Nobody will every be able to prove anything either way, but here are a couple of things which may well be complete misconceptions:
From the BBC:
Wage growth slows despite jobless fall
UK wages rose more slowly in the three months to May, despite a further fall in unemployment, official figures show.
Wage growth slipped to 2.7% from 2.8% in the three months to May, while unemployment fell by 12,000 to 1.41 million, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
We've done this before, it's a mathematical thing - the 'new'jobs tend to be lower paying than existing ones, thus dragging down the overall average increase.
Also from the BBC:
AI will create as many jobs as it displaces - report
Opinion is split over AI's potential impact, with some warning it could leave many out of work in future.
The pessimists argue AI is different to previous forms of technological change, because robots and algorithms will be able to do intellectual as well as routine physical tasks.
AKA 'it's different this time'. No it's not. Nearly all human labour is and always has been to some extent 'intellectual', so machines have always, to some extent, taken over 'intellectual' jobs.
Like using weather forecasts and the calendar to decide when to sow and harvest instead of relying on oral traditions and rules of thumb; like doctors using thermometers and X-ray machines; or like drivers using a sat nav instead of a paper map and road signs.
... John Hawksworth, chief economist at PwC, said:
"Major new technologies, from steam engines to computers, displace some existing jobs but also generate large productivity gains. This reduces prices and increases real income and spending levels, which in turn creates demand for additional workers.
"Our analysis suggests the same will be true of AI, robots and related technologies, but the distribution of jobs across sectors will shift considerably in the process."
PwC said about seven million existing jobs could be displaced by AI from 2017-2037, but about 7.2 million could be created, giving the UK a small net jobs boost of around 200,000.
Their figures are meaningless, but his point stands. In the short term, all this 'progress' is a pretty bad thing from the point of view of those who lose their jobs or whose businesses grind to a halt; in the long term, it's all good and seems to cancel out.
Tuesday, 17 July 2018
Economic Myths: innovation, employment and wages
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8 comments:
An early programmable manufacturing machine was the Jacquard loom 1804.
D, for example.
"Major new technologies, from steam engines to computers, displace some existing jobs but also generate large productivity gains. This reduces prices and increases real income and spending levels, which in turn creates demand for additional workers. But. As I read that he still thinks 'spending' drives growth....
L, let's not bicker, 'spending' is just short hand for demand, which is limited only by productive capacity.
If this AI talk isn't massively over hyped shouldn't we be seeing at least some increases in productivity rather than the 1 and a bit percent we had over the last three years? Without such productivity increases we won't be getting richer in aggregate.
PC, excellent point!
P156 Yes!
MW Agreed. But his statement is muddled.
p156c, I read a persuasive article saying that one of the reasons that productivity is so low is that the method of measuring it, like most things to do with the goverment's interaction with industry, hasn't really moved on from the "big employer employing a large labour force to do much physical work" model. Thus there is a huge amount of "stuff" produced, mainly intangible tech stuff, that isn't counted as "production" for the purposes of calculating productivity.
Also, ISTR on this blog, I think it was Mark pointing out that unemployed people don't form part of the productivity statistics, because they are not producing anything, so that id you have two workers, one unemployed and doing nothing, and the other working full time, you get much higher "productivity" than if you have both workers working part time. Lies, damned lies and statistics?
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