ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book reanalyses the issue of economic growth in advanced industrial nations, and points out some of its limits and costs. It shows that automation which produces higher output per person employed in productive industry does not necessarily increase national income, and that when it does not, it reduces the incomes of the working class. The book suggests that some such point will be reached in every advanced industrialised country eventually. Britain, as the first nation to mechanise production, is merely experiencing the first example of a universal phenomenon of technological change. Ricardo's theory of economic growth and technological change held sway throughout the nineteenth century, despite Marx's criticisms. The measure of the appropriate increase in the social dividend is the growth of automation.
