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

[Dave Monroe]

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/104259/they-took-our-jobs

On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 1:55 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l