Recent quotes:

Morning Must-Read: Carter Price: Is a Line of Code More Like a Factory or a Painting? - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

If we believe that once code is written, it is good forever (maybe with a few tweaks or upgrades over time), then the stock of code would grow rapidly. If that stock of code is a substitute for future code, then demand for high-tech workers would decrease over time… push down wages not just for high-tech workers but also for other workers…. But… what if it is more like art?
#Economic-Growth #Information-Economy #Carter-Price #Technological-Change - equitablegrowth.org

Over at Project Syndicate: Making Do with More - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

If we as a species can avoid nuclear war; curb those among us who are violent because they are God-maddened, state-maddened, or ethnicity-maddened; properly coordinate global action to reduce global warming from its current intolerable projected path to a tolerable one, adapt to the global warming that occurs, and distribute paying for the costs of that adaptation–well, if we can do all of those things, the human race can have a very bright future indeed.
#Economic-Growth #Information-Economy #Project-Syndicate #Economic-Inequality - equitablegrowth.org

Weekend Reading: Mike Konczal: Everyone Should Take It Easy on the Robot Stuff for a While (Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality...)

Mike Konczal: Everyone Should Take It Easy on the Robot Stuff for a While There's been a small, but influential... ...hysteria surrounding the idea is that a huge wave of automation, technology and skills have lead to a huge structural change in the economy since 2010. The implicit argument here is that robots and machines have both made traditional demand-side policies irrelevant or naïve, and been a major driver of wage stagnation and inequality.
#Information-Economy #Rise-of-the-Robots #Inequality #Mike-Konczal - bradford-delong.com

Lunchtime Must-Read: Mike Konczal: Everyone Should Take It Easy on the Robot Stuff for a While - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Mike Konczal: Everyone Should Take It Easy on the Robot Stuff for a While There’s been a small, but influential hysteria… …surrounding the idea is that a huge wave of automation, technology and skills have lead to a huge structural change in the economy since 2010. The implicit argument here is that robots and machines have both made traditional demand-side policies irrelevant or naïve, and been a major driver of wage stagnation and inequality. Though not the most pernicious story that gained prominence as the recovery remained sluggish in 2010 to 2011, it gained important foothold among elite discussion…
#Information-Economy #Rise-of-the-Robots #Mike-Konczal - equitablegrowth.org

Evening Must-Read: The Hamilton Project: Future of Work Event: Tweets - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

The Hamilton Project (@hamiltonproj) | Twitter: You can watch the full #FutureOfWork forum on @cspan http://cs.pn/1z3WKBP That concludes our #FutureOfWork event.Thanks to our panelists for a great discussion. Visit http://bit.ly/1BZmC4U for video & audio Who is going to be technologically displaced if machines take away labor jobs? That’s a social problem, concludes @LauraDTyson #FutureOfWork ‘US has great incentives to do #research, but weak incentives to create #jobs and keep profits here’ – @LauraDTyson #labor #FutureOfWork Given nature of tech changes, a lot is not going to measurable unless you figure what the output is, @LauraDTyson asks panel #FutureOfWork
#Information-Economy #Rise-of-the-Robots #Income-Inequality #Hamilton-Project - equitablegrowth.org

Evening Must-Read: The Recent Rise and Fall of Rapid Productivity Growth - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

John Fernald and Bing Wang: The Recent Rise and Fall of Rapid Productivity Growth: “Information technology fueled a surge in U.S. productivity growth… …in the late 1990s and early 2000s…. The exceptional pace of productivity growth has disappeared, returning to roughly its pre-1995 pace…. The important factor after 2003 is slower growth in innovation…. Fernald (2014a)… finds that the slowdown was in sectors that produce IT or use IT intensively….One slice of the data focuses on the “bubble” industries of the mid-2000s, that is, construction, real estate, finance, and natural resource[s]…. The contribution of bubble industries to overall TFP fell–becoming more negative–between the 2000–04 and 2004–07 periods. But the contribution of the remaining three-quarters of the economy fell even more…. The non-bubble industries are divided into three mutually exclusive groups: IT producers, intensive IT-users, and other industries that do not use IT intensively…. The TFP slowdown is concentrated in industries that produce IT or that use IT intensively…. Three out of the past four decades have seen business-sector productivity growth near 1½%. We could well see future growth in that range. Of course, such a forecast would completely discount the fast growth of 1995 to 2003…. Pessimists argue that IT is less important than great innovations of the past that dramatically boosted productivity, such as electricity or the internal combustion engine. Optimists point to the possibilities offered by robots and machine learning…
#Information-Economy #John-Fernald #Bing-Wang #Productivity-Growth - equitablegrowth.org