Summers: Yes, the Robots Are Coming to Take Our Jobs

[David Morris]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/03/summers-yes-robots-are-coming-take-our-jobs

*Tankersley:* How do you think about the effects of technology and
automation on workers today, particularly those in the middle class?

*Summers:* No one should speak with certainty about these matters, because
there are challenges in the statistics, and there are conflicts in the
data. But it seems to me that there is a wave of what certainly appears to
be labor-substitutive innovation. And that probably, we are only in the
early innings of such a wave.

Summers also gets it right on the value of education. He believes it's
important, but he doesn't think it will do anything to address skyrocketing
income inequality:

It is not likely, in my view, that any feasible program of improving
education will have a large impact on inequality in any relevant horizon.

First, almost two-thirds of the labor force in 2030 is already out of
school today. Second, most of the inequality we observe is within education
group — within high school graduates or within college graduates, rather
than between high school graduates and college graduates. Third, inequality
within college graduates is actually somewhat greater than inequality
within high school graduates. *Fourth, changing patterns of education is
unlikely to have much to do with a rising share of the top 1 percent, which
is probably the most important inequality phenomenon.* So I am all for
improving education. But to suggest that improving education is the
solution to inequality is, I think, an evasion.
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