Axios: The Problem With Automation

Very interesting:

“Acemoglu and Restrepo pin the blame on automation:

Over the last three decades, robots have destroyed more jobs than they have created, they say in one paper.

A primary reason is that the automation technology has not been good enough to create sufficient new work. That has led to stagnating productivity growth, a declining share of the economic pie for labor, and more inequality, according to a second paper.

An aging population is a leading indicator of more automation to come. The shift to robots will pick up in industries relying more on middle-aged workers, they say in the third paper.

In an interview, Acemoglu said that while prior technological cycles have killed many jobs, businesses and government have taken other actions that have counter-balanced the loss. Primarily, towering new technologies have spawned a lot of new industries and jobs. …”

In the early 20th century, for instance, the spread of the assembly line created new jobs for line workers, engineers, machinists, financiers, and so on. These new tasks account for much of the rise in productivity at the time.

But automation in our age has been largely about killing jobs, and not about creating new tasks that would require lots of human labor.

Acemoglu and Restrepo call it “so-so automation.”

 

Paper 1
Paper 2
Paper 3

I really wish there was someone running for president in 2020 who would start talking about this massive, looming problem and the social and economic impact it is certainly going to have on Millennials in particular as well as the White working class and the White middle class.

Note: Blompf is trying to convince his supporters he is going to bring back the 1950s. LMAO!

About Hunter Wallace 12390 Articles
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6 Comments

  1. Earlier advances in technology, such as the introduction of railroads and mass-produced automobiles, rendered some jobs obsolete but created many new jobs in return. By contrast, this latest generation of technological advances will simply render many existing jobs obsolete and replace them with nothing. Hence the inevitable need for a guaranteed basic income, among other things. But no ZOG approved political candidate will ever be able to offer any solutions to these problems, because ZOG does not want us to be happy – they want us to be replaced.

  2. “Over the last three decades, robots have destroyed more jobs than they have created, they say in one paper.” – That does not state or imply that robots have been primarily responsible for what has happened to workers.

  3. “A primary reason is that the automation technology has not been good enough to create sufficient new work. That has led to stagnating productivity growth.”

    What a bizarre thing to say. Doing the same thing with fewer workers is by definition an increase in productivity.

    Of course, if we didn’t have 30 million illegals in the US combined with millions of H-1b and H-2b workers imported for the express purpose of paying them below-market wages we wouldn’t have an unemployment problem, nor would be have a wage problem for those at the bottom.

  4. Go into any big box store or major supermarket and notice the lines at the automated check-out! Started off slow, now everyone is using them.

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