Story Summary

Since the dawn of the industrial age, a recurrent fear has been that technological change will spawn mass unemployment. However, neoclassical economists disagreed, predicting that this would not happen because people would find other jobs, albeit possibly after a long period of painful adjustment.

Two hundred years of breathtaking innovation since the dawn of the industrial age have produced rising living standards for ordinary people in much of the world, with no sharply rising trend for unemployment.

On balance, however, throughout much of the world, people live longer, work much fewer hours, and lead generally healthier lives.

A peculiar but perhaps instructive example comes from the world of professional chess. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, many feared that players would become obsolete if and when computers could play chess better than humans.

Of course, this time technological change could be different, and one should be careful in extrapolating the experience of the last two centuries to the next two.

Still, even as technological change accelerates, nothing suggests that a massive upward shift in unemployment will ensue over the next few decades.

Read more: http://dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2012/Oct-13/191233-new-technologies-are-usually-not-a-reason-for-mass-unemployment.ashx#ixzz29DHoWr1Y
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)