12/22/18

Long-Term Economic Question 3
Turning AI Jobs Into U.S. Hartland Jobs?

  1. Will Inflation/Growth Tame the Deficit   
2. Will Debt End U.S. Capitalism?
4. Dollar Privilege Continuation
5. Disposition of Illegal Immigrants

Free Book of the Semester   Great Recession: Historical Perspective

Great Transformation
Time Horizon
2020 Onward is a Long Time

From Rust Belt to Robot Belt: Turning AI Into Jobs in the US Heartland

"The naïve view among macroeconomists for several decades has been that technology will always create jobs,” says Acemoglu. “The alarmists’ is that this time is different and it will destroy jobs. The truth is it’s capable of doing both.” Though in the past the economic benefits from new technologies have always been enough to create more jobs than were lost, he says, “lately, for a variety of reasons, there has been a much more job-destroying face to technology."

Educated Immigrants
Bigger Problem?
Increased Supply of Best Workers
Hurts US Best Workers

Reinventing Pittsburgh

• "Mayor William Peduto, a Democrat elected in 2013,
• has been at the center of the city’s high-tech reincarnation.
•  We asked how it’s going. On the best use of new technologies:
• “What good is it if we develop autonomous vehicles that only
• create more  congestion on our streets? That deny people
• mobility unless they have a  Smartphone or credit card?  
• Are we really creating a better society?
• And if we aren’t, why are we investing in  it?”

“ Our neighbors throughout the Rust Belt are still going through a recession. They’re still not seeing any part of the new economy directly connecting to them. One of the reasons that President Trump did so well is that he offered them a false narrative of bringing back the mills and bringing back the mines. As Democrats we offered them no hope. Saying to someone who has generations’ worth of making and building things that you’re going to be retrained as a coder is an insult.”

On new jobs:
 “We don’t want to create a society based
on PhDs; we want to include GEDs."

On the city’s progress:"
We're right at the beginning. We’re at the beginning of the next phase of Pittsburgh. Those who lived through the ’80s and ’90s will tell you these are the best days. We went through those decades exporting people like we used to export steel. It has been a slow death of a former economy, but from it has come a new, more diverse economy. So it’s at the beginning phases.”

On lessons
for executives
in Silicon Valley:

" What I reminded them is that we were you before Silicon Valley existed. We were where the great wealth was and where all the jobs were being created 100 years ago. And we created air that was dangerous to breathe, water that was poisonous to drink, and the greatest disparity between the haves and the have-nots in American history. Learn from us.”