, which is a hydrogel, state-of-the-art soft robots can only do a limited number of movements.”

How could this improve our lives?

Katke explained that the process they have researched allows the hydrogels to change shape then change back to their original form “significantly faster this way” in soft robots that are larger than ever before.

At present, only microscopic-sized hydrogel robots can respond to a chemical signal quickly enough to be useful and larger ones require hours to change shape, Katke said. By using the new diffusio-phoresis method, soft robots as large as a centimeter may be able to transform in just a few seconds, which is subject to further studies.

Larger agile soft robots that could respond quickly could improve assistive devices in healthcare, “pick-and-place” functions in manufacturing, search and rescue operations, cosmetics used for skincare, and contact lenses.

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JOURNAL

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.208201 

ARTICLE TITLE

Diffusiophoretic Fast Swelling of Chemically Responsive Hydrogels

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-May-2024

Scientists made a soft robot that mimics a spider's leg

ESTONIAN RESEARCH COUNCIL

 

VIDEO: 

A SPIDERS LEGS INSPIRED MM-SCALE SOFT EXOSCELETON ENABLED BY LIQUID VIA HYDRATION AND CHARGE TRANSPORT.

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CREDIT: TARTU UNIVERSITY ITALIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Scientists made a soft robot that mimics a spider's leg

Researchers Indrek Must and Kadri-Ann Valdur of the Institute of Technology of the University of Tartu have created a robot leg modelled after the leg of a cucumber spider. A soft robot created in cooperation with the Italian Institute of Technology could in the future move where humans cannot.

In organisms, fluid is what binds the organs, the blood vessels and the musculoskeletal system as a whole. For example, hemolymph, a blood-like fluid in a spider's body, enables muscle activation and exoskeleton flexibility. It was the cucumber spider inhabiting Estonia that inspired scientists to create a complex soft robot, where soft and rigid parts are made to work together and are connected by a liquid.

According to Indrek Must, Associate Professor of Soft Robotics, the designed soft robot is based on real reason. "Broadly speaking, our goal is to build systems from both natural and artificial materials that are as effective as in wildlife. The robotic leg could touch delicate objects and move in the same complex environments as a living spider," he explains.

In a new research paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, the researchers show how a robotic foot touches a primrose stamen, spider web, and pollen grain. This demonstrates the soft robot's ability to interact with very small and delicate structures without damaging them.

The manufactured leg is the size of a little fingernail and consists of a light-curing resin exoskeleton and an artificial muscle made of polypyrrole. Similar to a natural muscle, a soft robot is activated by an electrical signal. The entire exoskeleton contains an electrolyte solution that surrounds both a stiffer tendon made of resin and an electroactive polymer artificial muscle. The solution behaves like the hemolymph in spiders and affects the properties of the exoskeleton as well as the movement – the liquid makes the exoskeleton more flexible and the leg starts to move due to the change in the shape of the polymer.

Soft robotics is inspired by wildlife. In the future, robots will be able to operate in places where humans cannot or cannot go, for example moving inside a person as a nanorobot during surgery or searching for survivors in a disaster area.

A spiders legs inspired mm-scale soft exosceleton touching plants anthers

CREDIT

Tartu University Italian Institute of technology

JOURNAL

Advanced Functional Materials

DOI

10.1002/adfm.202315161 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A Spider Leg-Inspired mm-Scale Soft Exoskeleton Enabled by Liquid via Hydration and Charge Transport

Protestors allege ‘robotic dogs’ produced by Penn U. spinout are involved in Israel-Hamas war

By Elea Castiglione 04/05/24

Jewish Voices for Peace held a demonstration at the College Green on April 4. 

Credit: Chenyao Liu

Around 120 protestors called on Penn to cut ties with a spinout that they allege has produced robotic dogs used by the Israeli military.

The crowd of Philadelphia community members gathered on Thursday at the Ben Franklin statue to protest Ghost Robotics, a company housed in Pennovation Works that develops and sells four-legged robots to be used for "data collection, intelligence, security, asset protection, and military-specific uses."

The protestors allege that the company is selling robots to Israel's military to be utilized in the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The Daily Pennsylvanian could not independently confirm these claims, including any direct connection to the University. In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel's military had employed robot dogs to explore Hamas' tunnels; it remains unclear which company produced those robots.

