10. On brilliant versus mediocre technologies, see D. Acemoglu and P. Restrepo, 2018a, “Artificial Intelligence, Automation and Work” (Working Paper 24196, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
11. Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo decompose the sources underpinning the demand for labor, showing that the replacement of workers in manufacturing can explain a large part of the decoupling between wages and productivity. This process began in the 1980s and has intensified since the turn of the twenty-first century. At the same time, it is important to remember that we have seen similar episodes before. Much like the situation today, in the mid-nineteenth century America saw machines take over existing work more rapidly than new technologies were able to reinstate labor in new activities. See D. Acemoglu and P. Restrepo, forthcoming, “Automation and New Tasks: The Implications of the Task Content of Production for Labor Demand,” Journal of Economic Perspectives. The authors’ data do not allow them to go farther back than 1850, but (as noted in chapter 5) Britain saw a similar pattern in the early part of the nineteenth century, when textile machinery replaced artisan craftsmen in large numbers.
12. N. Eberstadt, 2016, Men without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis (Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press).
13. C. B. Frey and M. A. Osborne, 2017, “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 114:254–80.
14. R. Bowley, 2017, “The Fastest-Growing Jobs in the U.S. Based on LinkedIn Data,” LinkedIn Official Blog, December 7, https://blog.linkedin.com/2017/december/7/the-fastest-growing-jobs-in-the-u-s-based-on-linkedin-data.
15. S. Murthy, 2014, “Top 10 Job Titles That Didn’t Exist 5 Years Ago (Infographic),” LinkedIn Talent Blog, January 6, https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/2014/01/top-10-job-titles-that-didnt-exist-5-years-ago-infographic.
16. M. Berg, 1976, “The Machinery Question,” PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2.
17. L. Summers, 2017, “Robots Are Wealth Creators and Taxing Them Is Illogical,” Financial Times, March 5.
18. C. Goldin and L. Katz, 2008, The Race between Technology and Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1–2.
19. G. J. Duncan and R. J. Murnane, eds., 2011. Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances (New York: Russell Sage Foundation).
20. J. D. Sachs, S. G. Benzell, and G. LaGarda, 2015, “Robots: Curse or Blessing? A Basic Framework” (Working Paper 21091, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
21. J. J. Heckman et al., 2010, “The Rate of Return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program,” Journal of Public Economics 94 (1–2), 114–28.
22. A. J. Reynolds et al., 2011, “School-Based Early Childhood Education and Age-28 Well-Being: Effects by Timing, Dosage, and Subgroups,” Science 333 (6040): 360–64.
23. H. J. Holzer, D. Whitmore Schanzenbach, G. J. Duncan, and J. Ludwig, 2008, “The Economic Costs of Childhood Poverty in the United States,” Journal of Children and Poverty 14 (1): 41–61.
24. A. M. Bell et al., 2017, “Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation (Working Paper 24062, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
25. A. M. Bell et al., 2018, “Lost Einsteins: Who Becomes an Inventor in America?,” CentrePiece, Spring, http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cp522.pdf, 11.
26. R. D. Putnam, 2016, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster), chapter 6.
27. K. L. Schlozman, S. Verba, and H. E. Brady, 2012, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
28. R. A. Dahl, 1998, On Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 76.
29. Quoted in G. R. Kremen, 1974, “MDTA: The Origins of the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962,” U.S. Department of Labor, https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/mono-mdtatext.
30. O. Ashenfelter, 1978, “Estimating the Effect of Training Programs on Earnings,” Review of Economics and Statistics 60 (1): 47–57.
31. Further complicating the matter is the fact that programs that target very different groups in the labor market cannot be compared. Workers from disadvantaged backgrounds and with less formal education naturally require more training and resources. What’s more, the effectiveness of training measures greatly depends on training content, local labor market characteristics, and the overall health of the economy.
32. B. S. Barnow and J. Smith, 2015, “Employment and Training Programs” (Working Paper 21659, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
33. R. J. LaLonde, 2007, The Case for Wage Insurance (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press), 19.
34. On UBI versus the welfare state, see A. Goolsbee, 2018, “Public Policy in an AI Economy” (Working Paper 24653, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
35. On television and well-being, see B. S. Frey, 2008, Happiness: A Revolution in Economics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), chapter 9.
36. D. Graeber, 2018, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (New York: Simon & Schuster). For survey evidence showing that people find meaning in their jobs, see R. Dur and M. van Lent, 2018, “Socially Useless Jobs” (Discussion Paper 18-034/VII, Amsterdam: Tinbergen Institute).
