Transcripts For CSPAN3 Automation And The Workforce 20180211

Event was hosted by the National History center. Welcome to this ongoing series hosted by the National History center. We bring perspective to Current Issues and try to provide historical content that can help to inform policymakers and deal with difficult issues. I would like to start first before introduce this mornings topic and speakers, to think the Carnegie Mellon foundation for funding our program. I would also like to thank the office of congressman Gerry Connolly for arranging meeting space. Above all, i thank, congressmann physics from the 11th the district a phd in physics from the 11th district of illinois. And his communication director for their help in organizing the briefing. As always, thanks to amanda perry for organizing the briefings, she is our assistant director. Some of you may remember a cover from the new yorker that came out just a few weeks ago. I will show you an example. It shows robots going about their daily work, coffee and their lunch pails. The rest of it, while the only person in the picture is relegated to a panhandler begging for money. It speaks obviously, to the widespread anxiety that exists today, that automation is making work obsolete. This is not the first time the technological innovation has transformed how we make a living. So the question in todays briefing, is, what can the past tell us about the impact of automation on employment on the workforce . We have three leading experts today who are going to help us with this. I am not going to introduce them in detail. There are leaflets outside that give their particulars and their publications alike. I will simply mention them in and their institutions, and the order in which they will be bix is ato react amy professor of history at Iowa State University who is written widely on History Technology and science in medicine. Hyman is an assistant professor of Labor Relations at law and history at Cornell University and has also written extensively on the economy and the workforce. Finally jonathan coopersmith, associate professor at a m university who has written about the history of machines and othe a variety of other topics. I will just turn it over to amy. Prof. In detail. Bix thank you very. Thanks to the National History center and to dane and amanda for organizing this. Mentioned, as dane mentioned, there is a long history about technological unemployment that we can talk about. We could go back to ancient roman times, but given that i have 10 minutes, i will start in the 19th century with an episode that some of you may be familiar with, the Luddite Movement. 18111816, it is part of the context of the British Industrial revolution, the mechanization, the movement of textile makings. From cottages and homes into meals. Mills. Where you have the resistance, or you would call it then machine breaking. The word a luddite has come to mean someone who is against technology as a matter of simple, but that is not how the Luddite Movement started out. It was not against all mechanization, but it was campaigning for paying attention to the treatment of workers. The question of what happened to craftsman, what happened to jobs in the context of this rapid change. Moving swiftly ahead and switching to the United States, in your history courses you might remember the boring 20s. Was therethe was there rg 1920s. The 1920s was known as the age of innovation. It is equated to american wellbeing, the market, new electric appliances, radio cars, corporate laboratories were coming up with all sorts of. Xciting plastics then came the great depression. 25 percent unemployment, higher in many pockets, there was a question, what had gone wrong . Quarters, there was concern that the prosperity of the 1920s, the very changes in science and technology had brought prosperity, and they might also be connected to the crash and the subsequent economic crisis. So, humorous will rogers said we , were a mighty, cocky nation, we invented mass production and massproduced everybody out of a job, with our laborsaving machinery. They forgot that machinery do not eat or by houses or clothes. The discussion in the 1930s about technological unemployment was both broad ranging and studies,n certain case as we would call them. For instance, critics in the 1930s said that approximately 28,000 Railroad Workers had been displaced from their jobs by the introduction of automatic loading machines, and other technical changes in railroads. Introduction of the direct dial system. That was blamed for displacing , as we would call them. For instance, critics in the 1930s said that approximately 28,000 Railroad Workers had been displaced from their jobs by the introduction of automatic almost 72,000 human operators. The women who used to sit at switchboards and physically connect calls, their function was no longer needed. Introduction of the talkies. Remember, this was the era when movies made the shift from silent to sound. Silent pictures had yandell piano players players or entire orchestras to a Company Selling pictures. Came in, they were no longer needed. 70,000 miners. Technological change in the industry. Showed he was a cartoon, it goes back to the many, many 1930s. Cartoons showing robots throwing people out of work, basically. How docern was, broadly, we define progress in the american machine age . The chicago progress fair had the saying science science, industry applies, man conforms. It is interesting to think about the ramifications. This concern about technological unemployment during the depression reach the highest levels. In his 1940 state of the union address, president roosevelt talked about a crisis of funding jobs faster than invention could take them away. Without a way to employ our which an efficiency of our industrial process has created. The concern was such that there was talk about whether you the United States should adopt a science holiday, putting scientific and Technical Research on hold. The idea was that it would give our social and economic and or sociologist Sciences Time to catch up. Duringuing against this the depression, american , leading man like Robert Milliken joined with leading American Industries to make an argument about despite 25 unemployment, despite concerns about machines during people out of job, they argued that what this country needed was to speed up investment in science and technology. They promised that advances in research in the hands of corporate industry would ultimately translate to american progress, which they defined as meaning, a higher standard of living, a wealth of consumer abandons. So at the new york worlds fair , was a world of tomorrow. They promise people to world full of wonderful cars, multi lane highways, also wonderful home appliances. They promised these things were just on the road if americans continue to have faith in sides in science and technology in the hands of industry. Well, world war ii interrupted that discussion. But after the war, the question of technological unemploymentide n came back, with a focus on the werther was relatively new in the vocabulary for a lot of people, automation. In 1946 in article machines without men come anticipated that the automatic fact during was modern was going to make modern man more obsolete on the factory floor. They had this idea that engineers dream the factory runs itself. The discussion continues, john f. Kennedy in 1960 spoke about automation as a dark medicine industrial dislocation, increasing unemployment and deepening poverty. The challenge of the 60s to maintain full employment at a time that automation is replacing man. Again, you can see the cartoons, worker being processed into the job. The challenge of the 60s to maintain full employment at a time that automation is replacing man. Time magazine wrot what they called automation refugees. Quoting one worker saying, every time a new machine is put in, two or three jobs are gone. But all through this postwar period, you have the context of the cold war, the Political Sentiment was in many quarters, that the United States had to pursue automation, because the soviet union was doing it. We had to keep up or slip back to a secondclass power. Welcome as you can see, the discussion of technological unemployment is inescapably intertwined all the way through this broader context of what is happening in american politics and American Economics. By the time you get to the 1970s and 1980s, the discussion of technological unemployment is tied up with the development of robotics. There was talk about japanese advances in robotics is the equivalent of sputnik. 