Sunday, October 30, 2011

Technology And Employment

I came across an article from a while back discussing the impact of technology on employment.

I've been arguing that as machines and software become more capable, they are beginning to match the capabilities of the average worker. In other words, as technology advances, a larger and larger fraction of the population will essentially become unemployable. While I think advancing information technology is the primary force driving this, globalization is certainly also playing a major role. (But keep in mind that aspects of globalization such as service offshoring--moving a job electronically to a low wage country--are also technology driven).

The economists sometimes mention technology, but in general they find other "structural" issues to focus on.
I'm not sure I agree with his thesis. People will eventually do different things than they did in the past. Just as they eventually did after collapse of farm labor in the 1930s. But the change was wrenching and it took 15 or 20 years to complete. More or less a generation.

We are in for rough sledding for quite a while longer if we count the beginning of the reorganization as 2008. We are well under a 1/4 of the way through the change.

In any case the author has made his book available for free (you can pay any amount you like too) at The Lights in the Tunnel.

This post was prompted by the comments to this article: The Technosponge.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

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