The Elasticity of Labor Supply

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The reason is that there's just all evidence to the contrary. There seems to be a finite amount that we can eat, right? That's correct. And then the, again, many of the professions, right, you think they, people seem to demand more of them as they get better - medical care or a lot of professional outputs. The third factor that I think is extremely important is kind of the elasticity of labor supply. So if there's an increase in demand for medical doctors or they become more productive so people are more willing to go to the doctor,.

David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the future of work and the role that automation and smart machines might play in the workforce. Autor stresses the importance of Michael Polanyi's insight that many of the things we know and understand cannot be easily written down or communicated. Those kinds of tacit knowledge will be difficult for smart machines to access and use. In addition, Autor argues that fundamentally, the gains from machine productivity will accrue to humans. The conversation closes with a discussion of the distributional implications of a world with a vastly larger role for smart machines.