Ghost Robotics operates out of the 23-acre Pennovation Works property located at 3401 Grays Ferry Avenue. The company was founded by Avik De, who received his Ph.D. in engineering from Penn in 2017, and Gavin Kenneally, who received his Ph.D. in engineering from Penn in 2021.

RELATED:

Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine hosts College Hall protest, blocks main entrance

Penn Chavurah, pro-Palestinian Jewish groups protest outside Magill’s congressional hearing

Ghost Robotics and a University spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Ghost Robotics is listed as a participant in PCI Ventures Impact, a Penn Center for Innovation program that supports early-stage companies.

An independent group called Shut Down Ghost Robotics organized the protest, according to a Bryn Mawr College senior and organizer of the rally who requested to be referred to as M.K. due to fear of retaliation.

"We are a group of concerned community members who are worried that our tax dollars are subsidizing and that our campus is supporting the manufacture of these robotic dogs,” M.K. said. “Our message to Penn students is to get involved with us and to not allow their college to be the landlord of a company that supporting a genocide.”

The protest included five speakers, none of whom claimed direct affiliation with the University. Organizers said that Penn-affiliated staff helped organize the event but did not publicly participate or speak out due to fear of retaliation from administration.

“For fear of intimidation, [Penn affiliates] don't want to speak," M.K. said. "There's a campus culture of repression and fear and intimidation."

M.K., in both her speech and her interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, noted that while the robotic dogs allegedly being used in Gaza are not armed, they have the potential to be armed in the future. She referenced a 2021 article published in The Verge, which showed Ghost Robotics’ Vision 60 robots equipped with custom guns.

College junior Logan Chapman said that he attended the protest after learning more about the technology companies supplying weapons to Israel. He described the need for a ceasefire as "urgent."

Cindy Lou, a longtime Philadelphia resident, held a sign with an image of the robotic dog at the protest. Her message to the Penn community was to “wake up and kick out Ghost Robotics.”

A Penn staff member, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation, described the alleged use of robot dogs as a "clear danger for all of humanity that is probably going to escalate in the very near future."

“The question people should ask themselves is, 'Do they want on their diploma or on their CV to see a University of Pennsylvania and know — and have other people know — that this university is participating in weaponizing robotic dogs?" the staff member said.

De and Kenneally founded the company while at Penn under the mentorship of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, & Perception Lab. In 2021, a subsidiary of the GRASP Lab, Kod*lab, announced that its founder was having his name removed from Ghost Robots' website and promotional materials given the company's "turn toward active partnerships to arm its legged robots."

Robot dog disguised as coyote lands job scaring birds away from runway

LOOKS MORE LIKE A GRASSHOPPER OR LOCUST

Aurora, with handler Ryan Marlow, will be camouflaged as a coyote or fox to ward off migratory birds and other wildlife at Fairbanks airport (Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News via AP)

By Associated Press Reporters

Today at 15:55

A headless robot about the size of a labrador dog will be camouflaged as a coyote or fox to ward off migratory birds and other wildlife at Alaska’s second largest airport, a state agency has said.

The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities has named the new robot Aurora and said it will be based at the Fairbanks airport to “enhance and augment safety and operations”, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

The transportation department released a video of the robot climbing rocks, going up stairs and doing something akin to dancing while flashing green lights.

Those dancing skills will be put to use this fall during the migratory bird season when Aurora imitates predator-like movements to keep birds and other wildlife from settling near plane infields.

The sole purpose of this is to act as a predator and allow for us to invoke that response in wildlife without having to use other means

Ryan Marlow, robot handler

The plan is to have Aurora patrol an outdoor area near the runway every hour in an attempt to prevent harmful encounters between planes and wildlife, said Ryan Marlow, a programme manager with the transportation department.

The robot can be disguised as a coyote or a fox by changing out replaceable panels, he said.

“The sole purpose of this is to act as a predator and allow for us to invoke that response in wildlife without having to use other means,” Mr Marlow told legislators last week.

The panels would not be hyper-realistic, and Marlow said the agency decided against using animal fur to make sure Aurora remained waterproof.

