“In Marxian analysis, capitalist firms increasingly substitute capital equipment for labor inputs (workers) under competitive pressure to reduce costs and maximize profits. Over the long-term, this trend increases the organic composition of capital, meaning that less workers are required in proportion to capital inputs, increasing unemployment (the "reserve army of labour"). This process exerts a downward pressure on wages. The substitution of capital equipment for labor (mechanization and automation) raises the productivity of each worker, resulting in a situation of relatively stagnant wages for the working class amidst rising levels of property income for the capitalist class.”

What impact does higher worker productivity and leveled pay have on lower earners?

“In a purely capitalist mode of production (i.e. where professional and labor organizations cannot limit the number of workers) the workers wages will not be controlled by these organizations, or by the employer, but rather by the market. Wages work in the same way as prices for any other good. Thus, wages can be considered as a function of market price of skill. And therefore, inequality is driven by this price. Under the law of supply and demand, the price of skill is determined by a race between the demand for the skilled worker and the supply of the skilled worker. "On the other hand, markets can also concentrate wealth, pass environmental costs on to society, and abuse workers and consumers." "Markets, by themselves, even when they are stable, often lead to high levels of inequality, outcomes that are widely viewed as unfair." Employers who offer a below market wage will find that their business is chronically understaffed. Their competitors will take advantage of the situation by offering a higher wage the best of their labor. For a businessman who has the profit motive as the prime interest, it is a losing proposition to offer below or above market wages to workers.”

What happens when business overpays their workers? & How do competing businesses repel workers?

“During the mass high school education movement from 1910–1940, there was an increase in skilled workers, which led to a decrease in the price of skilled labor. High school education during the period was designed to equip students with necessary skill sets to be able to perform at work. In fact, it differs from the present high school education, which is regarded as a stepping-stone to acquire college and advanced degrees. This decrease in wages caused a period of compression and decreased inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. Education is very important for the growth of the economy, however educational inequality in gender also influence towards the economy. Lagerlof and Galor stated that gender inequality in education can result to low economic growth, and continued gender inequality in education, thus creating a poverty trap. It is suggested that a large gap in male and female education may indicate backwardness and so may be associated with lower economic growth, which can explain why there is economic inequality between countries.”

What impact did the high school education movement have on the wages of unskilled workers?

“Sociologist Jake Rosenfield of the University of Washington asserts that the decline of organized labor in the United States has played a more significant role in expanding the income gap than technological changes and globalization, which were also experienced by other industrialized nations that didn't experience steep surges in inequality. He points out that nations with high rates of unionization, particularly in Scandinavia, have very low levels of inequality, and concludes "the historical pattern is clear; the cross-national pattern is clear: high inequality goes hand-in-hand with weak labor movements and vice-versa."

What do strong labor movement correlate with?

- What impact does higher worker productivity and leveled pay have on lower earners? 
- What happens when business overpays their workers?
- How do competing businesses repel workers?
- What impact did the high school education movement have on the wages of unskilled workers?
- What do strong labor movement correlate with? 

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

We can collect Wikipedia articles and their corresponding reading comprehension questions through SQuAD 1.1 and 2.0 databases. 

Reading Comprehension Dataset from Wikipedia Articles 

Questions for Economic Inequality Article

We need to select questions that meet a certain level of difficulty from the SQuAD database to accurately assess reading comprehension from difficult concepts. These criteria include:

- Syntactic variation: word structure of a sentence in the text is different from how it is phrased in the question (eg. Question: What Shakespeare scholar is currently on the faculty? Phrase from the text: Current faculty include...)
- Multiple sentence reasoning: multiple sentences required from text to answer a question, not just a single sentence

The SQuAD paper analyzes other question types, but for purposes of our research we only need to meet these criteria

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