The Supply Response to the Rising Return to Education in the United States

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The US has a very weak STEM education in secondary at the high school level and even in the middle school level. And so that makes it much, much harder for people to enter those activities. I think one reason, and part of it is just taste, people just don't really like doing those things. But my point simply being that the foundational skills in math and analytical training, need to come pretty early.

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.