Time to Address the Rise of the Machines
Posted at 10:15 a.m. on Feb. 4
The most influential and least understood economic trend during President Obama’s first term is the “rise of robots” in the US economy, according to Edward Luce.
“In January the US economy added just 4,000 manufacturing jobs, and the net increase since July is zero. Yet last month, manufacturing activity rose by its fastest rate since April… The difference boils down to robots, which pose an increasingly nagging paradox: the more there are, the better for overall growth (since they boost productivity); yet the worse things become for the middle class.”
“At some point, policy makers will be forced to grapple with what is intuitively obvious – that sustained growth is inconsistent with declining middle class incomes.”
