It’s Not the Robots

In his latest column at the New York Times Paul Krugman leaps to the defense of technology:

The other day I found myself, as I often do, at a conference discussing lagging wages and soaring inequality. There was a lot of interesting discussion. But one thing that struck me was how many of the participants just assumed that robots are a big part of the problem — that machines are taking away the good jobs, or even jobs in general. For the most part this wasn’t even presented as a hypothesis, just as part of what everyone knows.

And this assumption has real implications for policy discussion. For example, a lot of the agitation for a universal basic income comes from the belief that jobs will become ever scarcer as the robot apocalypse overtakes the economy.

So it seems like a good idea to point out that in this case what everyone knows isn’t true. Predictions are hard, especially about the future, and maybe the robots really will come for all our jobs one of these days. But automation just isn’t a big part of the story of what happened to American workers over the past 40 years.

He makes the following points:

  1. Technological disruption, while a factor, is not accelerating.
  2. Our problem is that increasing productivity is not being matched by increases in wages.
  3. The minimum wage isn’t high enough.
  4. Union membership has declined.

There are a number of factors he fails to mention:

  1. We have experienced an enormous influx of minimum wage and sub-minimum wage workers over the last 40 years.
  2. We have brought a significant number of people with college educations into the country who are willing to work for less than most Americans are.
  3. Prices and wages in both health care and education have risen much faster than they have in other sectors of the economy and account for much more of your budget than they did 40 years ago.
  4. The financial sector is much bigger than it used to be, too.
  5. We have tolerated Chinese predation on American industries.
  6. Most Americans are paying a lot more in taxes than they did 40 years ago.

I think Dr. Krugman is confusing causes with effects. The minimum wage hasn’t grown and union membership has declined as a consequence of some of the points I’ve made.

Whatever the causes I think we should agree that much of what we have experienced is the consequence of policy and policies can be reversed.

5 comments… add one
  • Gray Shambler Link

    Yes, trying to unionize today’s workforce is like herding cats.

  • Icepick Link

    No, herding cats is easier. Cats all speak cat. My immediate neighbors speak four different languages at home. Spread out to my ‘town’ of Pine Hills, Florida, and there are at least ten languages* spoken by a significant number of people. Not all of them speak English. About ten years back some Haitians robbed a Chinese restaurant, and just decided to shoot the cashier in the face because she couldn’t understand their pidgin English, and they couldn’t understand hers.

    Organization is rather tough on the Tower of Babble.

    * Off the top of my head there is

    English
    Haitian Creole
    Spanish
    Some language from the Indian subcontinent (neighbors of mine)
    Korean
    Chinese (at least one type)
    Vietnamese
    Arabic
    At least one Ameri-Indian language
    … shoot, I had ten a minute ago, but I can’t remember what it was.

    And that is one ‘communuty’ of under 60,000 people. I seem to recall Disney published their benefits package in at least 14 different language 16 years ago. No telling how many now.

  • That sounds like the kindergarten class my wife had in LA 35 years ago.

  • Gray Shambler Link

    Not tongue in cheek. Do you celebrate the diversity or resent it?
    I ask because I’m sensing nativist sentiment that might get Dave’s blog put on a watch list.

    ( my Humana manual has 17 languages)

  • Do you celebrate the diversity or resent it?

    Neither. I think it presents a difficult challenge.

    I also think that language is of paramount importance in unifying a culture and influences thought in subtle ways. So, for example, there is no verb “to have” in the Russian language. That inevitably affects the very concept of possession among Russian speakers.

    I read a comment yesterday at OTB in which the commenter was hailing our ability to assimilate new immigrants, ignoring what the data say. What the data tell us, for example, about Spanish-speaking immigrants is that they adopt English about a generation later than speakers of other languages. Too much of the old data rely on self-reporting. If you ask Spanish speakers whether they speak English well, they’ll say “yes” but less subjective measures tell a different story.

    IMO things are different than they were 25 or 50 or 100 years ago and we need to respond to today’s challenges rather than assuming present experience will be the same as that of a century ago.

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