Crémieux Profile picture
Oct 27, 2024 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
What does labor-saving technology do to workers? Does it make them poor? Does it take away their jobs?

Let's review!

First: Most papers do support the idea that technology takes people's jobs.Image
This needs qualified.

Most types of job-relevant technology do take jobs, but innovation is largely excepted, because, well, introducing a new innovation tends to, instead, give employers money they can use to hire people. Image
But if technology takes jobs, why do we still have jobs?

Simple: Because through stimulating production and demand, it also reinstates laborers!

This is supported by the overwhelming majority of studies:Image
This reinstatement effect is largely consistent across types of technology, with innovations still looking a bit odd.

That is the weirdest category of technology besides "other", so roll with it. Image
Now the operative question is, if workers lose their jobs and end up reinstated in other jobs, what happens to their incomes?

Well, technology introduction tends to boost incomes!Image
Across types of tech, this result is pretty consistent: studies agree, technology makes us richer! Image
But, you might ask, whose income is boosted? Because if reinstatement affects far smaller numbers of workers than replacement, some people might still be getting shafted.

Well, the net employment effects of technology are highly ambiguous:Image
If we look across types of technology the picture I mentioned above for innovation-style technology shows up again: many studies suggest it's good for employment. Image
The reason impacts on net employment are so ambiguous is because they really have to be qualified.

For example, in general, when robots cause manufacturing employment to fall, there's a compensatory effect on service-sector employment that's at least as large in magnitude: Image
What makes that impact so interesting is another way it's qualified: It's smaller in industries more at-risk of offshoring.

In other words, industrial robots save American jobs from going overseas.Image
Industrial robots also contribute directly to reshoring. In other words, when Americans buy robots to do their manufacturing, Mexicans lose their jobs.

The welfare impact for domestic workers is positive. Not so for Mexicans, but that's just how things go. Image
Overall, labor-saving technology is clearly good, and the longer we delay adopting it, the poorer we will be relative to the world in which we picked it up immediately.

Want to know more? Check out my latest article: cremieux.xyz/p/workers-for-…

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More from @cremieuxrecueil

Oct 22
The story of peanut allergy is entering its final chapter.

Nowadays, we are beating back both peanut and other food allergies, and all it took was telling parents the right thing to do🧵 Image
The story begins in 2000, when the American Academy of Pediatrics decided to issue some simple advice to parents: Have your kids avoid peanuts early in life. Don't expose them until they're at least three!Image
Parents complied. It turns out, they do that. They just follow advice from professional associations that appear to have authority.

So peanut allergy rates rose, from 0.4% in 1997 to 1.4% in 2008, to 2% in 2015.

But if the advice was right, the opposite should've happened!
Read 13 tweets
Oct 21
The CEOs managing Sweden's biggest companies tend to be smarter, taller, and to have better personalities. Image
The highest-paid CEOs in Sweden also tend to be taller, smarter, and to have better personalities. Image
To connect these things, CEO pay and firm size are considerably connected. Image
Read 4 tweets
Oct 21
Individuals with higher genetically predicted intelligence tend to end up working more prestigious jobs. Image
They tend to be more emotionally stable, healthier, satisfied with life, richer, and educated too. Image
Additionally, they tend to be happier and to have fewer psychiatric problems.

They're more likely to be go-getters! Image
Read 4 tweets
Oct 19
Boobtech is amazing.

It's an area that the rest of medicine could look to as an example.

The professionals making bigger, more realistic breast implants are simultaneously improving affordability, safety, and quality at a rapid rate🧵 Image
Consider one of the most recent improvements in boobtech: the Mia.

The Mia is the first successful "injectable" breast implant.

It cuts down scarring, complications, surgery time and cost, and it looks and feels more realistic than earlier implants. Image
The Mia is installed with a small armpit incision about 2 centimeters in length.

This is a significant reduction from earlier generations, which were regularly closer to 7 centimeters, or almost 3 inches. Image
Read 15 tweets
Oct 18
This should be considered *far* more alarming than the polls about political violence.

Two-thirds positive views towards an evil ideology that has killed tens of millions and cannot work is *very* bad. Image
It doesn't really matter if, at the end of the day, they're actually tepid towards socialism. This is like 66% of people saying Hitler was OK.

Source: news.gallup.com/poll/694835/im…

And an article qualifying how we understand support for political violence: cremieux.xyz/p/lets-not-ove…
I get too many dumb comments.

The dumb comment for this post is going to be something along the lines of 'But they're thinking about [successful place] not [bad place]!'

Ten points if you realize why that is not a meaningful reply.
Read 9 tweets
Oct 17
This is not true and there has never been a reason to believe it.

When we do have raw data for anywhere, we see that there's consistent scoring over time, not massive intelligence gains.

If we do not take measurement invariance seriously, we will be seriously misled. Image
I actually think it is exactly Noah's sort of post that helps to keep the culture of scientific fraud in academia and elsewhere alive.

Noah is smart enough and has been told enough to know better, and he still wrote something that he can't support.

But it's a popular message.
The message is just empirically wrong.

Will we ever move beyond the Cargo Cult version of the Flynn Effect that people like Noah, knowingly or otherwise, are wont to promote?

I don't think we will!

To learn more, see:
Read 5 tweets

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