While I can't tell you what people are going to do for work 100 years from now, the future doesn't hinge on my imagination.
If you think about it, many of the great inventions of the last 200 years were designed to replace human labor. Tractors were developed to substitute mechanical power for human physical toil.
I work a lot on skill demands and changes in labor markets having to do with technology and with trade as well.
I did software development for a while, and I also spent several years directing a nonprofit in San Francisco that did computer education for the poor. I also did a lot of work in fast food.
Economists have understood since the Victorian era that the main benefits of trade come from comparative advantage: the idea that people can specialize in what they're good at and then benefit from exchange. The principle is no more mysterious than specialization in the labor market.
Computers were programmed to swap out error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection.
Markets are, in many settings, self-organizing and 'efficient' in terms of maximizing the welfare of both buyers and sellers.
Tax reform done right will improve incentives to invest in U.S. production and to repatriate profits.
I did a lot of blue collar work. I also worked as a temp. I did, you know, light construction and cleaning. I did clerical temping. I also fix cars and motorcycles and electronics.
People tend to think about trade as if it's competition between companies - if Apple wins, Google loses. But that's false. Trade makes nations better off in general. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that everything about trade is good and beneficial. Trade also has costs.
The end of the 'tech bubble' in the year 2000 is, of course, widely recognized, as the NASDAQ stock index erased three-quarters of its value between 2000 and 2003.
If I lose my job at a furniture factory where I've worked for decades, no amount of cheaper toys and raincoats at Wal-Mart is going to make me whole again.
The U.S. tends to export high-tech goods because we have strong comparative advantage there, and we tend to import labor-intensive and less skill-intensive goods that other countries can do more cheaply.
Our machines increasingly do our work for us. Why doesn't this make our labor redundant and our skills obsolete? Why are there still so many jobs?
The average worker in 2015 wanting to attain the average living standard in 1915 could do so by working just 17 weeks a year, one third of the time. But most people don't choose to do that. They are willing to work hard to harvest the technological bounty that is available to them. Material abundance has never eliminated perceived scarcity.
The Internet promises to open new channels for worker-firm communications. What are the consequences of this opening?
Manufacturing value chains are global. Many U.S.-made goods have foreign components. Slapping on tariffs will raise prices and slow imports, but it will make us poorer and impede growth.
I'm not yet convinced that we will face an unemployment problem created by AI. There will certainly be some occupations eliminated - drivers of vehicles, many production jobs, etc. Whether this creates mass unemployment depends on how quickly this happens. If it happens overnight, it will be a huge disruption.