The idea of using a robot came after officials rejected a plan to use flying drones spraying a repellent including grape juice.

Previous deterrent efforts have included officials releasing pigs at a lake near the Anchorage airport in the 1990s, with the hope they would eat waterfowl eggs near plane landing areas.

The test period in Fairbanks will also see how effective of a deterrent Aurora would be with larger animals and to see how moose and bears would respond to the robot, Mr Marlow told the Anchorage.

Fairbanks “is leading the country with wildlife mitigation through the use of Aurora. Several airports across the country have implemented robots for various tasks such as cleaning, security patrols, and customer service,” agency spokesperson Danielle Tessen said in an email to the Associated Press.

In Alaska, wildlife service teams currently are used to scare birds and other wildlife away from runways with loud sounds, sometimes made with paintball guns.

Last year, there were 92 animal strikes near airports across Alaska, including 10 in Fairbanks, according to an Federal Aviation Administration database.

Most strikes resulted in no damage to the aircraft, but Marlow said the encounters can be expensive and dangerous in the rare instance when a bird is sucked into an engine, potentially causing a crash.

An AWACS jet crashed in 1995 when it hit a flock of geese, killing 24 people at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.

If the test proves successful, Mr Marlow said the agency could send similar robots to smaller airports in Alaska, which could be more cost effective than hiring human deterrent teams.

Aurora, which can be controlled from a table, computer or on an automated schedule, will always have a human handler with it, he said. It can navigate through rain or snow.

The robot from Boston Dynamics cost about 70,000 US dollars (£55,000) and was paid for with a federal grant.

Brain chips: the Sydney researchers ‘miles ahead’ of Elon Musk’s Neuralink


Tory Shepherd
Sat, 16 March 2024

Australian neuroscience advances are hugely promising for people who otherwise cannot communicate or interact with the world, but there are concerns over regulation and access.

Illustration: Victoria Hart/Guardian Design

Brain-computer interface technology is at the core of movies such as Ready Player One, The Matrix and Avatar. But outside the realm of science fiction, BCI is being used on Earth to help paralysed people communicate, to study dreams and to control robots.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk announced in January – to much fanfare – that his neurotechnology company Neuralink had implanted a computer chip into a human for the first time. In February, he announced that the patient was able to control a computer mouse with their thoughts.

Neuralink’s aim is noble: to help people who otherwise can’t communicate and interact with the environment. But details are scant. The project immediately sounded alarm bells about brain privacy, the risk of hacking and other things that could go wrong.

Related: Elon Musk says Neuralink has implanted its first brain chip in human

Dr Steve Kassem, a senior research fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia, says “tonnes of grains of salt” should be taken with the Neuralink news. It is not the first company to do a neural implant, he says. In fact, Australia is a “hotspot” for related neurological research.

Do patients dream of electric sheep?

A University of Technology Sydney project that has received millions in funding from the defence department is currently in the third phase of demonstrating how soldiers can use their brain signals to control a robot dog.

“We were successful [demonstrating] that a solder can use their brain to issue a command to assign the dog to reach a destination totally hands-free … so they can use their hands for other purposes,” Prof Lin, the director of the UTS Computational Intelligence and BCI Centre, says.

The soldier uses assisted reality glasses with a special graphene interface to issue brain signal commands to send the robotic dog to different places. Lin says they are working on making the technology multi-user, faster and able to control other vehicles such as drones.

Meanwhile, Sydney company Neurode has created a headset to help people with ADHD by monitoring their brain and delivering electronic pulses to address changes. Another UTS team is working on the DreamMachine, which aims to reconstruct dreams from brain signals. It uses artificial intelligence and electroencephalogram data to generate images from the subconscious.

And then there are the implants.

Good signal

Synchron started at the University of Melbourne and is now also based in New York. It uses a mesh inserted into the brain’s blood vessels that allows patients to use the internet, sending a signal that operates a bit like Bluetooth. People can shop online, email and communicate using the technology to control a computer.



Synchron has implanted the mesh in a number of patients and is monitoring them, including one in Australia. Patient P4, who has motor neurone disease, has the mesh implanted a few years ago.

