Money & Politics with Jim Pethokoukis Ep. 8: Erik Brynjolfsson
On this week’s Ricochet Money & Politics Podcast, Jim’s guest is Erik Brynjolfsson, director of MIT’s Center for Digital Business at the Sloan School of Management.
Brynjolfsson is also co-author, along with Andrew McAfee, of Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. The 60-page ebook explores the apparent disconnect between a) rising innovation and productivity, and b) weak job and income growth.
The Financial Times called Race Against the Machine “compelling for its claim to explain two crumbling economic laws: the first that growth will create jobs; the second that rising wages will follow rising productivity. The authors think this stems from the erosion of a third pattern – that technology creates at least as many jobs as it destroys. Many intuitively doubt this idea, as the looms long ago smashed by Ned Ludd attest.”
But Brynjolfsson argues Moore’s Law means technology is advancing faster than humans can adjust, at least for now.