Re:The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
by oli5679 on Friday August 12, 2016 @05:32PM
(#12278955)
1) 'Quantity demanded' would have been more precise (and more verbose) than 'demand' but you tell exactly the story I was attempting to.
2) I was critiquing the claim that 'automation reduces efficiency', not the claim that there could be distributional issues. You are attacking a straw-man.
"This was no-doubt harmful for many specific farm labourers"
Er, no.
A fall in non-skilled wages does not lead to an increase in demand for non-skilled labor output. It leads to an increase in supply of non-skilled labor output. This, under usual conditions, leads to some combination of decreased market clearing price and increased market clearing quantity of those goods.
> In 1850, 60%+ of the American labour force were farmers and over the next 100 years their jobs were automated out of existence by range of more efficient 'robots'. This was no-doubt harmful for many specific farm labourers, but didn't 'screw over the economy'.
Since the 1850s, quite a lot of social support mechanisms have been adopted within the US economy, largely to deal with problems encountered during the process of industrialization, including the displacement of traditional labor (including farm labor).
The idea that further disruptions of that kind might need improved corrective measures when the cracks in the compensatory mechanisms are already visible is hardly outrageous.