“I believe he’s had over 200 sessions,” Gil Rind, Sychron’s senior director of advanced technology, says. “He is still going strong with the implants and has been working very closely with us.

“He’s been able to use his computer through the system … As the disease has progressed it’s really challenging to use physical buttons.

“This has provided him with an alternative method of being able to interact with his computer – for online banking, communication with his carer, [with] loved ones.”

Dr Christina Maher at Sydney University’s Brain and Mind Centre says Synchron’s technology is “miles ahead” of Elon Musk’s and is more sophisticated and safer because it does not require open brain surgery. The researchers have also published more than 25 articles, she says.

“With Neuralink, we don’t know much about it.

“My understanding is that a big priority for them is to test the efficacy and safety of their surgical robots … so they’re a lot more about the robotic side of things, which makes sense from a commercial perspective.”

The need for regulation

Amid the hype and promise of neurotechnology, though, are concerns about who will be able to access the helpful technologies and how they will be protected.

Maher says it is a matter of balancing the need for innovation with proper regulation, while allowing access for those people who really need it. She says the “disparity between the haves and have-nots” is being discussed in Australia and globally.

Related: The big idea: should we all be putting chips in our brains?

“When brain-computer interfaces become more common, it’s going to really segregate people into those who can afford it and those who can’t,” she says.

Rind says Synchron is focused on those who have the most to gain, such as people with quadriplegia. “We would like to expand that out as far as we can – we hope we can reach larger markets and help more people in need,” he says.

A personal, pivotal moment for him was seeing the faces of the clinicians, team and family of the first patient to successfully receive the implant, he says.

On Neuralink, Kassem warns there will always be dangers when technology is developed by a company that exists to make profit. “A mobile phone plan for your brain is not what we want,” he says.

“And what about if this is hacked? There is always a risk if it’s not a closed system.”

More likely than that, though, is that Neuralink will use people’s data.

“Just like every single app on your phone and on your computer, Neuralink will monitor as much as it can. Everything it possibly could,” Kassem says.

“It will be stored somewhere.”

Protecting brain data

Maher says hacking will remain a risk if devices are linked to the internet, and agrees that data is a big problem. She says much of our social media, biometric and other data is already out there, but that brain data is different.

“While [BCI companies] are subject to the same data privacy laws … the difference is in a lot of people’s minds is that brain data is quite private, it’s your private thoughts.

“The big picture here is that once we start recording a lot of brain data, there’ll be an absolute megaton of data out there,” she says.

Kassem says despite concerns over privacy, interacting with the brain holds exciting possibilities.

“We need to remember how powerful and significant the brain is … everything you are now, everything you have been, and everything you will be is just your brain, nothing else,” he says.

There are trillions of neural connections in the brain, leading to “boundless opportunities”, he says, quoting the US physicist Emerson Pugh. “If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”

 

The Battle for Income Equality

by Dan Lieberman / February 27th, 2024

Questioning the statistics in Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, with intent to undermine his thesis, is futile. Even if Piketty’s alert that returns on investment have exceeded the real growth of wages and economic output, which means that the stock of capital is rising faster than overall economic output, is not exactly accurate, criticism has not upset the conclusions ─ severe income inequality and inequitable wealth distribution doom the capitalist system to collapse and a more narrow wealth distribution keeps it going.

Progressive economists connect meager wage growth to limited purchasing power ─ one cause of the 2008 crash ─ and increased concentration of wealth to cautious job growth in the post-crash years. Their conclusions have engineered debates on how to achieve equitable distributions in wages and wealth and raise middle-class wages, and the roles private industry, government, and labor unions play in achieving a more equitable society.

If private industry refuses to meet its obligations to readjust the divide, Thomas Piketty recommends increasing taxes on high earners and large estates and coupling them with a wealth tax. This method for resolving income inequality gives government a major role in correcting the unequal distributions of income and wealth.

In previous decades, unions had a larger membership, greater clout, and more strength to move management to meet wage demands. Government lacks a mechanism to force corporations to transfer productivity gains into wage gains. Only corporations can do the trick. Not likely. Corporations do not realize the social and economic benefits of decreasing income inequality and increasing middle-class purchasing power. Lowering remunerations to those in top pay brackets and increasing them for lower-income workers is more than a moral obligation; it has direct benefits to the economy for everyone. It is a requirement for achieving a stable economy.

