By: Anna O'Neill It is a common thought that advancing technology negatively effects the economy by displacing human labor and leaving people out of work. What is often overlooked is the fact the displaced workers are being over paid for work that could be more efficiently done by a machine, in other words they seek economic rent. Short turn unemployment is expected with technological advances, but long term effects are questionable. Critics of technological advance on the basis that they destroy jobs claim that unemployment will be prominent even in the longer run. Contrarily, history has proven that technological advances improve standards of living and employment norms by allowing shorter hours and workweeks, as well as lessening the need for multiple bread winners per family. Technological advances work to improve the standard of living in the area they are implemented in through increased efficiency. This can be done by increasing production output. It can also be achieved by decreasing the amount of resources needed to produce the same amount of output. Since labor is one of these necessary resources for production, increase leisure time is a sign of increased standard of living, made possible by advancing technology. This leisure time allows people the opportunity to create new artwork and new inventions. In this way, unemployment works constructively and unemployment statistics cannot truly act as a diagnosis of economic well being. Read more here: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa068.html
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