Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" There is no question we are in an era of people asking, 'Is the Robocalypse upon us? "
David Autor
Era
Asking
People
Related Quotes:
" Jobs can change a lot without there being huge changes in employment rates. "
David Autor
Changes
Without
Employment
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
David Autor
Opportunities
Successful
People
" History has suggested that the pessimists have been wrong time and time again. "
David Autor
Time
Wrong
Again
" Labor is getting a shrinking slice of a pie that's not growing very much. "
David Autor
Pie
Much
Labor
" 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
" Work is really wrapped up with identity. Work is not just money for most people. "
David Autor
Work
People
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. "
David Autor
Automation
Tools
People
" 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
" More than any other issue, economists have kind of been boosters for trade. "
David Autor
Any
Kind
Economists
" Workers and jobs are naturally heterogeneous, and the quality of their interaction when paired is difficult to forecast. "
David Autor
Workers
Difficult
Quality
" 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
" 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
" 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
" There's always new work to do. Adjusting to the rapid pace of technological change creates real challenges, seen most clearly in our polarized labor market and the threat that it poses to economic mobility. Rising to this challenge is not automatic. It's not costless. It's not easy. But it is feasible. "
David Autor
Challenge
Change
Work
" 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
" There was a great sag in employment beginning in 2000. "
David Autor
Employment
Great
Beginning
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Trade may raise GDP. But it does make some people worse off. "
David Autor
Worse
Off
People
" 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
" 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. "
David Autor
Moments
Night
Earth
" 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
" We have too few college graduates. We also have too few people who are prepared for college. "
David Autor
Who
Prepared
People