How robots became a scapegoat for the destruction of the working class

Jeff Spross

April 29, 2019

Should workers fear the robots? You don't have to look far to find lots of people shouting "yes."

Magazines and newspapers blare headlines like "Welcoming our new robot overlords," "When your new co-worker is a robot," and "You will lose your job to a robot — and sooner than you think." Studies suggest anywhere from 9 percent to 47 percent of American jobs could be automated in the next few decades. In 2017, Bill Gates proposed a "robot tax" to address the problem. Andrew Yang, a long-shot contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, puts the threat of mass joblessness due to automation at the center of his campaign — and he wants a universal basic income to deal with it.

But there's another narrative, too.

Three papers in the last year — one by the Aspen Institute's Future of Work Initiative, one from the Roosevelt Institute and Duke University, and another in development from Roosevelt — suggest maybe the automation we're seeing now is little different from the technological advances we've seen in every other era. Instead, the problems of inequality, stagnation, and unemployment (which get blamed on the robots) are due to policy choices and power dynamics in the U.S. economy.

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