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" I did a lot of blue collar work. I also worked as a temp. I did, you know, light construction and cleaning. I did clerical temping. I also fix cars and motorcycles and electronics. "
David Autor
Construction
Blue
Work
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" 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. "
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" A lot of the work in, say, construction or restaurants involves visual and motor flexibility. It also requires adaptability, in terms of answering questions, giving people directions, or taking orders. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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Two
" Tax reform done right will improve incentives to invest in U.S. production and to repatriate profits. "
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Invest
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" Trade may raise GDP. But it does make some people worse off. "
David Autor
Worse
Off
People
" I think we labor economists like to think of ourselves as being closer to the people. "
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" We have too few college graduates. We also have too few people who are prepared for college. "
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Prepared
People
" More than any other issue, economists have kind of been boosters for trade. "
David Autor
Any
Kind
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" 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? "
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Us
Work
Why
" Markets are, in many settings, self-organizing and 'efficient' in terms of maximizing the welfare of both buyers and sellers. "
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Settings
Efficient
Markets
" There is no question we are in an era of people asking, 'Is the Robocalypse upon us? "
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Era
Asking
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. "
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Competition
Good
People
" 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. "
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Cash
Introduction
Here
" Work is really wrapped up with identity. Work is not just money for most people. "
David Autor
Work
People
Money
" Work is what structures adults' lives: it gives us purpose, focus, a set of responsibilities, and an identity. So when people are not participating in the labour market, all sorts of other things often start to go wrong. "
David Autor
Identity
Work
Purpose
" There was a great sag in employment beginning in 2000. "
David Autor
Employment
Great
Beginning
" 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
" 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
" Computers were programmed to swap out error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection. "
David Autor
Human
Perfection
Computers
" 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
" 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
" Workers and jobs are naturally heterogeneous, and the quality of their interaction when paired is difficult to forecast. "
David Autor
Workers
Difficult
Quality
" 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
" The U.S. tends to export high-tech goods because we have strong comparative advantage there, and we tend to import labor-intensive and less skill-intensive goods that other countries can do more cheaply. "
David Autor
Other
Because
Less
" The long-term policies that will be most effective all have to do with investment: investing in ourselves, investing in opportunities, creating good schools, and creating situations where people can acquire skills that enable them to be successful. "
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Opportunities
Successful
People
" 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. "
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Mysterious
People
Trade
" In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded and crashed down to Earth less than two minutes after takeoff. The cause of that crash, it turned out, was an inexpensive rubber O-ring in the booster rocket that had frozen on the launchpad the night before and failed catastrophically moments after takeoff. "
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Moments
Night
Earth
" The last 200 years, we've had an incredible amount of automation. We have tractors that do the work that horses and people used to do on farms. We don't dig ditches by hand anymore. We don't pound tools out of wrought iron. We don't do bookkeeping with books! But this has not, in net, reduced the amount of employment. "
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Automation
Tools
People
" 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. "
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Value
Education
Technology