1990s we get all of the vocabulary about people needing to adapt to the new age of technological change. Talk about justintime hiring, worries about people being roadkill on an automation superhighway. Now, again tied up with the , broader context of what is happening in america more generally, concern about technological unemployment really never completely vanished, but it hits the headlines with much more especially after the 2008 economic crisis. In 2011, president obama said, there are structural issues with our economy were a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. I have given you some samples of headlines here. In many ways, of course these headlines are designed to catch peoples attention by showing the most alarm of sentiment. That is part of what i am suggesting here. That there is a factual and real basis for concern about technological unemployment, at more than that, it really reflects a broad sense of unease among americans about the , thethis is something that economists have studied, the safety of our economy and society, with a sense that things are changing so rapidly. Sociologists, engineers and scientists themselves. 2013 there was a high profile study out of oxford where they looked at more than 700 occupations and concluded that 47 of them were at a high risk of being automated over the next one or two decades. They pointed to specific jobs of physical work, anything that was routine. So, deliveries, cap driving, fast food, security jobs cab driving, fast food, security jobs, they suggested that routine knowledge work was in danger of being replaced. Paralegals, and accountants, tax preparers and journalists. A couple of academics out of m. I. T. Who looked at this question wrote a book the second machine age. Said, technology is always destroying jobs, but right now, ace is accelerating. We are not creating jobs at the same piece we need to. Recent Economic Indicators reflect this. Fewer people are working, and wages are falling even as productivity and profits soar. We do not have time to get into all the economic details, but some important things i wanted to point out here as a historian despite that 2008 economic crisis, we really have not talk that is the equivalent of the depressioneuro call for science holiday. Today, for better or for worse, we have come to the point of view that the Consumer World of technology was progress for many of us in america. You have seen temporary push backs against uber, not just in the u. S. But elsewhere, for various reasons. But i didnt think of it is going to build up into any longterm resistance. Abouts fears technological unemployment reflect reality, but it is also a general assumption, something you see casually thrown around in speeches and in the media. As jonathan and louis will talk about, it connects to about technological unemployment reflect reality, but it is also complex intersections of economic life. The trend toward contingent work, off shoring, international movement. It connects to a broader questions of unemployment and social and economic justice. For so many of us, work has come to seem like one of our identity. So, in thinking about technological unemployment, we need to think about the role of work in our life, which leads to thinking about the role of leisure. It was predicted that we would be at a 15 hour workweek by now, obviously we are not there. Bill gates has proposed the idea of robot taxes, and using the funds for education, ideas for universal basic income also fit in here. So, this links to discussions about access to education structural discrimination, economic inequality, paul krugman recently said, smart machines made higher gdp possible but also reduced the demand for people, including smart people there we had we could be looking at a society that grows ever richer, but in which all the gains in wealth accrued to whoever owns the robots. What does all this mean . As has been made Clear Technology does create new jobs, but the question is, where, how fast, what type of requirements do you have for those . Somebody laid off cannot go from a coal mine yesterday and go tomorrow to take up a job as a dentist in venue depressionera. Technology creates new jobs and redefines old ones. It brings up issues of how we keep American People flexible. Issues of retraining and entrepreneurialism. One concern is that we are heading toward jobpolarization where a lot of the work force have opportunities for highpaying, High High School jobs. Highskilledg, jobs. At the other and you have low pay, low skill jobs that are resisted to automation, but not much in between. Something i want to throw out there that we can talk about later is thinking about this question of jobs, also we need to think about gender and other dimensions. Women have been historically been underrepresented for reasons we can talk about. Many jobs relating to stem and computer work. And they have also been overrepresented in service positions, which some say are harder to fully automate. It nursing for example, you cannot really automate the caring heart, although the japanese have what they call caring robots. Women are suited to this, our men suited to these . Technological change, ultimately, we can think of it as a miracle either. History does not give us a simple answer, but given the sheer persistence and apt of depth of concern about technological unemployment stretching back centuries, we really need to think about how this connects to our broader history and future of the American Economic life, social organization, and where we are going from 2017 onwards. Thank you. [applause] i would not call myself a luddite, but i will not use powerpoint today. Thank you so much for having us here to riyadh it is a wonderful opportunity to talk about as a historian, these issues relating to the future area an. As always, i think history can help us think about what is new and what is not in our current period of economic change. And america was founded as a great agricultural nation. Within a few short decades we went through a massive transformation. That disruption, that fundamental disruption has already guided so much of our political and economic history. Isay, as professor bix talking about, we are living in another great transformation, when the Digital Economy is beginning to replace the industrial. American manufacturing has in roboticized. For some, this is seen as a terrifying end of human work. I think we should not think of it that way. The reality need neither be dystopian or utopian. It will be the results of choices that we make. Just as how we make choices in the Industrial Age. To liberate Human Potential or squash it. Invented knowledge, skill and strength into machines is nothing new. If any of you have ever used a sewing machine, you know that is the case. Artificial intelligence will make all of us if we learn how to harness it, into more productive and betterpaid workers, just like other tools have been in the past. For 200 years, our educational system and job life has tried to teach us how to work like robots. So, we should not be surprised that when robots finally come to my they take our jobs. My point is not to become better robots than robots, it is to become better humans than our , creative, caring and curious. Creative, caring and curious is what will define the human in the 21st century. These are what makes for human and humane works to riyadh so i think we should use this moment as an opportunity to think about our longheld american valleys. American values. Rising industrialization in the 19th century turned us into a nation of wage earners who depended on the wage. Low wages are part of the problem, but wage labor in itself was a problem, in which one did not have freedom to control when they will work. This is a greater threat to our vision of independence and democracy. So today we talk a lot about the American Dream. We fret a lot about our jobs and our hay, but they mostly have a lot to do with consumption. This older American Dream is a more important American Dream. It is still persistent to entrepreneurs, our Small Businesses and even our independent 1099 contractors. That is selfdetermination. The 