The typical economist’s take on this, however, is that by filling the lower-skilled jobs with robots, we will be able to move human workers into the higher-skilled work. Of course, as robots get smarter (or as we continually reduce complex processes to a series of simple steps—which has been the basis of automation since the days of Adam Smith), humans will be funneled into ever-higher-order tasks. Not to worry, say the economists, because we’ll need more and more robots, too. Hence, the final refuge for human workers will be to make the robots that do everything else.
Economist Joan Robinson (who should have been the first woman to win the Nobel for Economics—but was disqualified for taking the winning side of the “Capital Controversy” debate; note all the losers of that debate did get a Nobel, presumably as a consolation prize for losing to Robinson!) saw all this coming long ago when she wondered “But what do we do when robots make the robots?”
Back in 1991 I wrote about all this in a journal article: “Saving, Profits, and Speculation in Capitalist Economies”, Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 25, no. 4, December 1991, pp. 951-975. I just took a look at it and still consider it to be the best article I have published.....Economonitor — Great Leap Forward
When Robots Make Drones: The Brave New World Of Secular Stagnation
L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, University of Missouri at Kansas City
2 comments:
The most significant kind of stagnation we are facing is the the stagnant social and moral vision of dinosaur neoliberal economists like Summers.
Most jobs don't involve robots, or even require higher education. A visit to the Bureau of Labour Statistics or its equivalent will confirm that.
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