The Populist Temptation by Eichengreen Barry;

Author:Eichengreen, Barry; [Eichengreen, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2018-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

If the problem is secular rather than cyclical, the result of technology rather than trade, and specifically due to the automation of routine tasks in manufacturing, then the solution is to better equip workers to undertake non-routine tasks, not just in manufacturing but also in the service sector. Restaurant chefs, home health care workers, security guards, and spiritual advisors require situational adaptability, interpersonal skills, and oral communication ability, but not always higher education. The importance of adaptability, collegiality, and communication make these jobs relatively safe from automation.22 To be sure, a San Francisco start-up called Momentum Machines has developed a robot that not only flips hamburgers but makes them from scratch. But the mass production of burgers is the epitome of a routine task; it’s hard to imagine the high-end Napa Valley restaurant French Laundry mechanizing the production of its tasting menu. In Japan, where a declining birth rate and a rapidly aging population make the problem of home health care especially acute, Honda has developed an autonomous humanoid robot, Asimo, to get food for the elderly and turn lights off and on. But in an age when robots still can’t turn doorknobs or fold napkins, whether robotics can help with more complicated needs, provide emotional succor, and cope with the ethical dilemmas of elder care is uncertain. Another Silicon Valley company, Knightscope, is developing wheeled automatons equipped with sensors, microphones, and lasers to act as security guards. Its K5 model, however, is known mainly for knocking over a child and running over one of his feet at the Stanford Shopping Center. The company’s website revealingly touts robots as appropriate for “boring and monotonous” patrols and acknowledges that “decision-making is best left to real people.”23

Educators argue that the situational adaptability, ease of interpersonal interaction, and communication skills needed for non-routine tasks are heavily influenced by education, starting in early childhood. Interpersonal, collaborative, and communication skills are shaped when children are young, pointing to a high-return area in which to invest.24 But it will take time, even in the best-case scenario, for such investments to pay off, the time from when a child receives early education to when she enters the labor force. That the problem of declining manufacturing employment due to the automation of routine tasks developed over a period of decades means, unavoidably, that it will similarly take decades to address.

Be this as it may, these were not directions in which the United States, following its startling 2016 election, was prepared to go. The new Congress and administration, critical of federal bureaucracy and mandates, were more inclined to cut early childhood education than to expand it. Skeptical of the ability of the federal government to solve problems, they had little appetite for place-based policies. The very notion of the federal government negotiating occupational profiles and dictating training curricula was anathema to the politicians brought to power in 2016.

And if the promise of bringing back good manufacturing jobs through restrictive trade policies and deregulation was false, it was unclear where

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