19th century, the federal government supported the vision through the homestead act, which was to make our citizenry independent by giving them land area and secure and selfreliant. Farming was just a way towards that goal. Sadly for various reasons, that fell apart, mostly to do with the coming of new machines, industrial agriculture and the ways in which these forms were financed. A may have been shortlived but its ambition lingers on in the way that so many of us claim that owning our own houses produces greater independence. In the Industrial Age in the 20th century, we traded independence for a good job. We made laws during the 1930s to ensure that workers were treated fairly. As long as that industrial economy lasted, those laws worked. We developed institutions like a National History<\/a> center. Welcome to this ongoing series hosted by the National History<\/a> center. We bring perspective to Current Issues<\/a> and try to provide historical content that can help to inform policymakers and deal with difficult issues. I would like to start first before introduce this mornings topic and speakers, to think the Carnegie Mellon<\/a> foundation for funding our program. I would also like to thank the office of congressman Gerry Connolly<\/a> for arranging meeting space. Above all, i thank, congressmann physics from the 11th the district a phd in physics from the 11th district of illinois. And his communication director for their help in organizing the briefing. As always, thanks to amanda perry for organizing the briefings, she is our assistant director. Some of you may remember a cover from the new yorker that came out just a few weeks ago. I will show you an example. It shows robots going about their daily work, coffee and their lunch pails. The rest of it, while the only person in the picture is relegated to a panhandler begging for money. It speaks obviously, to the widespread anxiety that exists today, that automation is making work obsolete. This is not the first time the technological innovation has transformed how we make a living. So the question in todays briefing, is, what can the past tell us about the impact of automation on employment on the workforce . We have three leading experts today who are going to help us with this. I am not going to introduce them in detail. There are leaflets outside that give their particulars and their publications alike. I will simply mention them in and their institutions, and the order in which they will be bix is ato react amy professor of history at Iowa State University<\/a> who is written widely on History Technology<\/a> and science in medicine. Hyman is an assistant professor of Labor Relations<\/a> at law and history at Cornell University<\/a> and has also written extensively on the economy and the workforce. Finally jonathan coopersmith, associate professor at a m university who has written about the history of machines and othe a variety of other topics. I will just turn it over to amy. Prof. In detail. Bix thank you very. Thanks to the National History<\/a> center and to dane and amanda for organizing this. Mentioned, as dane mentioned, there is a long history about technological unemployment that we can talk about. We could go back to ancient roman times, but given that i have 10 minutes, i will start in the 19th century with an episode that some of you may be familiar with, the Luddite Movement<\/a>. 18111816, it is part of the context of the British Industrial<\/a> revolution, the mechanization, the movement of textile makings. From cottages and homes into meals. Mills. Where you have the resistance, or you would call it then machine breaking. The word a luddite has come to mean someone who is against technology as a matter of simple, but that is not how the Luddite Movement<\/a> started out. It was not against all mechanization, but it was campaigning for paying attention to the treatment of workers. The question of what happened to craftsman, what happened to jobs in the context of this rapid change. Moving swiftly ahead and switching to the United States<\/a>, in your history courses you might remember the boring 20s. Was therethe was there rg 1920s. The 1920s was known as the age of innovation. It is equated to american wellbeing, the market, new electric appliances, radio cars, corporate laboratories were coming up with all sorts of. Xciting plastics then came the great depression. 25 percent unemployment, higher in many pockets, there was a question, what had gone wrong . Quarters, there was concern that the prosperity of the 1920s, the very changes in science and technology had brought prosperity, and they might also be connected to the crash and the subsequent economic crisis. So, humorous will rogers said we , were a mighty, cocky nation, we invented mass production and massproduced everybody out of a job, with our laborsaving machinery. They forgot that machinery do not eat or by houses or clothes. The discussion in the 1930s about technological unemployment was both broad ranging and studies,n certain case as we would call them. For instance, critics in the 1930s said that approximately 28,000 Railroad Workers<\/a> had been displaced from their jobs by the introduction of automatic loading machines, and other technical changes in railroads. Introduction of the direct dial system. That was blamed for displacing , as we would call them. For instance, critics in the 1930s said that approximately 28,000 Railroad Workers<\/a> had been displaced from their jobs by the introduction of automatic almost 72,000 human operators. The women who used to sit at switchboards and physically connect calls, their function was no longer needed. Introduction of the talkies. Remember, this was the era when movies made the shift from silent to sound. Silent pictures had yandell piano players players or entire orchestras to a Company Selling<\/a> pictures. Came in, they were no longer needed. 70,000 miners. Technological change in the industry. Showed he was a cartoon, it goes back to the many, many 1930s. Cartoons showing robots throwing people out of work, basically. How docern was, broadly, we define progress in the american machine age . The chicago progress fair had the saying science science, industry applies, man conforms. It is interesting to think about the ramifications. This concern about technological unemployment during the depression reach the highest levels. In his 1940 state of the union address, president roosevelt talked about a crisis of funding jobs faster than invention could take them away. Without a way to employ our which an efficiency of our industrial process has created. The concern was such that there was talk about whether you the United States<\/a> should adopt a science holiday, putting scientific and Technical Research<\/a> on hold. The idea was that it would give our social and economic and or sociologist Sciences Time<\/a> to catch up. Duringuing against this the depression, american , leading man like Robert Milliken<\/a> joined with leading American Industries<\/a> to make an argument about despite 25 unemployment, despite concerns about machines during people out of job, they argued that what this country needed was to speed up investment in science and technology. They promised that advances in research in the hands of corporate industry would ultimately translate to american progress, which they defined as meaning, a higher standard of living, a wealth of consumer abandons. So at the new york worlds fair , was a world of tomorrow. They promise people to world full of wonderful cars, multi lane highways, also wonderful home appliances. They promised these things were just on the road if americans continue to have faith in sides in science and technology in the hands of industry. Well, world war ii interrupted that discussion. But after the war, the question of technological unemploymentide n came back, with a focus on the werther was relatively new in the vocabulary for a lot of people, automation. In 1946 in article machines without men come anticipated that the automatic fact during was modern was going to make modern man more obsolete on the factory floor. They had this idea that engineers dream the factory runs itself. The discussion continues, john f. Kennedy in 1960 spoke about automation as a dark medicine industrial dislocation, increasing unemployment and deepening poverty. The challenge of the 60s to maintain full employment at a time that automation is replacing man. Again, you can see the cartoons, worker being processed into the job. The challenge of the 60s to maintain full employment at a time that automation is replacing man. Time magazine wrot what they called automation refugees. Quoting one worker saying, every time a new machine is put in, two or three jobs are gone. But all through this postwar period, you have the context of the cold war, the Political Sentiment<\/a> was in many quarters, that the United States<\/a> had to pursue automation, because the soviet union was doing it. We had to keep up or slip back to a secondclass power. Welcome as you can see, the discussion of technological unemployment is inescapably intertwined all the way through this broader context of what is happening in american politics and American Economic<\/a>s. By the time you get to the 1970s and 1980s, the discussion of technological unemployment is tied up with the development of robotics. There was talk about japanese advances in robotics is the equivalent of sputnik. 