Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (44 page)

4
. John D. Pomfret, “Guaranteed Income Asked for All, Employed or Not,”
New York Times,
March 22, 1964. For other media coverage of the Triple Revolution report, see Brian Steensland,
The Failed Welfare Revolution: America’s Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 43–44.

5
. Norbert Wiener’s article on automation is discussed and quoted extensively in John Markoff, “In 1949, He Imagined an Age of Robots,”
New York Times,
May 20, 2013.

6
. From a letter to Robert Weide dated January 12, 1983, cited in Dan Wakefield, ed.,
Kurt Vonnegut Letters
(New York: Delacorte Press, 2012), p. 293.

7
. For the text of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Remarks Upon Signing Bill Creating the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress,” August 19, 1964, see Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26449
.

8
. The National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress reports can be found online at
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009143593
,
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007424268
, and
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2013/P3478.pdf
.

9
. For information on unemployment rates in the 1950s and ’60s, see “A Brief History of US Unemployment” at the
Washington Post
website,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/us-unemployment-rate-history/
.

10
. For a vivid description of the design and operation of the first digital computers and the teams that built them, see George Dyson,
Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
(New York: Vintage, 2012).

11
. For a listing of the average wages for production or nonsupervisory workers, see Table B-47 in
The Economic Report of the President, 2013,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/erp2013/full_2013_economic_report_of_the_president.pdf
. As noted in the Introduction, the table shows peak weekly wages of about $341 in 1973 and $295 in December 2012, measured in 1984 dollars. I have adjusted these to 2013 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator at
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
.

12
. On median household incomes versus per capita GDP, see Tyler Cowen,
The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better
(New York: Dutton, 2011), p. 15, and Lane Kenworthy, “Slow Income Growth for Middle America,” September 3, 2008,
http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/09/03/slow-income-growth-for-middle-america/
. I have adjusted the figures to reflect 2013 dollars.

13
. Lawrence Mishel, “The Wedges Between Productivity and Median Compensation Growth,” Economic Policy Institute, April 26, 2012,
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-compensation/
.

14
. “The Compensation-Productivity Gap,” US Bureau of Labor Statistics website, February 24, 2011,
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2011/ted_20110224.htm
.

15
. John B. Taylor and Akila Weerapana,
Principles of Economics
(Mason, OH: Cengage Learning, 2012), p. 344. In particular, see the bar chart and commentary in the left margin. Taylor is a very highly regarded economist, known especially for the “Taylor Rule,” a monetary policy guideline used by central banks (including the Federal Reserve) to set interest rates.

16
. Robert H. Frank and Ben S. Bernanke,
Principles of Economics,
3rd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin, 2007), pp. 596–597.

17
. John Maynard Keynes, as quoted in David Hackett Fischer,
The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 294.

18
. Labor Share Graph, Data Source: FRED, Federal Reserve Economic Data, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: Nonfarm Business Sector: Labor Share, Index 2009=100, Seasonally Adjusted [PRS85006173]; US Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics;
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PRS85006173
; accessed April 29, 2014. The vertical scale is an index with 100 set to 2009. The labor share percentages shown on the graph (65% and 58%) were added for clarity. See also: Margaret Jacobson and Filippo Occhino, “Behind the Decline in Labor’s Share of Income,” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, February 3, 2012 (
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/trends/2012/0212/01gropro.cfm
).

19
. Scott Thurm, “For Big Companies, Life Is Good,”
Wall Street Journal,
April 9, 2012,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577331660464739018.html
.

20
. Ibid.

21
. Corporate Profits / GDP graph: Data Source: FRED, Federal Reserve Economic Data, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: Corporate Profits After Tax (without IVA and CCAdj), Billions of Dollars, Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate [CP]; Gross Domestic Product, Billions of Dollars, Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate [GDP];
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=CP
; accessed April 29, 2014.

22
. Loukas Karabarbounis and Brent Neiman, “The Global Decline of the Labor Share,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 19136, issued in June 2013,
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19136.pdf
; see also
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/loukas.karabarbounis/research/labor_share.pdf
.

23
. Ibid., p. 1.

24
. Ibid.

