Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Chapter Eight is called "The Usual Objections." I presume these are answers to the objections people generally raise to his arguments. In turn:

Q: Aren't fears of disappearing jobs common during times of technological change, as during the agricultural and technological revolution, and hasn't time always proven these fears wrong?

A: This time is different. The technology is orders of magnitude more revolutionary. "The speed, breadth, impact, and nature of the changes are considerably more dramatic than anything that has come before."

He quotes Ben Bernanke, who said in 2017 that "AI is qualitatively different from an internal combustion engine." 58 % of cross-sector experts polled by Bloomberg agree with the statement, "It's different this time."

Economists, he says, in particular seem predisposed to believe all will be well, nothing that we've always heard these fears; new jobs have always appeared.

"There is an almost magical embracing of ignorance cloaked in humility: 'It is unknowable what the new jobs will be. It is beyond human wisdom. I just know that they will be there."

"This, to my mind, is a disavowal of judgment and reality. History repeats itself until it doesn't."

There has never been a computer smarter than humans until now, he notes; and even if you rely solely on history, the adjustment period will be seriously ugly. (He's right.)

Q. Won't the labor market adjust? Won't people move on to other jobs?

A. No. Only if you're a great Silicon Valley programmer does the labor market work efficiently. If your factory that just got closed, there won't be job openings at other nearby factories.

Q. I get it that old jobs will disappear, but won't new ones take their place? (Didn't he just answer this?)

A. Sure. Self-driving cars will probably bring a need for new infrastructure and maybe some construction jobs.

The problem is that the new ones won't be where the old ones are and they'll be less numerous than the ones that disappear. And they'll require more education than the displaced workers have.

So we'll have 200 new robot supervisors in California and 50 new web designers in Seattle--meanwhile, there will be 50,000 unemployed retail employees who won't have jobs where they live.

We'll trade, in effect, 100 high-school grads for 5-10 college grads elsewhere. The millions of jobs we're losing are not going to be replaced by millions of new jobs for middle-aged people with low skills and little education.

The closest thing to a growth opportunity in unskilled labor is being a home health care aide. "Former truck drivers will not be excited to bathe grandma."

"If home health care aide is our answer to the future of jobs, we're in deep trouble."

Q. The government should give these workers education and training to transition to new jobs.

A. (I paraphrase): You're not getting it are you, these people aren't so bright.

Besides, these government-funded skill retraining programs just create a bunch of scamming cheap schools. They don't work.

Nope, forget that.

Q: If jobs are already vanishing, wouldn't it be showing up in the unemployment rate?

A. No, because that doesn't measure what you think it does. (He's right.)

The rate=people in the labor force who are looking but unable to find a job. It doesn't include people who just drop out of the workforce.

If you stop looking for a job, you're no longer considered "unemployed."

And the unemployment rate doesn't reflect the underemployment rate. In fact, the number of workforce dropouts is at a multi-decade high; 37 percent of adults are out of the workforce. In 2000, 70 million were out of the workforce; now it's 95 million.

Q. "If we were undergoing a technological revolution, wouldn't we see increased productivity?"

A. Productivity indicators are backward-looking; we'll only see the change when the self-driving cars are on the road.

It's possible the low productivity rates reflect the overabundance of labor looking for things to do. And technically we're still in an expansion; employers save the toughest decisions for when things get hard.

The test will come in the next downturn: that's when everyone who still has a job will be replaced by a robot. In fact, you'll probably be fired by a new AI cost-cutting tool.

"We're the frog and the grill is being pre-heated."

End of chapter, end of Part I, and depressingly persuasive.