70
votes
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
This is an interesting question a lot of good labour economists have been thinking about for a while. There are a few conflicting theories as to what will happen. You could base a whole career on this ...
- 3,761
46
votes
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
Automation has been happening for a couple of hundred years now and right now we're all still working pretty hard. Although a 40-hour working week is standard, many people exceed this, and many ...
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32
votes
Accepted
Does recycling lead to fewer jobs?
Any invention that replaces human labor puts an end to that specific task. Glass recycling eliminates (or decrease) the need for silica-gathering task. Typewriter eliminates the need for printing ...
- 2,784
27
votes
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
Your question relates to an important research topic on the link between automation and employment.
David Autor works on this issue and the topic "Inequality, Technological Change and Globalization". ...
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27
votes
Accepted
Why do wages not equalize across space?
There are several explanations for this in the literature (the order does not necessarily reflect importance of each explanation).
Different Price Levels: Non-trivial portion of the wage differential ...
- 54.4k
23
votes
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
Horses were replaced by cars. Clerks were replaced by word-processors and spreadsheets. We have adapted to the technology and changed how we work. Therein lies the answer. Consider if you will a ...
- 386
22
votes
Accepted
Why are real median household incomes stagnant?
The metric of median household income is also used by others to argue the presence of income inequality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States#Causes
However, it seems ...
- 28.7k
21
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Why do wages not equalize across space?
I would add two more, and rather primitive, factors in @1muflon1 long list:
Labor input is not perfectly mobile with respect to the wage. We should never forget that the concept of a utility function ...
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19
votes
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
There are already excellent answers, but I would like to add in a different perspective:
There will be fewer people.
Not just jobs, but actual human beings - if there is less demand for human ...
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15
votes
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
EDIT / UPDATE 5th November 2016:
http://mashable.com/2016/11/05/elon-musk-universal-basic-income/
...
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15
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How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
I'm going to give a less economically rigorous answer, and address your concern about your own situation.
Jobs change. Your skillsets will always need to change. If you are young, it's a certainty ...
- 259
13
votes
What is the difference between contract theory and mechanism design?
Contracts are a subset of all mechanisms where agreements are enforcable.
An example of a mechanism that is not a contract:
A second price auction (or Vickrey auction) is a truth-telling mechanism ...
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11
votes
Accepted
Why is the percentage of Australian businesses that don't have any employees so high?
Employment excludes non-salaried directors, volunteers, persons paid by commission only, and self employed persons such as consultants and contractors.
The actively trading businesses with zero ...
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10
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How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
I am surprised none of the posts above discuss the following paper:
Autor, D., and M. Handel. "Putting Tasks to the Test: Human Capital." Job Tasks and Wages" Journal of Labor Economics (2009).
This ...
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9
votes
Accepted
Why has increased productivity over the last 100 years not affected how much people work?
Let's work such a very simple model. We have a Robinson Crusoe island economy, an isolated individual that lives totally alone. In order to consume something Crusoe must work. Assume for even more ...
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9
votes
What determines whether slavery is economically efficient in industrialized/modern era economies?
Necessary Caveats When Discussing Slavery:
First before tackling this question it is important to note that this issue is broad and complex. This is because there is no single 'slavery'. For example, ...
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9
votes
Field experiments on labour market discrimination: do sizes of randomly assigned groups matter?
No, this should not be a major issue. We will very carefully take into account the different sample sizes. Allow me to continue your example:
Assume "Resume A" is the the treatment resume ...
- 3,467
8
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How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
The way I see it, there are two possible futures given the increasing state of automation in the world.
Future One: A Basic Income
We decide as a nation, federal state, or world, that human beings ...
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8
votes
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
Intentionally unserious answer. Let's just take the individual's possible reactions to "having their job taken over by a machine" and scale them up to the macro level.
Find a job in another field. ...
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8
votes
Accepted
What keeps minimum wage rates in balance?
How is the minimum wage determined?
Yes and no. It is a political choice, but with economic reasoning. In the end, that's the case for every economic rule, maybe with the exception of monetary rules, ...
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8
votes
Term for fraction of economic value earned?
You seem to be looking for the phrase 'wage share' or 'share of labour compensation'.
Wage share:
The wage share (or labor share) is the ratio between compensation of employees (according to the ...
- 28.7k
8
votes
Minimum Wage effects on Adjacent Cities
A very famous study in this direction is Card and Krueger (1994).
They look an increase in the minimum wage in New Jersey in 1992. While New Jersey raised the minimum wage from USD 4.25/h to USD 5.05/...
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8
votes
Analyzing Farm Bureau's claim that milk prices would double at the retail level if all the illegals were deported
It is worth noting that OP's original question before I edited it asked, "why would economists lie to us?" This already leaves a poor taste in my mouth; such a question is loaded enough as it is, only ...
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8
votes
How did we arrive to 40 hr work week?
The 40-week comes started with the movement of the 8h working day. The wikipedia article makes a quick summary of the historical progress of thinking from 12h work days in Britain during the ...
- 2,145
8
votes
Lack of skilled IT workforce, but they do not raise wages
The factual observations you've listed fit neatly with the law of supply. You've seen that wages (price) have fallen, and during the same period, supply has gone down.
The fact that companies ...
- 1,346
7
votes
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
In Progress and Poverty, Henry George claims that the advancement of technology eventually leads to increasing the land value and the land rent. This means that people who own land will have a high ...
- 3,033
7
votes
What is the difference between contract theory and mechanism design?
As the previous answer mentions Contract Theory is a subset of Mechanism Design.
Contract Theory is the study of Mechanism Design restricted to a single agent, i.e how to incentivize a single agent ...
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7
votes
What is feminist economics?
Feminist Economics is a broad field covering, broadly, how gender relates to the trade-offs involved in circumstances of scarcity.
Economics as a field was dominated by men for a long time. As a ...
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7
votes
Field experiments on labour market discrimination: do sizes of randomly assigned groups matter?
They generally measure the probability of getting an interview, not the number of interviews, so that that the number of applications is normalized out. For example, consider Are Emily and Greg More ...
- 16.3k
7
votes
Accepted
Deriving aggregate output from labor demand and supply
Use $W_{i}=V \cdot \frac{P_{i}^{\beta}}{Z_{i}}=VQ_i$, then $$L_{i}=\left(\frac{\alpha^{1-\eta} \eta^{\eta}}{R^{\eta}} \cdot \frac{A_{i}}{(V_{i} Q_{i})^{1-\eta}}\right)^{\frac{1}{1-\alpha-\eta}} \cdot ...
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