causal

Technology Makes Skills Obsolete, Hurting Older Workers

The serious danger of smart machines is not that they fail to create new jobs but that they render existing skills valueless, leaving a generation of workers—like the hand-loom weavers of the Industrial Revolution—who are too old or otherwise unable to retrain and who die bitter, disappointed, and poor.

causalpending

Speaker

Joel Mokyr

Evidence Quote

their skills became obsolete. They were too old, or for some other reason incapable of being retrained, and they died bitter and disappointed, and many of them poor.

Source

Joel Mokyr on Growth, Innovation, and StagnationEconTalk
Created: 6/13/2026, 12:12:21 AM

My Notes

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