James Manyika

So there's some urgency to the climate change and climate risk question.

I think with regards to the issue of inequality, I think this is one that is also within our capacity to address.

I think it's important

to keep in mind that I think the capitalism and the market economies that we've had and we do have, have been unbelievably successful in creating growth and economic prosperity for the world in most places where they've been applied.

particularly in recent years, I think we've also started to see that, in fact, there's been growth in inequality, partly because the structure of our economy is changing and we can get into that conversation.

So, in fact, some people are doing phenomenally well and others are not, and some places are doing phenomenally well and some other places are not.

I mean, I think

It's not lost on me, for example, Lucas, that even if you look at an economy like the United States, something like two thirds of our economic output comes out of 6% of the counties in the country.

That's an inequality of place in addition to the inequalities that we have of people.

So I think we have to tackle the issue of inequality quite head on.

And unless we do something, it has the potential to get worse before it gets better.

The way our economy now works, and this is quite different, by the way, than what it might have looked like even as recently as 25 years ago, which is most of the economic activity, a function of the sectors that are driving economic growth, a function of the types of enterprises and companies that are driving economic growth, have tended to be much more today than they were 25 years ago, to be fairly regionally concentrated and in particular places.

So some of those places include Silicon Valley and other places.

Whereas if you had looked, for example, 25 years ago, where you might have seen the kind of sectors and companies that were doing well, were much more geographically distributed.

So you had more economic activity coming out of more places across the country than you do now.

So this is just, again, a function of, not that anybody designed it to be that way, but just a function of the sectors and companies and the way our economy works.

A related factor, by the way, is even the inequality question is also a function of how the economy works.

I mean, it used to be the case that whenever we had economic growth and productivity growth, it also resulted in job growth and wage growth

That's been true for a very long time, but I think in recent years, as in, depending how you count it, the last 25 years or so, when we have productivity growth, it doesn't lift up wages as much as it used to.

Again, it's a function of the structure of the economy.