David Autor Quotes
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The Internet promises to open new channels for worker-firm communications. What are the consequences of this opening?
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A lot of the work in, say, construction or restaurants involves visual and motor flexibility. It also requires adaptability, in terms of answering questions, giving people directions, or taking orders.
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Here's a startling fact: in the 45 years since the introduction of the automated teller machine, those vending machines that dispense cash, the number of human bank tellers employed in the United States has roughly doubled, from about a quarter of a million to a half a million.
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The average worker in 2015 wanting to attain the average living standard in 1915 could do so by working just 17 weeks a year, one third of the time. But most people don't choose to do that. They are willing to work hard to harvest the technological bounty that is available to them. Material abundance has never eliminated perceived scarcity.
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I did software development for a while, and I also spent several years directing a nonprofit in San Francisco that did computer education for the poor. I also did a lot of work in fast food.
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There's never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value.
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Work is really wrapped up with identity. Work is not just money for most people.
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More than any other issue, economists have kind of been boosters for trade.
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Computers were programmed to swap out error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection.
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I did a lot of blue collar work. I also worked as a temp. I did, you know, light construction and cleaning. I did clerical temping. I also fix cars and motorcycles and electronics.
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I had never taken any economics. I literally didn't know what it was. I thought it was just about the study of money.
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In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded and crashed down to Earth less than two minutes after takeoff. The cause of that crash, it turned out, was an inexpensive rubber O-ring in the booster rocket that had frozen on the launchpad the night before and failed catastrophically moments after takeoff.
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There is no question we are in an era of people asking, 'Is the Robocalypse upon us?
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There's always new work to do. Adjusting to the rapid pace of technological change creates real challenges, seen most clearly in our polarized labor market and the threat that it poses to economic mobility. Rising to this challenge is not automatic. It's not costless. It's not easy. But it is feasible.
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The last 200 years, we've had an incredible amount of automation. We have tractors that do the work that horses and people used to do on farms. We don't dig ditches by hand anymore. We don't pound tools out of wrought iron. We don't do bookkeeping with books! But this has not, in net, reduced the amount of employment.
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The fact that a task cannot be computerized does not imply that computerization has no effect on that task. On the contrary, tasks that cannot be substituted by computerization are generally complemented by it. This point is as fundamental as it is overlooked.
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One would expect that a surge of new automation opportunities in highly paid work would catalyze a surge of corporate investment in computer hardware and software. Instead, the opposite occurred.
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Tax reform done right will improve incentives to invest in U.S. production and to repatriate profits.
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I work a lot on skill demands and changes in labor markets having to do with technology and with trade as well.
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Trade may raise GDP. But it does make some people worse off.
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China's rise is really a kind of a world historical event. This is the largest country in the world. It has caused a wholesale substantial contraction of U.S. manufacturing employment.
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If I lose my job at a furniture factory where I've worked for decades, no amount of cheaper toys and raincoats at Wal-Mart is going to make me whole again.
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Markets are, in many settings, self-organizing and 'efficient' in terms of maximizing the welfare of both buyers and sellers.
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While I can't tell you what people are going to do for work 100 years from now, the future doesn't hinge on my imagination.