If you break down employment by sector, hasn’t manufacturing employment steadily decreased since about the 1960s, while manufacturing output has increased (i.e. the productivity gains and job losses come from automation, not globalization)?
I think that the real automation concern is reduced employment prospects for specific sections of the population, not long-term involuntary unemployment. When the union manufacturing jobs go away and you get a job at Wal-Mart instead, you can still pay rent and eat food- but you’ve moved from lower middle class to lower class, which has a number of troubling secondary effects.
Historically, automation has resulted in wealth skewing. Some resources such as land are zero-sum, and so wealth skewing has negative humanitarian impacts. But automation also has benefits to people at the bottom of the wealth distribution. Even though automation has made things worse for some people by reducing the status and pay of their jobs, the holistic effect on the bottom 50% of the wealth distribution (say) seems likely to be positive.
If you break down employment by sector, hasn’t manufacturing employment steadily decreased since about the 1960s, while manufacturing output has increased (i.e. the productivity gains and job losses come from automation, not globalization)?
I think that the real automation concern is reduced employment prospects for specific sections of the population, not long-term involuntary unemployment. When the union manufacturing jobs go away and you get a job at Wal-Mart instead, you can still pay rent and eat food- but you’ve moved from lower middle class to lower class, which has a number of troubling secondary effects.
Historically, automation has resulted in wealth skewing. Some resources such as land are zero-sum, and so wealth skewing has negative humanitarian impacts. But automation also has benefits to people at the bottom of the wealth distribution. Even though automation has made things worse for some people by reducing the status and pay of their jobs, the holistic effect on the bottom 50% of the wealth distribution (say) seems likely to be positive.