This Axios headline is problematic: “Summers: Automation is the middle class’ worst enemy.”
The accompanying piece doesn’t actually quote economist Larry Summers making that declaration. Rather it summarizes an interview in which Summers indeed points out the challenge automation poses for workers. He’s right. Of course that’s been the case for the past 200 years and will likely be the case for the next 200. But in exchange for a degree of instability and disruption, technological progress has dramatically raised living standards for workers. Technicians build LEAP engines for jetliners at a new, highly automated General Electric (GE) factory in […]
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