Comment of the Day: Kaleberg: "It depends on what you mean by a 'robot'. Do you count remote wellhead monitoring systems? That eliminates drill monitoring jobs. Do you count synthetic oils and computerized internal combustion engine control letting lubrication oil last longer? That eliminates automobile maintenance jobs. Let's not even talk about the revolution in steel making over the last 30 years that has eliminated tens of thousands of dirty, dangerous jobs. There is a long list like this. Uber and Lyft eliminate dispatcher's jobs. Reservation web sites eliminate receptionist and scheduling jobs...
...Why don't we see labor productivity soaring? If we look closely at particular businesses, it is probably visible. If we look at the aggregate we have to account for the fact that the workers still exist and are now either out of the workforce, hence a lower employed population percentage, or are working at a job with lower pay and lower output. In that latter case we'd see rising income inequality as more and more workers fall to the wage, benefit and productivity floor. I'm willing to bet their is a structural argument that these workers get jobs that scale with untrained labor, produce limited output gains but still provide a bit of a profit to businesses.
Technological change is a problem, but as the changes build up, the nation faces a demand crisis. This happened in the 1930s when massive technological improvements increased productivity by two to three orders of magnitude. It was a great time to be a radio engineer, just as the current day is a good time to be a computer engineer...
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