1990s we get all of the vocabulary about people needing to adapt to the new age of technological change. Talk about justintime hiring, worries about people being roadkill on an automation superhighway. Now, again tied up with the , broader context of what is happening in america more generally, concern about technological unemployment really never completely vanished, but it hits the headlines with much more especially after the 2008 economic crisis. In 2011, president obama said, there are structural issues with our economy were a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. I have given you some samples of headlines here. In many ways, of course these headlines are designed to catch peoples attention by showing the most alarm of sentiment. That is part of what i am suggesting here. That there is a factual and real basis for concern about technological unemployment, at more than that, it really reflects a broad sense of unease among americans about the , thethis is something that economists have studied, the safety of our economy and society, with a sense that things are changing so rapidly. Sociologists, engineers and scientists themselves. 2013 there was a high profile study out of oxford where they looked at more than 700 occupations and concluded that 47 of them were at a high risk of being automated over the next one or two decades. They pointed to specific jobs of physical work, anything that was routine. So, deliveries, cap driving, fast food, security jobs cab driving, fast food, security jobs, they suggested that routine knowledge work was in danger of being replaced. Paralegals, and accountants, tax preparers and journalists. A couple of academics out of m. I. T. Who looked at this question wrote a book the second machine age. Said, technology is always destroying jobs, but right now, ace is accelerating. We are not creating jobs at the same piece we need to. Recent Economic Indicators<\/a> reflect this. Fewer people are working, and wages are falling even as productivity and profits soar. We do not have time to get into all the economic details, but some important things i wanted to point out here as a historian despite that 2008 economic crisis, we really have not talk that is the equivalent of the depressioneuro call for science holiday. Today, for better or for worse, we have come to the point of view that the Consumer World<\/a> of technology was progress for many of us in america. You have seen temporary push backs against uber, not just in the u. S. But elsewhere, for various reasons. But i didnt think of it is going to build up into any longterm resistance. Abouts fears technological unemployment reflect reality, but it is also a general assumption, something you see casually thrown around in speeches and in the media. As jonathan and louis will talk about, it connects to about technological unemployment reflect reality, but it is also complex intersections of economic life. The trend toward contingent work, off shoring, international movement. It connects to a broader questions of unemployment and social and economic justice. For so many of us, work has come to seem like one of our identity. So, in thinking about technological unemployment, we need to think about the role of work in our life, which leads to thinking about the role of leisure. It was predicted that we would be at a 15 hour workweek by now, obviously we are not there. Bill gates has proposed the idea of robot taxes, and using the funds for education, ideas for universal basic income also fit in here. So, this links to discussions about access to education structural discrimination, economic inequality, paul krugman recently said, smart machines made higher gdp possible but also reduced the demand for people, including smart people there we had we could be looking at a society that grows ever richer, but in which all the gains in wealth accrued to whoever owns the robots. What does all this mean . As has been made Clear Technology<\/a> does create new jobs, but the question is, where, how fast, what type of requirements do you have for those . Somebody laid off cannot go from a coal mine yesterday and go tomorrow to take up a job as a dentist in venue depressionera. Technology creates new jobs and redefines old ones. It brings up issues of how we keep American People<\/a> flexible. Issues of retraining and entrepreneurialism. One concern is that we are heading toward jobpolarization where a lot of the work force have opportunities for highpaying, High High School<\/a> jobs. Highskilledg, jobs. At the other and you have low pay, low skill jobs that are resisted to automation, but not much in between. Something i want to throw out there that we can talk about later is thinking about this question of jobs, also we need to think about gender and other dimensions. Women have been historically been underrepresented for reasons we can talk about. Many jobs relating to stem and computer work. And they have also been overrepresented in service positions, which some say are harder to fully automate. It nursing for example, you cannot really automate the caring heart, although the japanese have what they call caring robots. Women are suited to this, our men suited to these . Technological change, ultimately, we can think of it as a miracle either. History does not give us a simple answer, but given the sheer persistence and apt of depth of concern about technological unemployment stretching back centuries, we really need to think about how this connects to our broader history and future of the American Economic<\/a> life, social organization, and where we are going from 2017 onwards. Thank you. [applause] i would not call myself a luddite, but i will not use powerpoint today. Thank you so much for having us here to riyadh it is a wonderful opportunity to talk about as a historian, these issues relating to the future area an. As always, i think history can help us think about what is new and what is not in our current period of economic change. And america was founded as a great agricultural nation. Within a few short decades we went through a massive transformation. That disruption, that fundamental disruption has already guided so much of our political and economic history. Isay, as professor bix talking about, we are living in another great transformation, when the Digital Economy<\/a> is beginning to replace the industrial. American manufacturing has in roboticized. For some, this is seen as a terrifying end of human work. I think we should not think of it that way. The reality need neither be dystopian or utopian. It will be the results of choices that we make. Just as how we make choices in the Industrial Age<\/a>. To liberate Human Potential<\/a> or squash it. Invented knowledge, skill and strength into machines is nothing new. If any of you have ever used a sewing machine, you know that is the case. Artificial intelligence will make all of us if we learn how to harness it, into more productive and betterpaid workers, just like other tools have been in the past. For 200 years, our educational system and job life has tried to teach us how to work like robots. So, we should not be surprised that when robots finally come to my they take our jobs. My point is not to become better robots than robots, it is to become better humans than our , creative, caring and curious. Creative, caring and curious is what