Chrystia Freeland Quotes

I think Obama and the economists around him have a very sophisticated understanding of both globalization and the technology revolution and the impact they're having on the world economy and they way they're creating these winner-take-all spirals.

As skills and energy became more of a demand, people who didn't have skills just got left behind, got shuttled to the side. Education didn't keep up with their promise. Education didn't prepare them for this new world. Jobs went overseas.

Americans today are blaming globalization for change itself and the pace of change, much of which has little to do with globalization.

This is … a time when there is increasingly no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job — the thing that sustained the middle class in the last generation. Now there is only a high-wage, high-skilled job. Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being buried — made obsolete — faster than ever

We need to wake up to the fact that it is not immigrants who are causing economic dislocations. It is technology and an evolving economy that is pushing more and more Americans to the sidelines.

It is easy to underestimate in advance the impact of globalization and automation - I have done it myself.

Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class.

Good intentions can often lead to unintended consequences. It is hard to imagine a law intended for the workforce known to Henry Ford can serve the needs of a workplace shaped by the innovations of Bill Gates.

We are entering a new phase in human history - one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population.

A new era of production has begun. It's principles of organization are as different from those of the industrial era as those of the industrial era were different from the agricultural. The cybernation revolution has been brought about by the combination of the computer and the self-regulating machine. This results in a system of almost unlimited capacity which requires progressively less human labor. Cybernation is already reorganizing the economic and social system to meet its own needs .... As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated [to their work] governmental measures—unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments.

This rise of the new global mega-rich is happening as established institutions are falling. The fall runs the gamut from the music business and traditional media to the Detroit automakers who find themselves obsolete, outmaneuvered, and out-priced by entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Mumbai, Shanghai, and even Siberia.

The economic reality is that, thanks to smart machines and global trade, the well-paying, middle-class jobs that were the backbone of Western democracies are vanishing.

While the digital transformation of industries will be profound, we must keep in mind that it will have wider economic and social impact, too, as with previous revolutions driven by steam and coal, electricity and computers.

What is happening with automation and globalization, that's not going away.

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.

What we can say with confidence is that the technological revolution is worsening inequality, due mostly to mechanisms that limit free markets. It is also bringing about disruptive change that is intensifying insecurity and may indeed lead to large-scale labor displacement.

One thing I want to do is get Silicon Valley to think harder about those who have been left behind by the technology revolution. It has created huge winners for those who are able to understand it and are adept at it. But it has also displaced a tremendous number of jobs.

The progressive integration of new technologies in our economy amounts to a paradigm shift with a profound impact on the context and content of work.

The structural changes of globalization and automation that has created concentrated wealth among some people who have had the right skills and the right opportunities has also created extraordinary disruption and havoc among the American middle-class.

You’re going to have some very amazing capabilities in the economy. When we have computers that can do more and more jobs, it’s going to change how we think about work. There’s no way around that. You can’t wish it away.

In many cases, jobs that used to be done by people are going to be able to be done through automation. I don't have an answer to that. That's one of the more perplexing problems of society.

I see three forces militating in favor of growing inequality: increasing measurement of worker value added, automation through smart software, and globalization.

The world is poised on the cusp of an economic and cultural shift as dramatic as that of the Industrial Revolution.

The bottom line is there are lots of problems that were not created by government. The biggest one is loss of middle class incomes, loss of good-paying jobs which was created by technology and globalization. Above all, when you can move a job to China or India, it reduces wages.

I just think we're living in a time of massive, amazing change, like the Industrial Revolution on acid.