Stephen Hawking died Wednesday, the 14th of March 2018, after complications due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive neurodegenerative disease. He was 76.

Here’s my favorite quote by Stephen Hawking:

‘If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.’

This is similar to what people like David Graeber , author of ‘Debt’ or Peter Joseph, of the Zeitgeist Movement, keep repeating. We can produce everything to fulfill the basic needs of everyone on the planet, but the profit driven dynamic prevents this. We are seeing the unbridled ‘Matthew effect’ in our economy. Those that have get more, and those that don’t have, will get even less. A first step to counter this would be to go back to the massive tax rates the rich had to pay up under presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt, the red man in the White House, as economics professor Richard Wolff brilliantly explains.

RIP Stephen Hawking.