Social costs due to less equitable income and wealth distributions

Rationalizing poorly distributed wealth by noting the American poor are wealthier than the middle class in many developed nations is deceiving. Poverty is defined as an absolute number but its effects are relative. The lower wage earners in the United States are unaware of what they earn in relation to foreigners; they are aware of what they do not earn in relation to others living close to them. The wide disparity in wealth creates resentment and tension and leads to psychological and emotional difficulties. Minimizing social problems means combining giving more to the lower classes and taking less by the upper classes.

The social problems and associated costs in developed nations that have wide distributions of income and wealth are well-documented — elevated mental illness, crime, infant mortality, and health problems. One statistical proof is that the United States, classified as the most unequal of the developed nations, except Singapore, had the highest index of social problems. The graph below from 2010-2011 and an earlier article, Health is a Socio-Economic Problem, describe the important relationships.

Every citizen suffers from and pays for the social problems derived from income inequality, an unfair condition in a democratic society. Private industry has an obligation and an opportunity to fix the problem it has caused. If not, Uncle Sam, whom they don’t want on their backs, will reach into their pockets, redistribute the wealth and resolve the situation.

Income inequality produces wealth concentration and political consequences. Wealthy individuals have increased control of the political debate, more influence in selection of candidates, tend to place their interests before national interests, and determine the direction of political campaigns. Skewing the electoral process distorts government and the decisions that guide social and economic legislation. Severe disparities in the concentration of wealth reduce democratic prerogatives, fair elections, and equality before the law.

The Sunlight Foundation, in an article, The Political 1% of the 1% in 2012 by Lee Dustman, June 2013, presents a fact-filled discussion of this topic.
Note: Although statistics are from ten years ago, they are interesting statistics and are relevant today.

More than a quarter of the nearly $6 billion in contributions from identifiable sources in the last campaign cycle came from just 31,385 individuals, a number equal to one ten-thousandth of the U.S. population.

Of the 1% of the 1%’s $1.68 billion in the 2012 cycle, $500.4 million entered the campaign through a super PAC (including almost $100 million from just one couple, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson). Four out of five 1% of the 1% donors were pure partisans, giving all of their money to one party or the other.

These concerns are likely even more acute for the two parties. In 2012, the National Republican Senatorial Committee raised more than half (54.2 percent) of its $105.8 million from the 1% of the 1%, and the National Republican Congressional Committee raised one third (33.0 percent) of its $140.6 million from the 1% of the 1%. Democratic party committees depend less on the 1% of the 1%. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised 12.9 percent of its $128.9 million from these top donors, and the Democratic Congressional Committee raised 20.1 percent of its $143.9 million from 1% of the 1% donors.

To the many billionaires who are tilting election campaigns, add the political contributions by super-sized corporations and industries, and electoral control by the wealthy becomes complete. Campaign contributions from the financial sector, the same financial sector that increased its liabilities from 10 percent of GDP in 1970 to 120 percent of GDP in 2009, and shifted investment from manufacturing to rent-seeking ─ making money the new-fashioned way ─ leads the way.

The Sunlight Foundation article also states:

In 1990, 1,091 elite donors in the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate).contributed $15.4 million to campaigns ─ a substantial sum at the time. But that’s nothing compared to what they contributed later. In 2010, 5,510 elite donors from the sector contributed $178.2 million, more than 10 times the amount they contributed in 1990.

The Debt of each sector as a percentage of GDP tells the story of the financial sector.
Note: 2022 GDP = $25.4T
          2022 Q4 Debt at the following:
          Total = $89.5T, Household = $19.4T, Business = $20.8T, Finance = $19.3T, Government= $26.8
2022 Percent of GDP at the following:
Household = 72.4%, Business = 81.9%, Finance = 76.8%, Government= 105.5%

The graph shows that the FIRE sector increased its wealth by borrowing money, making the economy work for it rather than working for the economy. The credit enabled the financial industry to grow until it led the nation into the 2008 economic disaster.