will define the human in the 21st century. These are what makes for human and humane works to riyadh so i think we should use this moment as an opportunity to think about our longheld american valleys. American values. Rising industrialization in the 19th century turned us into a nation of wage earners who depended on the wage. Low wages are part of the problem, but wage labor in itself was a problem, in which one did not have freedom to control when they will work. This is a greater threat to our vision of independence and democracy. So today we talk a lot about the American Dream<\/a>. We fret a lot about our jobs and our hay, but they mostly have a lot to do with consumption. This older American Dream<\/a> is a more important American Dream<\/a>. It is still persistent to entrepreneurs, our Small Businesses<\/a> and even our independent 1099 contractors. That is selfdetermination. The 19th century, the federal government supported the vision through the homestead act, which was to make our citizenry independent by giving them land area and secure and selfreliant. Farming was just a way towards that goal. Sadly for various reasons, that fell apart, mostly to do with the coming of new machines, industrial agriculture and the ways in which these forms were financed. A may have been shortlived but its ambition lingers on in the way that so many of us claim that owning our own houses produces greater independence. In the Industrial Age<\/a> in the 20th century, we traded independence for a good job. We made laws during the 1930s to ensure that workers were treated fairly. As long as that industrial economy lasted, those laws worked. We developed institutions like a National Labor<\/a> unions to turn all that productivity, all that isomation that professor bix talking about into rising wages. Productivity of course has been the source of all wealth in the history of capitalism. Not land, not resources, but how we turn automation into money for all of us. Part of what we are struggling with, and probably why many of you are here today, is the mismatch between our laws and our economy. I do not think you can legislate capitalism. By you can set the rules of the game. The rules of labor and capital to support workers and businesses, to make sure that capital is channeled into growth areas. For some critics of the freelance economy, critics of to this more automated economy, the answer is simply to turn back the clock. They demand through law that the obligations provide fornomy, the industrial firms almost a century ago, be shoehorned in todays very different economy. As we talk about this postwar as we romanticize manufacturing, we should not be roboticized in romanticizingobligations the. For many of those who are excluded from these jobs, especially women and africanamericans, the rest of the economy was not so glorious. But even for the white men who have a good paycheck, working on an assembly line, or in a mine is dehumanizing, backbreaking, and most importantly, soul breaking work. Humans should never do the work of machines. So as we think about this, as we think about machines, we should think that we should think about policies that promote independence in income, but it might not look like the 19th or 20th century. As historians, we like to talk about this moment as a transition that we have been enjoying for most centuries. When historians think about this, we often do not talk about the industrial revolution. We talk about the industrious revolution. Because it is the reorganization people that makes industrialization possible. The first factories were just buildings. The First Assembly<\/a> lines were just gravity slides. We develop technologies for these reorganizations of people. Then this technology was intertwined with this reorganization. So even though we talk about this as a second machine age, as in the 18th century, the reorganization of People Matters<\/a> as much if not more than the reorganization of machines. I think we should think of this as a second industrious revolution. Since the reorganization of people, at least to me, and many other historians, is as shocking as the technology. This is not to say that technology does not matter. We should not be naive about what ais will be able to do. Artificial intelligence will be able to do a lot. When partnered with teleoperated robotic bodies, as are being developed at m. I. T. , it will developed at m. I. T. , it will allow the rapid automation of any automated physical or digital process. Instead of having to instruct these machines, we can teach them just by doing the task again and again and again. Just like the drivers who taught tesla how to drive a car, digital Migrant Workers<\/a> will be running robot bodies. Degrees of the job are actually more importantly attached and repetitive, but they will no longer exist. The larger question is this, should humans be doing those jobs . Should they be making change . My belief is that every person, is capable of being more creative and doing caring more curious work. Just as we do not all go out in the field, we should notthe fiet robots hold our towels and drive our cars. By not taking advantage of peace human resources, we are squandering them, squandering lives, just as much as we are depleting other nonrenewable resources. At google for instance, they have stopped measuring projects by dollars and started to measure them by engineers working lives. How many lives would it take to make this project succeed . I dont think engine years lives lives matter more than anybody elses, and a i suspect you dont either. That is what we are talking about. His organizational change, this industrious revolution, the change is coming. It is much about automation and organization. It is no surprise that these conversations of ai, we switch into conversations about freelancers, the gig economy, and how americans are working. Over uber, is what it means for work. It is americans becoming more insecure. From 2005 to 2015, 94 of net new jobs came outside of the traditional work. Outside of fulltime, permanent employment. These are independent contractors and freelancers. Economic Economic Growth<\/a> of the second industrious revolution, the world of the wage is having way to the world of the independent workforce. Already, a third of our workforce participates in this alternative world of work. There is a primary or supplementary form of income. Most of these workers are not driving for over uber. Despite all the hype, or working for a digital platform. Less than 1 of the workforce is mediate through these workforce. Overjust like the steam engine accelerated the factory, so will the digital platform accelerate they are just working. The gig economy. They are trying to solve for a change that has already occurred. The gig economy. They are trying to solve for a what is new today is not just this technology, but the possibility that workers might be as productive on their own as within a farm. Working globally, selling globally. Incorporation is no longer as necessary as it once was. For me, this is what is truly novel. Platforms are going to give companies a run for their money. And for talent. Operations have another the signature institution of the industrial era, organizing people, capital, manufacturing, distribution, you name it. But all those no longer need to be channeled through a firm. That is what is truly novel in this history of capitalism. Not automation, that the possible refashioning and supplementing of the corporation. That is what america needs. That is what i think america is all about. Today, as our industrial jobs are automated, we get a chance to rediscover the old American Dream<\/a> of independent works, independent from the corporation. So as we tried to think about what to do, we should try to capture what is the best of then and now, combining prosperity and flexibility. The gig economy might have the best of both worlds where individuals have the productive capacity of an industrial economy able to leverage new, automated forms of life. Of work. We should use this to liberate us. The challenge of the 21st century will not be defending our robotlike jobs but discovering and valuing what is human. This will not naturally come out better for everybody. History is dotted with this kind of history. It feels start today in many ways. But if we create a system that allows for flexibility into some in