The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone concentrate on inequality and shaping the long run of labor officially began on November 3, 2025 brings together scholars, policymakers and practitioners to look at critical questions on economic opportunity, technology and democracy.
Co-led by MIT professors Daron Acemoglu, David AuthorAnd Simon JohnsonThe recent Stone Center analyzes the forces contributing to growing income and wealth inequality through the erosion of job quality and labor market opportunities for staff with no college degree. The center identifies revolutionary ways to place the economy on a more equitable path.
WITH Provost Anantha Chandrakasan opened the kick-off event by highlighting the urgency and importance of the Center's mission. “As artificial intelligence tools change into more powerful and more widely used,” he said, “we must strive to be certain that people from diverse backgrounds find opportunities in business.”
Here are among the key takeaways from participants within the afternoon discussions on the subject Wealth inequality, liberalismAnd Pro-worker AI.
Wealth inequality is driven by private corporations and public policy
Owen Zidar from Princeton University highlighted that owners of companies corresponding to automobile dealerships, construction corporations and franchises make up a significant slice of the highest 1 percent. “For every public company CEO who gets loads of attention, there are a thousand private entrepreneurs who’ve a minimum of $25 million in assets,” he explained. These business owners have outsized political influence through overrepresentation, lobbying, and donations.
Advocacy from Princeton University linked high inequality to the US debt crisis and argued that massive savings at the highest weren’t being channeled into productive investment. Instead, falling rates of interest are forcing the federal government to run ever-larger budget deficits.
To reduce wealth inequality, speakers highlighted policy proposals including eliminating the 20 percent deduction for personal business owners and increasing wealth taxes.
However, policies have to be rigorously designed. Antoinette Schoar from the MIT Sloan School of Management explained how mortgage subsidy policies following the 2008 financial crisis actually worsened inequality by penalizing poorer would-be homeowners.
Governments must provide basic public goods and economic security
Marc Dunkelman from Brown University's Watson School of International and Public Affairs identified excessive bureaucracy as a central problem in modern liberal democracy. “We can't construct high-speed trains. You can't construct enough housing,” he explained. “This spurs strange individuals who want the federal government to enter the populist camp. We did this to ourselves.”
Josh Cohen from Apple University/University of California at Berkeley emphasized that liberalism must ensure shared prosperity and fair opportunity, not only protect individual freedoms. When people lack economic security, they could turn to leaders who abandon liberal principles altogether.
Liberal democracy must adapt while preserving its core values
Helena Rosenblatt Dhar from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York found that liberalism and democracy weren’t at all times allies. Historically, “civil equality was very essential, but not political equality,” she said. “Liberals were very suspicious of the masses.”
Speakers emphasized that today's challenge for liberalism is to meet its commitments to limit authoritarian power and protect fundamental freedoms while correcting its mistakes.
In Dunkelman's view, this may mean working to “eliminate the sowing of the seeds of populism by ensuring that the federal government properly balances the rights of the person and the desire of the numerous.”
Human-centered policy requires regulation of social media
In his keynote at launch, U.S. Rep Jake Auchincloss (Massachusetts 4th District) combined these ideas of presidency effectiveness and public trust with the influence of technology. He stressed the necessity to manage social media platforms.
“In my opinion, media is prior to culture, and culture is prior to politics,” he said. “If we wish a greater culture, and definitely if we wish higher politics, we’d like higher media.”
Auchincloss suggested that regulation should include liability of social media corporations for content and bans on targeted promoting to minors.
He also reiterated the urgency and importance of the middle's research agenda, particularly to know whether AI will facilitate or replace work.
“My bias has at all times been: Technology creates more jobs,” he said. “Maybe it'll be different this time. Maybe I'm incorrect.”
Augmentation is the important thing to worker-friendly AI – nevertheless it may require alternative AI architectures
Stone Center co-director Daron Acemoglu argued that expanding human capabilities slightly than automating their tasks is critical to achieving worker-friendly AI.
However, Acemoglu warned that this can not occur by itself, stating that technology corporations' business models and their concentrate on artificial general intelligence are usually not in keeping with a worker-friendly vision for AI. This vision may require public investment in alternative AI architectures that concentrate on “domain-specific, trusted knowledge.”
Ethan Mollick from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School noted that AI labs are explicitly attempting to “replace humans in all areas” and are “absolutely confident that they may have the ability to accomplish that within the very near future.”
Meanwhile, corporations “would not have a model for adopting AI,” Mollick explained. “There is absolute confusion.” Still, “there may be enough money at stake to maintain the machine moving forward,” underscoring the urgency of intervention.
A have a look at what such an intervention could appear to be Zana Bucinca of Microsoft shared research that considering staff' values and insights in AI design can enable higher complementarity.
“The impact of AI on human work will not be fate,” she emphasized. “It’s design.”
