Why does inequality in capitalist economies tend to increase over long periods of time?

“The rise of piecemeal work is a key issue in the Hollywood writers’ strike.

Universities devote a smaller share of faculty slots to tenured professorships than in the past — and hire more adjunct professors who have little chance for promotion. Law firms employ relatively fewer partners and more lawyers who are paid less. And Hollywood hires fewer writers to participate in the entire production process, relegating more of them to piecemeal work.

This trend is part of what my colleague Noam Scheiber calls “the fracturing of work,” and it is a central issue in the Hollywood writers’ strike that is now 11 weeks old. As one historian explained, there is increasingly a “tiered work force of prestige workers and lesser workers.” The arrangement has its roots in manufacturing, Noam writes in a story that just published:

At the turn of the 20th century, automobiles were produced largely in artisanal fashion by small teams of highly skilled “all around” mechanics who helped assemble a variety of components and systems — ignition, axles, transmission.

By 1914, Ford Motor had repeatedly divided and subdivided these jobs, spreading more than 150 men across a vast assembly line. The workers typically performed a few simple tasks over and over.

Specialization does have big advantages. Companies can complete tasks more efficiently and inexpensively. But workers sometimes pay the price in the form of lower wages and less responsibility, especially if they are not unionized and lack bargaining leverage.

Piketty’s rule

Screenwriters — who are unionized — have gone on strike in an attempt to use their collective leverage to avoid becoming Hollywood’s equivalent of adjunct professors. Until the past decade, writers not only wrote scripts but also remained on set during filming and participated in the process. They offered thoughts about costumes and props and would tweak the script as the cast acted it out.

The producer Michael Schur has compared the job to an apprenticeship. Schur was a writer on “The Office,” and the experience helped him learn how to create and run his own shows. Later, he did so, with “Parks and Recreation” and “The Good Place.”

Today, only one or two writers remain with a show through production, while others produce scripts and are then dropped from the process. “The making of television is very compartmentalized now,” John Koblin, who covers the television business for The Times, told me. “The writers write. The actors act. The directors direct.” (John went into more detail as a guest on the NPR show “Fresh Air.”)

As a result, writers’ pay has stagnated even as streaming has led to a boom in the number of television shows. Studio executives say that they need to hold down costs in response to declining revenue from cable television and movie theaters. And those challenges are real, but the executives also seem to be using the shift to streaming as an excuse to change the economics of their industry in ways that are less favorable to many employees.

The trend is a microcosm of larger developments. Nationwide, the pay of the bottom 90 percent of earners has trailed well behind economic growth in recent decades (as you can see in these Times charts). Most Americans have not received their share of the economy’s growing bounty, while a relatively small share have experienced very large income gains.

That’s not shocking.

As the economist Thomas Piketty has explained, inequality tends to rise in a capitalist economy, partly because the wealthy have more political power and economic leverage than the middle class and poor do.

But history also shows that rising inequality is not inevitable.

There are forces that can push in the other direction. Rising educational attainment can give more people the skills to become specialists. Taxes on top incomes and large fortunes can redistribute wealth. Labor unions can give workers the bargaining power to prevent wage stagnation.

Hollywood writers — and, as of last week, actors too — are now trying to make such a push against inequality.”