supporting this new, independent workforce, ubi, etc. Something akin to dealing with the reality of the new economy as we have dealt with the reality of the new industrial workforce, then things will turn out fine. Work is part of the Human Experience<\/a> and defined as purposeful action, work will always be part of our Human Experience<\/a>. But as a wage connected to a job, it might just be a passing moment in economic history, a contingent part of the industrial economy, a footnote to history that only People Like Us<\/a> historians should really know about. We have to figure out ways to turn this a. I. Productivity into prosperity and by embracing the new reality of flexible digital work, rather than fighting it, i think we can provide a new American Dream<\/a> that is in essence the oldest one of all, independence and security. Thank you so much. [applause] one of the shifts here is you are moving away from physical labor as a major attribute of a job. And we are seeing this everywhere. If you look in the retail industry, for over a century there have been buffeted ways of waves of change, including the latest in innovation on online stores. We should note by the way it took amazon a decade and a billion dollars before it made its first profits. So essentially, job change has been perennial in its accelerating. I cannot move up and down. Ok. Even back in the 1960s, president kennedys secretary of about, feared a human slag heap, that we will have two nations, one of the well educated, well employed, and the others who are going to be discarded. Jonathan so we have a long history of these concerns, of these fears. And if you look at this current period of pessimism, a lot of similarities. Worldwide challenges of governments, how to give jobs to their people to make sure that their people are employed. Line if you think the system is working, ask somebody who isnt. Fears of foreign competition, fears of immigrants, and a justified sense of accelerating technological organizational social change and who will see that sense of change actually accelerating into the future. And we are going to see that as people talk about several areas, a. I. , robots, reorganization, virtual migration or telepresence, a possible decentralizing and 3d printing, but in all cases we see efficiency in almost every area of the economy, making it easier to do more with less. Meanwhile, you have other changing factors. We have 24 7 Media Coverage<\/a> of events, social media, which is people can read more, watch more, publish more about what they are doing, increasing longevity, people are living longer and we are now talking about decades of retirement, which is putting certain strains on retirement systems. Changing concepts of employment. A lot of businesses or sectors, two tiers of employment, one for the old guard with permanent and for the newerjobs generation. The rise of the gig economy. A lot of changes. , there are a lot of areas where policymakers should be thinking about how can we adopt the existing regulations to the current situation. How can we increase flexibility, how can we increase entrepreneurialism for people . What is not going to work, as amy noted, the idea of a science holiday. We live in a very competitive world. And if we do not if we say we are not going to do something, a country probably will. What i would like to conclude with is to go back to the Great British<\/a> economist john maynard keynes, writing in 1930, after the depression and talking about this big fear, the new challenge of technological unemployment. Keynes was an optimist and he ended, this is only a temporary phase of maladjustment, it means in the long run that mankind is solving its economic problem, that this Economic Abundance<\/a> means we are going to have the opportunity, as louis said, to think about how we can become more creative what were the other two . Caring and curious. Jonathan that means rethinking questions about the relationship between work and income, work and identity, work and the citizenship. These are really exciting problems to have. I look forward to the next few decades with a certain degree of trepidation, but a lot more sense of anticipation and excitement, because we do have opportunities that weve never had before. Thank you. [applause] dane ok, we would like to open this up for questions and comments. Yes, mark . Mark i have a question for louis. First, it is pretty well known that we have been experiencing in the United States<\/a> a decline in the number of startups. The ratio of young firms to old firms has been going down, the absolute number of new firms established has been going down. How does this fit with the perspective that you described in which we may have less of a role for corporations . Louis i think part of it is a couple of different factors going on. This is a problem, the startups going down. And what is counterintuitive about it is that we think they are all around us. We hear this is the future of the economy, but it turns out over the last 40 years weve made it easier to lend money to consumers than to businesses. So i think there is an imbalance in the financial system. For instance, small and mediumsized businesses have to often they cannot get commercial loans anymore. We have made it easy to secure consumer credit, but nearly impossible to securitize business loans. If you look at the capital needed for Small Businesses<\/a>, the Small Business<\/a> administration or kickstarter, these are rounding errors on what is actually needed. I think people would like to start these, but we are living in a time of massive insecurity. It is hard to start a business if you are worried about health care, if you are worried about whether you are able to make rent or take care of your kids. So part of this is this time over the last 40 years, we have increased the insecurity of American People<\/a> and i think it has constrained their creativity, entrepreneurialism, and these are the kinds of policies we need to think about, in terms of capital, but also in terms of risk taking, especially for younger people. I wonder if we are reaching a point, you focused a bit on manufacturing, but where manufacturing will become obsolete with a 3d machine. If i need a certain item, i can use my 3d printer, right, and make the item myself. I do not needed to be made anyone else or go out and buy it from someone else. All i need to do is basically by the raw materials. So manufacturing outside of the household seems to me to be becoming obsolete. Probably not becoming obsolete, but more economically challenging. One of the more exciting areas of innovation are the maker spaces you are seeing pop up in a lot of countries. Jonathan one of the interesting ways that Public Libraries<\/a> are reinventing themselves is they are installing 3d machines. This is the sort of creative thinking which does not take much money, but if you are a Public Library<\/a> it does take a lot of money relatively. This is something we need to be thinking about. How can we encourage this innovation from below this , experimentation, and how do we reduce the risk of individuals into smaller institutions. Amy at the same time, one of the truisms among historians is how difficult it is to predict where technology is going. Things will happen that we do not anticipate, but things were talking about now they get sidetracked or take longer than we anticipate. So if you look at all the predictions, we were supposed to be driving flying cars by now and somehow that never quite got quite happened. I am still waiting for that. So it is interesting to think about where we might be going. It is not something where we can have a fixed timetable and it takes time for them to diffuse it through the population, so certain segments of the population, certain geographic regions, will get access to things like that before others. So you will have a mixed economy where the technology is mixed, the work is mixed, the consumerism is mixed, so it makes the picture far more complex to think about. Yes . First, jonathan touched on this, which we do not really as a country have an option on this. We cannot walk away from the technology. If you look at the competition between nations, the nation with the highest gdp growth will be the nation that deploys the robot factories as quickly as possible. Similarly, the competition between companies, the company that wins will be