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" 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. "

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" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Workers are basically supervisors of machines. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "