The jobless economy
I was recently interviewed by Tom Ashbrook for NPR's "On Point" about the "jobless economy" - basically, the "rise of the robots" that everyone is talking about. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andy McAfee, authors of the new book The Second Machine Age, were also on the program. You can listen to the audio here.
Erik and Andy had very coherent and well-prepared points, which is not surprising given that they've just written a book on the subject. I haven't yet formed a single dominant thesis about the "rise of the robots", so my thoughts were separated into a number of distinct points. Those points were:
1. Technology has not been as important a force behind inequality and unemployment during the last 15 years as many people think; up til now, the much bigger story has been globalization (especially China). This is supported by Mike Elsby's research on the subject. But going forward, the "rise of the robots" may be a much bigger worry, and we need to think about how to respond to it.2. It's not yet clear if human labor will find a way to remain valuable en masse in the age of automation and the digital economy. That ended up happening in the Industrial Revolution, but there is no guarantee that it will happen again. We need to be prepared for the possibility that large numbers of humans are rendered nearly obsolete by new technology.3. In the short term (~5 yrs), infrastructure spending can boost our economy and help people get more jobs and higher wages. But that opportunity will be played out and will not repeat itself....MORE
