AS FAR back as the Industrial Revolution there have been periodic panics about the impact of automation. Handloom weavers’ resistance to new machines earned them a pejorative name—Luddites—that has become a byword for all those who try in vain to stop technological progress. Such anxieties resurfaced in America in the early 1960s, thanks to the rapid automation of agriculture, even though the economy was booming. They are even more prevalent in the rich world now, as advances in information technology (IT) threaten jobs that previously seemed invulnerable to automation. Whether the anxiety is any more justified this time round is the subject of three new papers in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Angst about automation typically focuses on the substitution effect, whereby jobs once done by people are taken over by machines—the fate of the Luddites. The current fear is that ever more versatile robots will substitute for labour on a scale never seen before. However, previous experience shows that focusing on substitution shows only part of the picture....
from The Economist: Finance and economics http://ift.tt/1DPZU4X
No comments:
Post a Comment