Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

by Martin Ford

My key point here is that professional economists—all of whom have access to the same objective data—are completely unable to agree on what I would characterize as an extraordinarily fundamental economic question: Is a demand shortfall holding back economic growth, and if so, is income inequality an important contributor to the problem? I suspect that the lack of consensus on this question offers a pretty good preview of what we can expect from the economics profession as the technological disruption I’ve been describing in these pages unfolds. While it’s certainly possible that two “scientists” may look at the same data and interpret it differently, in the field of economics the opinions all too often break cleanly along predefined political lines. Knowing the ideological predisposition of a particular economist is often a better predictor of what that individual is likely to say than anything contained in the data under examination. In other words, if you’re waiting for the economists to deliver some sort of definitive verdict on the impact that advancing technology is having on the economy, you may have a very long wait.