David Autor Quotes

Technological 'revolutions' don't really overthrow anything - they simply append a new and dynamic market to that which went before.

People tend to overestimate the short-term impact of technological change. In the short-term, it's not going to make that much of a difference.

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

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road.

Leaders in China and India realize that science and technology lead to success and wealth. But many countries in the West graduate students into the unemployment line by teaching skills that were necessary to live in 1950.

If you and your skills are a complement to the computer, your wage and labor market prospects are likely to be cheery. If your skills do not complement the computer, you may want to address that mismatch. Ever more people are starting to fall on one side of the divide or the other. That's why 'average is over.'

. As labor becomes a less important factor in production as compared to owning intellectual capital, a majority of citizens may find the value of their labor insufficient to pay for a socially acceptable standard of living. These changes will require a political, rather than a purely economic, response concerning what kind of social safety nets should be in place to protect people from large, structural shifts in the economy. Absent mitigating policies, the beneficiaries of these shifts may be a small group at the upper stratum of the society

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.

All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations

Every technological revolution takes about 50 years.

Automation has emerged as a bigger threat to American jobs than globalization or immigration combined.

We adapt to technological progress by raising our minimum standards of living and working to stay above this rising threshold.

Does the entry of Indian H-1B worker augur a change in the relations of production in the world of cybertechnology? No, but the presence of such workers - their skills and their histories - introduce contradictions into the system that are not always easily absorbed or dissolved.

We needed overtime laws, we needed unionization, we needed to figure out how to distribute the Industrial Revolution's gains with equity, and we're going through something similar with the technology revolution.

A visionary leadership is required to harness rapid technological change for positive benefit rather than allowing to become disruptive and further exacerbate economic inequality.

The impact of technology on labor has become clearer and clearer by the day.

I don't think that artificial intelligence means doomsday, and I think many new jobs will be created, too. However, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that these new types of jobs will favor low-income demographics. We need to address the needs of those who will be left out of the new job market.

It's hard to know what's going to be replaced by technology tomorrow. It feels like we're all at risk. I feel only safe as an emeritus professor!

With any previous transition we made with technology, it hasn't been the case that we need less people.

Publishing isn't a job anymore. It's a button.

A man who tries to make the workmen believe that their employers are their natural enemies is indeed the worst enemy of workmen. For the employees of yesterday are the employers of today, and the employees of today can and will partly be the employers of tomorrow.

But if the 1 percent and the 0.1 percent are respected and allowed to risk their wealth - and new rebels are allowed to rise up and challenge them - America will continue to be the land where the last regularly become the first by serving others.

Technology giveth and technology taketh away.

It may at first appear strange, but I believe it is true, that I cannot by means of money raise a poor man and enable him to live much better than he did before, without proportionably depressing others in the same class.

I'm a great believer in particularly being alert to changes that change something, anything, by an order of magnitude, and nothing operates with the factors of 10 as profoundly as the Internet.