the company that deploys the robots as quickly as possible, rather than treating employees right. Ok . It seems that there is a fundamental conflict between what you are hoping for and the natural result of competition between nations and between corporations. Is there any way out of that conundrum . Jonathan yes. And we will find out soon enough. Hopefully one of the challenges is with that company, what will they do with the money they make from that . Will they be like amazon and reinvest, will they take more profits out of it . That is one of the real challenges, is what how do the profits from this get reinvested and i honestly do not know. As amy and louis said, there are many conceivable paths for that but at the very least we need to be thinking about those in and raising those issues now, before you have the single robot factory. Louis and i think how we make use of the robots. What else do they enable . Capitalism is not a zerosum game. I think what is excited about our economy is that it is going to create all these robots. And maybe just in time, that the demographic shift globally as is the populations in advanced countries are being reduced, and if a lot of our Economic Growth<\/a> labor, thenh more we would need more robots. The question is how do we use this to transform how we work and our quality of life. Although it will be terrifying at that moment, we mentioned keynes before, and in the long run we are all dead, as he famously said, so thinking through the shortterm transition is the hardest part of all. Yes, sir . [indiscernible] an economy that is caring, creative, and curious is justified as a utopian question, but it seems to me that a lot of the demand for facing the future involves basic changes in a subject of looking at politics and markets. The way i am looking at this and i wonder how you think whether this is a productive way the real challenge is rethinking the direction of globalization as a problem of inequality and sustainability as a closely related question. In other words, instead of thinking we can make more stuff with the 3d producers, how can you have an equitable, global quality of life and maybe reduce the amount of stuff we consume, but have a better quality of life with things that are more creatively and curiously generated. I do not think manufacturing is going to go away, if you look at what is happening to aerospace and aviation, boeing and how they are making airplanes, or how people are curiously thinking about the storage of electricity. I think there are a couple different questions there. It is an important question. Louis if we talk about manufacturing, we think about manufacturing and mass production. This is certainly for things like planes, cars and computers, these are complicated supply chains that need to be managed and produced. But we are opening up this new niche of manufacturing, the different gizmos and things may be only i want and only you can imagine. That is a wonderful thing. In terms of globalization, we have reduced global poverty in the last 20 years mainly have in human history. And maybe that has had a toll on the american economy, but for the human race as an overall, this has been a wonderful thing. We should not reject that. And it is important that as we move into, this is what brings about Global Political<\/a> stability, right . We want everybody to be part of this new world. So as we think about that, it is important that we understand that globalization is part of the story, but also it is a good part of the story, as it comes about. Amy and you also raised the important question of sustainability, this is not the discussion about jobs and economics and internationalization that can or should happen in isolation from questions such as what is happening to the world in terms of environmental wellbeing. So manufacturing, transport, all these things we need to think about when supporting new industries, the international dimensions, the Scientific Consensus<\/a> around Climate Change<\/a> is essentially pretty clear, so we need to integrate these discussions, which is by no means simple, but essential ultimately. Yes, maam . Thank you for the insights. How does the legislative body address these questions in a way that is constructive and not polarizing . How do we look at these longerterm issues collaboratively and constructively without the polarizing partisan constraints that i feel that we are trapped in . Louis i try to point to an i tried in my remarks to point to an older tradition that we can draw on, that i think is not a radical position [indiscernible] louis no, i think that this idea of american independence, the idea of an independent workforce, core american values, Small Businesses<\/a>, this is shared in the left and right, at least the moderate left and right, and figuring out policies that enable people to take risks, so they can start Small Businesses<\/a>. I think this has been cast as welfare or socialism, but this is not welfare or socialism, this is how to empower a workforce, you empower the business class, be creative in the world. And it is what is necessary. I think trying to figure out how we recast some of these ideas in new ways, or actually in the older ways, i think that is what is important. As we think about this legislatively. Jonathan i think part of this is doing what we are doing here, my short answer to almost everything is to hire more historians. [laughter] but to have conversations like this and maybe try to get more people thinking about this, having discussions like this. And there have been efforts in various areas to create organizational mechanisms to bring people together and give them brief this guy whose name i forget but there are institutional ways to do that. They take efforts and one of the challenges, as you said, this is a hyper partisan well, according to what i read in the papers yeah, but having these discussions is a good place to start. And i think that it is something that we should maybe be asking or demanding of our universities. Have us come forward and be more active outside of the classroom, doing events like what the National History<\/a> center is doing. And we can, we will make predictions. We will be wrong, but at least thinking about the future and trying to get people to actively shape it is a key part of what american democracy should be. Amy as he said, part of the conversation does have to be around education, but it is not a nice simple formula, such as give everybody two years of Computer Programming<\/a> education and everything will be fine. It is not that simple and straightforward, so you need this broader conversation about education, the technical skills, but also in the humanities, providing that intellectual and social basis for the creativity and curiosity that we talked about, so part of it is education and part of it is providing people that sense of security. You know, there are universities that have courses on entrepreneurship. There are ways to promote that, but at the same time recognizing that human beings, there is no way to ask everybody to be entrepreneurial anymore than we can ask everybody to have their favorite color be blue, so recognizing that changes are not going to work equally well for everybody, so trying to provide basic security, so you can do away with some of the fear surrounding technological change that i think has really been ever present through the 20th century and into the 21st. Thinking about economic security, health care as jonathan mentioned, family security, so again it is no nice , neat, simple answer. But that is part of our job as historians, to think longterm. Louis i think also, if i can in the way that historians like to talk too much when we think about the past, the transition into the Industrial Age<\/a> and equitable transitions. Think about the late 19th century, this is the world we are afraid of, where jobs are grinding, there is no pay, people at the top are making all the money, and it seems like a dickensian nightmare. In the 1930s, we turned this around in the middle of the great depression. It was not just the left, we have historians talking about a bunch of liberals, but there was a rightwing new deal, overseen by people who were inherited from the hoover administration, promarket, and texans who did things like take all the idle money on wall street that had nowhere to go, just like today we got about 2. 