Yes it was political. But only possible by the shipping container which was a technology shift.
It’s not purely that people shift to other jobs, it’s what jobs and where. A union manufacturing job and retail cashier job at dollar tree are not equivalent. And when the whole core of a company moves they aren’t replaced.
The real number is work force participation. It’s down. Alot. Economic share of wages is down. Alot.
There's two concepts unaccounted for by the "but different jobs" pro-AI economic rewriting story.
1. As you say, new jobs of what sort, with what labor power, and at what pay?
Offshoring manufacturing was as much about breaking US labor unions as anything else. No unions in China, and no bad press about feuding with US workers. Just 'oops, new economic reality, things change, so sorry'.
Making high value add jobs disappear and replacing them with only low value add jobs isn't a net gain.
2. What mechanism do people see realistically distributing hypothetical bountiful gains from AI-boosted productivity?
Let's imagine AI works out perfectly: productivity gains through the roof, entire industries automated, record corporate profits across the board.
What plausible path do people see from that (and the unemployment it spiked) to most people being given a chunk of the profits?
Remember: they're already legally spoken for by the shareholders.
Introducing new corporate tax rates at the federal level? Ha!
And even if UBI manages the get through in some form... how much do you think that will be?
Which is to say, how much of their wealth do you think the richest will be willing to part with to redistribute?
Because history says as little as they can get away with.
I agree with most of your points and think you’re asking the right questions. Unfortunately, our opinions don’t really matter.
The only thing I would say is that shareholders don’t have an exclusive legal right to profit. That is a policy choice and one that has shifted over time (American law has moved to the extreme shareholder maximizing end of the spectrum) and is currently different in other countries (Germany has a corporate governance structure that Requires an employee and union board of directors so it isn’t just shareholders interests that are represented in governance decisions.
It’s not purely that people shift to other jobs, it’s what jobs and where. A union manufacturing job and retail cashier job at dollar tree are not equivalent. And when the whole core of a company moves they aren’t replaced.
The real number is work force participation. It’s down. Alot. Economic share of wages is down. Alot.