Lunchtime Must-Read: Colin Lewis: Larry Summers, Thomas Piketty, and the Rise of the Robots

Colin Lewis: Larry Summers gets it wrong on Piketty and Robots: “Summers gets much right, especially with respect to how many people are unemployed….

He… [thinks] robotics will have a major impact… [and that] Thomas Piketty does not emphasize the threat of robotics… enough…. ‘I am not sure that Piketty’s theory emphasizes the right aspects. Looking to the future, my guess is that the main story connecting capital accumulation and inequality will not be Piketty’s tale of amassing fortunes. It will be the devastating consequences of robots, 3-D printing, artificial intelligence, and the like for those who perform routine tasks. Already there are more American men on disability insurance than doing production work in manufacturing. And the trends are all in the wrong direction, particularly for the less skilled, as the capacity of capital embodying artificial intelligence to replace white-collar as well as blue-collar work will increase rapidly in the years ahead.’… [But] Piketty does look to the future… [his] extreme example is a society where robots produce the entire output… and [the] factoral income distribution would be 100% capital, 0% labor…. We should take the threat of robots and potential mass unemployment seriously, as Summers says… but more importantly we should consider Piketty’s warning on who owns the robots…