37. On happiness and unemployment, see B. S. Frey, 2008, Happiness, chapter 4.
38. I. Goldin, 2018, “Five Reasons Why Universal Basic Income Is a Bad Idea,” Financial Times, February 11.
39. G. Hubbard, 2014, “Tax Reform Is the Best Way to Tackle Income Inequality,” Washington Post, January 10.
40. For an overview of the effects of the EITC, see A. Nichols and J. Rothstein, 2015, “The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)” (Working Paper 21211, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
41. R. Chetty, N. Hendren, P, Kline, and E. Saez, 2014, “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129 (4): 1553–623.
42. L. Kenworthy, 2012, “It’s Hard to Make It in America: How the United States Stopped Being the Land of Opportunity,” Foreign Affairs 91(November/December): 97.
43. M. M. Kleiner, 2011, “Occupational Licensing: Protecting the Public Interest or Protectionism?” (Policy Paper 2011-009, Upjohn Institute, Kalamazoo, MI).
44. On occupational licensing and nonemployment among men in their prime, see B. Austin, E. L. Glaeser, and L. Summers, forthcoming, “Saving the Heartland: Place-Based Policies in 21st Century America,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.
45. B. Fallick, C. A. Fleischman, and J. B. Rebitzer, 2006, “Job-Hopping in Silicon Valley: Some Evidence Concerning the Microfoundations of a High-Technology Cluster,” Review of Economics and Statistics 88 (3): 472–81.
46. R. J. Gilson, 1999, “The Legal Infrastructure of High Technology Industrial Districts: Silicon Valley, Route 128, and Covenants Not to Compete,” New York University Law Review 74 (August): 575.
47. S. Klepper, 2010, “The Origin and Growth of Industry Clusters: The Making of Silicon Valley and Detroit,” Journal of Urban Economics 67 (1): 15–32.
48. T. Berger and C. B. Frey, 2017b, “Regional Technological Dynamism and Noncompete Clauses: Evidence from a Natural Experiment,” Journal of Regional Science 57 (4): 655–68.
49. E. Moretti, 2012, The New Geography of Jobs (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 158–65.
50. C. T. Hsieh and E. Moretti, forthcoming, “Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics.
51. M. Rognlie, 2014, “A Note on Piketty and Diminishing Returns to Capital,” unpublished manuscript, http://mattrognlie.com/piketty_diminishing_returns.pdf.
52. See, for example, E. L. Glaeser and J. Gyourko, 2002, “The Impact of Zoning on Housing Affordability (Working Paper 8835, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA); E. L. Glaeser, 2017, “Reforming Land Use Regulation
s” (Report in the Series on Market and Government Failures, Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets, Washington).
53. R. Chetty, N. Hendren, and L. F. Katz, 2016, “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment,” American Economic Review 106 (4): 855–902.
54. On place and the likelihood of becoming an inventor, see Bell et al., 2017, “Who Becomes an Inventor in America?,” and 2018, “Lost Einsteins.”
55. C. T. Hsieh and E. Moretti, 2017, “How Local Housing Regulations Smother the U.S. Economy, New York Times, September 6.
56. D. Etherington, 2018, “Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Signs First Cross-State Deal in the U.S.,” TechCruch, https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/15/hyperloop-transportation-technologies-signs-first-cross-state-deal-in-the-u-s/?guccounter=1.
57. M. Busso, J. Gregory, and P. Kline, 2013, “Assessing the Incidence and Efficiency of a Prominent Place-Based Policy,” American Economic Review 103 (2): 897–947.
58. For more on the TVA, see P. Kline and E. Moretti, 2013, “Local Economic Development, Agglomeration Economies, and the Big Push: 100 Years of Evidence from the Tennessee Valley Authority,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129 (1): 275–331.
59. E. Moretti, 2004, “Estimating the Social Return to Higher Education: Evidence from Longitudinal and Repeated Cross-Sectional Data,” Journal of Econometrics 121 (1–2): 175–212.
60. S. Liu, 2015, “Spillovers from Universities: Evidence from the Land-Grant Program,” Journal of Urban Economics 87 (May): 25–41.
61. K. K. Charles, E. Hurst, and M. J. Notowidigdo, 2016, “The Masking of the Decline in Manufacturing Employment by the Housing Bubble,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 30 (2): 179–200.
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