Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

The introduction of machinery is turning into idleness thousands, faster than new industries are founded

The root of the worker’s resistance to technological change is the conflict between labor as a commodity and labor as a resource. Increased productivity imposes upon the worker a risk of obsolescence.

The great question, however, for the poor man is, or shortly will be, that of escape from competition with labor-saving machinery

Trade is not the cause for unemployment. In fact, the biggest drivers for unemployment are innovation and increased productivity. It has nothing to do with trade.

I'm an entrepreneur trying to let the American people know that it's not immigrants that are causing economic problems, it is the fact that our economy is advancing in ways that is making human labor less and less essential.

Modern ingenuity has made it possible for a child to run some of the machines and the child will get the job while the men must tramp.

Massive increases in productivity due to the happy marriage if information technology and advanced manufacturing techniques are having a chilling, unprecedented effect on job creations.

Technology is a wonderful thing if you are putting it to use, less so if it is putting an end to your usefulness.

Most of the jobs that are going from the United States are not going to other countries; they are going to machines.

I think what we have to do is figure out how to make sure we get the benefits of improved technology and yet cope with the dislocation that it will inevitably produce in certain industries.

The bottom line is that while automation is eliminating many jobs in the economy that were once done by people, there is no sign that the introduction of technologies in recent years is creating an equal number of well-paying jobs to compensate for those losses.

There is a fear of innovation because people are afraid of job loss.

No one has ever been able to stop the process and evolution of technology, not even I.B.M. That is going to continue. Those who grab it and move ahead with it will determine the future in this industry.

I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

Efficiency innovations are a natural part of the economic cycle, but these are the innovations that streamline process and actually reduce the number of available jobs.

Name anything - high-definition TV, computer obsolescence - and I'm pretty much annoyed by it.

We humans have a love-hate relationship with our technology. We love each new advance and we hate how fast our world is changing... The robots really embody that love-hate relationship we have with technology.

The Negro is trying to enter a social community and a tradition of work-and-income which are in the process of vanishing even for the hitherto privileged white worker Jobs are disappearing under the impact of highly efficient, progressively less costly machines.

Only in a minority of cases will workmen be able to recognize the technological change responsible for their dismissal. For this it would be necessary that machines be introduced in an existent plant under the eyes of the workmen and that dismissal be effected immediately after.

Even before the [2008] recession, corporations were able to enhance profitability by taking advantage of using technology to perform or supplement the work of human beings. This was, on the whole, a manageable situation. Workers who were replaced by the technology were adapting by learning how to work with the technology; jobs in technology opened up to balance the jobs lost. The current situation is far different. During the recession, companies learned how to maintain production and profits with fewer employees. They assigned existing workers to take on tasks performed by those who were laid off, they converted full-time jobs to part-time jobs (which carried little or no expense to the company for employee benefits), and they outsourced.

Suppose, … that the making of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpet makers, thrown on the streets?

Think back to the time when Agriculture was not labor efficient. We have lost all these jobs. But I don't think anyone is too sad about it.

Automation is going to cause unemployment, and we need to prepare for it.

Technology's always taken jobs out of the system, and what you hope is that technology's going to put those jobs back in, too. That's what we call productivity.

This is an anxiety driven world - the whole world is driven by anxiety. It is anxiety about the aftermath of the global financial crisis; it's anxiety about inequality and about computers replacing jobs.