The Economic Consequences of Wealth Concentration

What has occurred with wealth concentration? A previous decade indicated a deflection of investment from dynamic industrial processes to static rent situations, from industries that employ workers to make goods to industries that employ money to make money. Graphs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) record the trend.

Note: In 2023, Financial sector employment was 9.2M and manufacturing employment was 12.9M.

The graphs plot employment in the manufacturing and financial sectors, Manufacturing had a slow deterioration during the Reagan presidency, followed by stability during the Clinton administration and a sharp decline during the George Bush era. Some deterioration in manufacturing employment is understandable; administrative jobs (clerical, administration) have been displaced by information technologies and these fields have added jobs; factory floor work of consumer goods has been displaced by machines (robot, numerical control) that have their own factory floors; and labor has been transferred from highly labor-intensive manufacturing to service industries. However, the employment loss is excessive and bewildering when compared to the increase in financial employment. Can a healthy economy result from a steady growth in financial workers and a consistent decrease in industrial workers?

Beginning in the Reagan era, until economic collapse in 2008, employment in the financial sector monotonically increased, except for slight blips during the 1991 recession and a few years of the Clinton administration. From a ratio of 1/3 in 1986, financial sector employment rose to 2/3 that of manufacturing employment by 2014, and increased by more than the changes in their respective additions to the Gross Domestic Product. Since the 2009 mini-depression, employment in the financial industry has remained relatively static. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows the value added by each industry.

Manufacturing rose from $1390.1 billion in 1997 to $2079.5 billion in 2013, an increase of 50 percent.
Finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing rose from $1623.1 billion in 1997 to $3293.2 billion in 2013, an increase of 100 percent.

A comparison between salaries of engineers, those who contribute directly to industrial growth, and financiers, those who drive active and passive investments, also reveals the importance given to those who make money from money.

One of the contributors to Capital, Thomas Philipson, in an article Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry: 1909-2006, NBER Working Paper No. 14644, January 2009, shows that wages for the financial sector started a steady growth during the Reagan administration, and eventually exceeded engineering wages, especially for those who had advanced degrees from the elite universities.

As the FIRE industry expands, the purchasing power contracts, one reason being that part of the rent-seeking covets higher returns and gets sidetracked into endless speculation; money rolling over and over and never available to purchase anything but pieces of paper. Millions of arbitrage transactions per second can earn thousands of dollars per second, which adds up to 3.6 million dollars per hour ─ no positive effect on the economy; only paper dollars continually created.

Stagnant labor wages and weak purchasing power force expansion of credit to increase demand, The wealthy respond to credit expansion with accelerated demand for larger houses, larger cars, and more luxury goods, spending that raises asset values and places middle-class earners at a disadvantage. The bottom ninety percent on the income scale desperately pursue debt to give themselves a temporary share of prosperity. Debt must eventually be repaid. Real wealth remains with a privileged few and others remain stagnant.

What is the Result?

Thomas Piketty has reshaped the thinking of the Capitalist system. Economics enables the understanding of how and when to increase demand, enable sufficient purchasing power, and the true meaning of profit.  A better understanding of economics may come from less regard for the conventional economics of modern theorists and more regard for the classical economics of the fathers of political economy ─ Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. The latter provided a controversial concept ─ wages provide purchasing power, and beyond what is bought by that purchasing power is surplus, whose value allows profit.

Pledge your support

Piketty shows that profits are being sidetracked into passive investments that produce only more capital and not useful goods, into the accumulation of excessive personal wealth, and into financial speculation that features the constant churning of paper money, which removes dollars from the market and creates difficulties for manufacturing to grow. Accumulation of excessive wealth generates social problems, diminishes the quality of life, and burdens the middle class when taxes are used to seek relief.

Capturing the political system by those most responsible for the problems ─ the privileged wealthy who manipulate a portion of the electoral process for their advantage ─ hinders routes to ameliorating the deterrents to a fair and successful economy. Due to their financial and political clout, the wealthy have their voices more easily heard in Congress and before federal agencies.

Karl Marx claimed that Capitalism contains the seeds of its destruction. Those who foster severe income inequality and inequitable wealth distribution apparently want to prove his statement is correct.

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com. He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.