Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I think we labor economists like to think of ourselves as being closer to the people. "

Related Quotes:

" More than any other issue, economists have kind of been boosters for trade. "

" The Internet promises to open new channels for worker-firm communications. What are the consequences of this opening? "

" Tax reform done right will improve incentives to invest in U.S. production and to repatriate profits. "

" 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. "

" I work a lot on skill demands and changes in labor markets having to do with technology and with trade as well. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

" There is no question we are in an era of people asking, 'Is the Robocalypse upon us? "

" I had never taken any economics. I literally didn't know what it was. I thought it was just about the study of money. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Work is really wrapped up with identity. Work is not just money for most people. "

" 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. "

" Jobs can change a lot without there being huge changes in employment rates. "

" I'm a professor of economics and associate head of the MIT Department of Economics. "

" 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. "

" Computers were programmed to swap out error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Markets are, in many settings, self-organizing and 'efficient' in terms of maximizing the welfare of both buyers and sellers. "

" History has suggested that the pessimists have been wrong time and time again. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Labor is getting a shrinking slice of a pie that's not growing very much. "

" We have too few college graduates. We also have too few people who are prepared for college. "

" The fact that a task cannot be computerized does not imply that computerization has no effect on that task. On the contrary, tasks that cannot be substituted by computerization are generally complemented by it. This point is as fundamental as it is overlooked. "