25
. Labor Force Participation Rate Graph, Data Source: FRED, Federal Reserve Economic Data, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate, Percent, Seasonally Adjusted [CIVPART];
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=CIVPART
; accessed April 29, 2014.

26
. Graphs showing the participation rates for men and women can be found at the Federal Reserve Economic Data website; see
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300001
and
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300002
, respectively.

27
. A graph of the labor force participation rate for adults twenty-five to fifty-four years of age can be found at
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=l6S
.

28
. On the greatly increased number of disability applications, see Willem Van Zandweghe, “Interpreting the Recent Decline in Labor Force Participation,”
Economic Review—First Quarter 2012,
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, p. 29,
http://www.kc.frb.org/publicat/econrev/pdf/12q1VanZandweghe.pdf
.

29
. Data Source: FRED, Federal Reserve Economic Data, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: All Employees: Total Nonfarm, Thousands of Persons, Seasonally Adjusted [PAYEMS]; US Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics;
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PAYEMS/
; accessed June 10, 2014.

30
. On the number of new jobs needed to keep up with population growth, see Catherine Rampell, “How Many Jobs Should We Be Adding Each Month?,”
New York Times
(Economix blog), May 6, 2011,
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/how-many-jobs-should-we-be-adding-each-month/
.

31
. Murat Tasci, “Are Jobless Recoveries the New Norm?,” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Research Commentary, March 22, 2010,
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/commentary/2010/2010–1.cfm
.

32
. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Chart Book: The Legacy of the Great Recession,” September 6, 2013,
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3252
.

33
. Data Source: FRED, Federal Reserve Economic Data, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: All Employees: Total Nonfarm, Thousands of Persons, Seasonally Adjusted [PAYEMS]; US Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics;
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PAYEMS/
; accessed June 10, 2014.

34
. Ghayad’s experiment is described in Mathew O’Brien, “The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment,”
The Atlantic,
April 13, 2013,
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-terrifying-reality-of-long-term-unemployment/274957/
.

35
. Regarding the Urban Institute report on long-term unemployment, see Mathew O’Brien, “Who Are the Long-Term Unemployed?,”
The Atlantic,
August 23, 2013,
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/who-are-the-long-term-unemployed/278964
, and Josh Mitchell, “Who Are the Long-Term Unemployed?,” Urban Institute, July 2013,
http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/412885-who-are-the-long-term-unemployed.pdf
.

36
. “The Gap Widens Again,”
The Economist,
March 10, 2012,
http://www.economist.com/node/21549944
.

37
. Emmanuel Saez, “Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States,” University of California, Berkeley, September 3, 2013,
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf
.

38
. CIA World Factbook, “Country Comparison: Distribution of Family Income: Gini Index,”
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html
; accessed April 29, 2014.

39
. Dan Ariely, “Americans Want to Live in a Much More Equal Country (They Just Don’t Realize It),”
The Atlantic,
August 2, 2012,
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/americans-want-to-live-in-a-much-more-equal-country-they-just-dont-realize-it/260639/
.

40
. Jonathan James, “The College Wage Premium,” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary, August 8, 2012,
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/commentary/2012/2012–10.cfm
.

41
. Diana G. Carew, “No Recovery for Young People” (Progressive Policy Institute blog), August 5, 2013,
http://www.progressivepolicy.org/2013/08/no-recovery-for-young-people/
.

42
. Nir Jaimovich and Henry E. Siu, “The Trend Is the Cycle: Job Polarization and Jobless Recoveries,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 18334, issued in August 2012,
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18334
, also available at
http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/hsiu/research/polar20120331.pdf
.

43
. See, for example, Ben Casselman, “Low Pay Clouds Job Growth,”
Wall Street Journal,
April 3, 2013,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324635904578643654030630378.html
.

44
. This information comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly employment reports. The December 2007 report (
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_01042008.pdf
), Table A-5, shows 122 million full-time jobs and about 24 million part-time jobs. The August 2013 report (
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_09062013.pdf
), Table A-8, shows about 117 million full-time jobs and 27 million part-time jobs.

45
. David Autor, “The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market: Implications for Employment and Earnings,” a paper jointly released by The Center for American Progress and The Hamilton Project, April 2010, pp. 8–9,
http://economics.mit.edu/files/5554
.