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" History has suggested that the pessimists have been wrong time and time again. "
David Autor
Time
Wrong
Again
Related Quotes:
" I think we labor economists like to think of ourselves as being closer to the people. "
David Autor
People
Think
Economists
" Labor is getting a shrinking slice of a pie that's not growing very much. "
David Autor
Pie
Much
Labor
" Economists have understood since the Victorian era that the main benefits of trade come from comparative advantage: the idea that people can specialize in what they're good at and then benefit from exchange. The principle is no more mysterious than specialization in the labor market. "
David Autor
Mysterious
People
Trade
" Our machines increasingly do our work for us. Why doesn't this make our labor redundant and our skills obsolete? Why are there still so many jobs? "
David Autor
Us
Work
Why
" If you think about it, many of the great inventions of the last 200 years were designed to replace human labor. Tractors were developed to substitute mechanical power for human physical toil. "
David Autor
Power
Labor
Think
" If I lose my job at a furniture factory where I've worked for decades, no amount of cheaper toys and raincoats at Wal-Mart is going to make me whole again. "
David Autor
Job
Lose
Going
" More than any other issue, economists have kind of been boosters for trade. "
David Autor
Any
Kind
Economists
" One would expect that a surge of new automation opportunities in highly paid work would catalyze a surge of corporate investment in computer hardware and software. Instead, the opposite occurred. "
David Autor
Work
New
Opportunities
" Tax reform done right will improve incentives to invest in U.S. production and to repatriate profits. "
David Autor
Done
Invest
Right
" Workers and jobs are naturally heterogeneous, and the quality of their interaction when paired is difficult to forecast. "
David Autor
Workers
Difficult
Quality
" Manufacturing value chains are global. Many U.S.-made goods have foreign components. Slapping on tariffs will raise prices and slow imports, but it will make us poorer and impede growth. "
David Autor
Value
Will
Growth
" While I can't tell you what people are going to do for work 100 years from now, the future doesn't hinge on my imagination. "
David Autor
You
Future
Imagination
" We have too few college graduates. We also have too few people who are prepared for college. "
David Autor
Who
Prepared
People
" People tend to think about trade as if it's competition between companies - if Apple wins, Google loses. But that's false. Trade makes nations better off in general. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that everything about trade is good and beneficial. Trade also has costs. "
David Autor
Competition
Good
People
" The average worker in 2015 wanting to attain the average living standard in 1915 could do so by working just 17 weeks a year, one third of the time. But most people don't choose to do that. They are willing to work hard to harvest the technological bounty that is available to them. Material abundance has never eliminated perceived scarcity. "
David Autor
Work
Harvest
People
" Trade may raise GDP. But it does make some people worse off. "
David Autor
Worse
Off
People
" Jobs can change a lot without there being huge changes in employment rates. "
David Autor
Changes
Without
Employment
" Here's a startling fact: in the 45 years since the introduction of the automated teller machine, those vending machines that dispense cash, the number of human bank tellers employed in the United States has roughly doubled, from about a quarter of a million to a half a million. "
David Autor
Cash
Introduction
Here
" I'm a professor of economics and associate head of the MIT Department of Economics. "
David Autor
Professor
MIT
Economics
" The end of the 'tech bubble' in the year 2000 is, of course, widely recognized, as the NASDAQ stock index erased three-quarters of its value between 2000 and 2003. "
David Autor
Year
Recognized
End
" I'm not yet convinced that we will face an unemployment problem created by AI. There will certainly be some occupations eliminated - drivers of vehicles, many production jobs, etc. Whether this creates mass unemployment depends on how quickly this happens. If it happens overnight, it will be a huge disruption. "
David Autor
Some
Will
Face
" The fact that people are dropping out of the labour force says one of two things: either employers have no use for them, or they have no use for the jobs that are being offered at the wages they can command. "
David Autor
Fact
Wages
Two
" I work a lot on skill demands and changes in labor markets having to do with technology and with trade as well. "
David Autor
Technology
Work
Skill
" There's never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value. "
David Autor
Value
Education
Technology
" I had never taken any economics. I literally didn't know what it was. I thought it was just about the study of money. "
David Autor
Study
Money
Thought
" China's rise is really a kind of a world historical event. This is the largest country in the world. It has caused a wholesale substantial contraction of U.S. manufacturing employment. "
David Autor
Rise
Country
World
" There's a reason I write articles and go out for good dinners: because I'm better at research than cooking. And there are people who are much better at cooking than research, so it's mutually beneficial for us to specialize. "
David Autor
People
Research
Good
" Computers were programmed to swap out error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection. "
David Autor
Human
Perfection
Computers
" I did software development for a while, and I also spent several years directing a nonprofit in San Francisco that did computer education for the poor. I also did a lot of work in fast food. "
David Autor
Food
Education
Work
" Markets are, in many settings, self-organizing and 'efficient' in terms of maximizing the welfare of both buyers and sellers. "
David Autor
Settings
Efficient
Markets