7 trillion in idle capital in the banks, not just talking about corporations and excess reserve requirements. They borrowed it and put it into new startups like aerospace, electronics, like synthetic rubber. In the late 1930s, theres something called the reconstruction finance corporation. And it brought us things like the suburbs and aerospace and rural electrification. So as we ask these cautions about how we bring rural americans into the economy and how we provide housing for the new century, how do we think about all the new industries that require capital and do not have them, to create jobs for people at scale, there are other aspects. And this was done by railway executives, bankers, and it was not just a bunch of liberal eggheads. It was actual people in the world. Looking to these other bipartisan models in the past could be a way of pushing forward the economy. Yes . I wanted to bring up i think running through everyone of your presentations is something you mentioned as a rightwing new deal, the reconstruction finance corporation. But where is that coming from . It is also government. There has been discussion about looking to the future, we are planning, there is a sense of the possibilities, i like the possibilities and the optimism, but are we overlooking some of the forces that are working against any kind of planning or activist government in a sense that could influence the development of universal income or planning for job loss and that kind of thing . Jonathan that is one of the reasons that you are here and we are here, to try to foster this debate. Again, we are a democracy and it is incumbent upon us to be active to be participants. , this is one of the challenges, to get people, Small Businesses<\/a> and large businesses, governments, and other sectors, ngos, thinking actively about the possibilities here. It is a very flexible future and we cannot design it, we can help try to shape trends, promote important values, including sustainability and others. But we need to know what they are and to try to create what is called nudges, how to get people to do the right thing, to move towards new world, i will get this right, i apologize it is not trademarked. It is we texans forget three things. We will forget at least one of them. , and a creative, caring curious, what are the infrastructures or goals of doing that. I will interject one quick question and then i think i need to close this. But given the shifts that louis was talking about in terms of the move toward a gig economy, i would like to take it back to amys mention of gender and i am curious as to how these transformations may be shaping sort of the role of women in the economy and opportunities, or lack there of for them . Amy it is interesting, as a historian we like to look at what has changed and what hasnt. It is interesting that for all the changes that have occurred in womens lives and in society and in mens lives and the lives of families, from the 20th to the 21st century, the most common jobs for women today are still some of the same ones they were decades ago. Secretaries, teachers, nurses, and so it is interesting to think about the social forces that are shaping that and the way that those jobs may or may not be affected by automation. It is not just a question of jobs eliminated, it is a question of jobs that are never created. For example, in our department we have literally one secretary. And even though the department expands, that is all we have had. Part of it is because she is wonderful, but it is because so many of us are doing our own typewriting, placing our own calls, doing our own photocopies. It is not jobs eliminated, it is also jobs that were not created, which are hard to think about. But to come back to nursing, demographically as the population ages there is the talk that nursing and home care will be expanding job opportunities. But again, part of the thing is those that have been so stereotyped as jobs for women, that while there is talk about bringing more men into nursing, that there is reluctance to that, some pushback. So i do not see that you can separate these questions of jobs and future change from the history of how jobs have been gendered. Why we have seen some jobs as jobs for women, others as jobs for men. So i think gender is at the center of the conversation, because as is race in a lot of ways, it is about who counts in the economy. There is so much hammering around white mens jobs that have disappeared because of industrialization, but more jobs disappeared for women. And this is sort of disappearing of jobs for all kinds of people. We have seen women be more adaptable to the new economy. Lewi ebay, etsy, most sellers ae women and it has created and since the passage of the aca, people have gone from about 18 , that as a primary income, to 35 as their primary income on etsys platform. This is a model of how people can adapt to the new economy, finding new platforms to be creative and work for people. And i think largely etsy is discounted because it is women sellers and buyers and somehow that makes it irrelevant and not as important as uber and tesla and these other things. But it is just as important and in a lot of ways it is a vehicle for the future. I think if we have to recenter the conversation about who andts in the new economy discount who we did not count before people of color, women , who are not part of the postwar manufacturing utopia, they are here and they count and they are working and they are creative and we need to make sure that they are included as part of the economy and they are already insisting on that. Amy part of it is, in the United States<\/a> the number of women going into engineering grew significantly during the late 1960s, 70s and 80s, but more recently it has plateaued. The number of women studying computers in college peaked a number of years ago and has declined more recently so there is discussion about that, how to get more women into stem fields. That is a whole separate conversation there is no way we have time for here. Dane please join me in thanking our panelists. [applause] and thanks to our sponsors as well. Amy thank you. This weekend on cspan3, today at 10 00 eastern, Kenneth Carlsen<\/a> talks about growing up in a military family and his service in vietnam. It had a view point where you could see what was going on over combat. We were watching the rockets coming in. Explosions are going off. These men are scared to death. The one from arkansas said it kind of looks like the fourth of july. I said it does not. She said, what do you mean . I said people are dying. That does not happen on the fourth of july. With the start of the winter olympics, we are featuring three films. Team isnited states causing plenty of unexpected excitement here. They were underdogs. And now, they have upset all predictions by winning the game with russia earning them the first gold matter the less gold team iner won by a u. S. Hockey. Historians explore the relationships between president s and Mikael Gorbachev<\/a> during the end of the cold war. If you look at 1989 when bush comes in and bush and gorbachev in 1991, from gorbachevs point of view, bush is not measuring up to what reagan had been. Watch American History<\/a> tv every weekend on cspan3. Announcer next, Jonathan White<\/a> talks about the dreams of soldiers and civilians during the american civil war. Professor white details the dreams of several individuals and reflects on the underlying emotions behind them, such as fear of death or hope of returning home. He also discusses how dreams became part of the wartime culture, reflected in such things as songs and poems. This discussion was part of the annual Lincoln Forum<\/a> symposium in gettysburg, pennsylvania. It is just under one hour. Harold good afternoon. I am the vicechairman of the Lincoln Forum<\/a> and it is a pleasure to welcome to you what we think will be an illuminating and original session. A session devoted to private lives, not only the private life of the very public president of the United States<\/a> during the","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia800109.us.archive.org\/2\/items\/CSPAN3_20180211_130000_Automation_and_the_Workforce\/CSPAN3_20180211_130000_Automation_and_the_Workforce.thumbs\/CSPAN3_20180211_130000_Automation_and_the_Workforce_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240630T12:35:10+00:00"}