The Value of Expert Work in the Industrial Economy

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Jobs requiring certain body of knowledge or competency and that are not everyone's cup of tea are better paid in an industrial economy.
Industrial era created a tailwind where people with a reasonable amount of education were highly productive in offices, factories and sales, creating a rising tide that was relatively equalizing.
Institutions like democracy and other factors besides technology also contributed to the creation of middle class.

For the last four decades, technology has been mostly a force for greater inequality and a shrinking middle class. But new empirical evidence suggests that the age of AI could be different. We speak to MIT's David Autor, one of the greatest labor economists in the world, who envisions a future where we use AI to make a wider array of workers much better at a whole range of jobs and help rebuild the middle class.

This episode was produced by Dave Blanchard and edited by Molly Messick. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Katherine Silva. Jess Jiang is Planet Money's acting executive producer.

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