Re: Economists are revising their views on robots and ...

These discussions are always focused on the "robots". What about the spreadsheets, the computers, algorithms, industrial control systems, Python scripts, voice recognition systems, data pipelines, software powered gig economy, algorithmic traders? These types of automation have been in place for decades, and all of them cut costs for the owners of them and reduce the number of workers needed. Many of them can be operated with minimal training.

The benefits of those efficiency improvements are already going to the owners of the capital, not to workers, and this has been going on for decades. If in 1980 you were able to replace 4 clerks handwriting transactions in an accounting ledger with one clerk typing them into a spreadsheet but pay that one clerk marginally more than a handwriting clerk, who benefits most in that equation?

We're always focused on the some day maybe robots, but automation has been changing society and (I'd argue) increasing inequality for decades, and we've been completely blind to it because we're always talking about "the robots that are coming to take our jobs". We already need to find ways to distribute the benefits of these efficiency improvements more equally. In fact, we needed to years ago.

I wouldn't be surprised if this explains a lot of the productivity-pay gap [1]

[1] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

jordwest, 21 hours ago