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I read the whole thing. It’s not so much that Yang is wrong but that the automation-is-taking-all-the-jobs mantra is incomplete and that outsourcing to places l

I read the whole thing. It’s not so much that Yang is wrong but that the automation-is-taking-all-the-jobs mantra is incomplete and that outsourcing to places like China is a substantial part of it. From what I can tell from Yang-like arguments outsourcing could be seen as a form of automation. The general idea is that companies are incentivized to reduce labor costs so whether it’s outsourcing or automation the end result is the same. Presumably if we restrict outsourcing then just more investment into automation will take place. It’s inevitable.

awinder 7y ago
The most charitable way of looking at this is that yang wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t right either. He made explicit claims like “this isn’t a rules problem” in response to trade policy; actually, there’s a lot of evidence that there _is_ a trade policy problem.
zanny 7y ago
This is also the corporatists argument for a high minimum wage - the higher the cost of labor the more aggregate pressure to automate it away. And the more abrupt the upset the more likely the necessary cultural shift occurs. The alternative, generational slow burn automation, would just perpetuate the current state of affairs - new generations being poorer than their parents gradually till the two classes - capital and labor - have totally diverged into post scarcity luxury and destitute helpless permanent poverty.