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" 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. "

David Autor

Automation

Tools

People

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

Work

Why

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

" There was a great sag in employment beginning in 2000. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Trade may raise GDP. But it does make some people worse off. "

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

" Workers are basically supervisors of machines. "