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AI and Jobs: What Do We Really Know?
57:10|Will artificial intelligence help you do your job, or will it just straight-up do your job and leave you unemployable? Or will the future bring something else entirely — either between those two extremes or a world that we simply cannot imagine yet? And are we already starting to see signs of that future emerging? On this episode of The New Bazaar, Cardiff is joined by economist Nathan Goldschlag, Research Director at the Economic Innovation Group. Until recently, Nathan was Principal Economist at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies, where among other things he led research on the impact of technology, including AI, on the economy. Any worthwhile list of the world’s best economists on the subject of AI and work would have to include him. Cardiff and Nathan go through Nathan’s own research* and also filter out the megaton of nonsense on the topic and discuss some of the work done by others — research, essays, meanderings — that they think is actually worth sharing with listeners. They discuss, among other things: How many businesses are now using AI to produce goods and servicesHow have things changed since the launch and popularization of large language modelsEconomic growth consequences of AIWhether “learn to code” is still good advice The skills that still matter To steer or not to steer the AI future* Nathan’s research on AI was done in collaboration with a large team of researchers at the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau including Emin Dinlersoz, Lucia Foster, David Beede, John Haltiwanger, Zach Kroff, Nikolas Zolas, Gary Anderson, and Eric Childress, along with program area partners including Kathryn Bonney, Cory Breaux, Cathy Buffington, and Keith Savage, as well as academic partners including Daron Acemoglu, Erik Brynjolfsson, Kristina McElheran, and Pascual Restrepo. Related links:The impact of AI on the workforce: Tasks versus jobs?Tracking Firm Use of AI in Real Time: A Snapshot from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey.The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI | NBERAnswering the Call of AutomationAI-2027.comTyler Cowen - the #1 bottleneck to AI progress is humansDriverless trucks are coming and unions aren’t happy about itGenerative AI at Work
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The US-China Trade War: Causes and Consequences
52:33|It's hard to think of a better guide to the ongoing US-China trade war than Evan Medeiros. A professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and a lifelong scholar of the US-China relationship, Evan is also the co-author (with James Polk) of a new study, China's New Economic Weapons. Ever since the trade wars of the first Trump term, Chinese officials have been designing a new set of weapons to prepare them for another provocation from the US."Whereas in the past China mainly used basic trade or investment incentives and sanctions," the authors write, "today China is developing, testing, and deploying an entirely new collection of legal and regulatory tools for the explicit purpose of imposing targeted costs on companies and countries it sees as acting against its interests. In effect, these are precision-guided economic munitions, designed to inflict targeted and often substantial pain for political and geopolitical purposes." In other words, China has been preparing for exactly this moment. Cardiff and Evan discuss these new weapons, the long evolution of the US-China relationship, Evan's own experience in policymaking in the Obama White House, how both American and Chinese leaders have changed in the past decade, and the stakes of the current standoff.Related links: China's New Economic WeaponsChina and Russia Will Not Be SplitThe Delusion of Peak ChinaEvan's Faculty Page
Tariffs and the global fallout
01:06:00|Chad Bown is not just among the world’s most respected trade economists. He is also perhaps the single most careful tracker of real-time trade activity — which obviously makes him the best possible guest to explain the consequences of US President Donald Trump’s decision on April 2nd to impose new tariffs on China and many other countries in addition to further escalating the trade war with China just a week later while changing course (though not entirely) against the rest of the world.Among the topics they chatted about: The scale of the potential fallout Where the tariffs stand now — including earlier tariffs already imposedThe ongoing threat to the American auto industry What it all means for the global liberal trading order The worst-case and best-case scenarios …and more! Related links: Chad Bown home pageTrade Talks, Chad’s podcast Chad’s (updated in real time) interview with Kai RyssdalThe trade war timeline
Post-Bidenomics and what comes next
01:10:37|Joining Cardiff for this episode is Jared Bernstein, who was most recently the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors for President Joe Biden following a long career in economic policy and public service. Jared shares with Cardiff his thoughts on the current economic moment, the achievements he was most proud of during the Biden years, and a few regrets. They also discuss: How the econ policymaking sausage gets madeTrade policy, globalization with allies, and concerns about protectionismInflation challenges, including the impact of the American Rescue PlanUnions and worker bargaining powerThe housing supply crisis and the role of federal incentives for local reformsImmigrationAI’s possible effects on labor and productivity How an early musical career led Jared to economicsRELATED LINKSJared’s Substack newsletterJason Furman’s Foreign Affairs articleJared’s response to Furman2024 Economic Report of the PresidentEIG’s analysis on “Manufacturing jobs boom not reaching places hit by the China Shock”
High-skilled Immigration: The Way Ahead to Stay Ahead
56:02|On today’s episode, Cardiff chats with his EIG colleagues Adam Ozimek, chief economist, and Connor O’Brien, research analyst, about the one policy that achieves all three of the following goals simultaneously: It massively boosts the rate of economic growth through its effects on entrepreneurship, innovation, and the creation of entire new industries.It reduces inequality.Not only does it cost the taxpayers nothing, it actually saves them huge sums of money. That policy is the expansion of high-skilled immigration, a subject that became a source of contentious debate within the American right not long after the 2024 election. As it happens, Adam and Connor are the co-authors (with John Lettieri) of a big new report, Exceptional by Design, which explains how to design a high-skilled immigration that will maximize its benefits for American workers, businesses, and communities. In this chat, the three discuss: How bad thinking has led to bad policy The surprisingly nuanced economics of high-skilled immigrationThree myths about high-skilled immigrationThe flaws in the current system A new policy vision to change itThe three close with a discussion of why high-skilled immigration carries so much promise for the United States in particular — and the enormous, self-inflicted damage of failing to capitalize on it. RELATED LINKExceptional by Design, by Adam Ozimek, Connor O’Brien, and John Lettieri
AI and the Global Battle for Tech Supremacy
53:25|It’s not often that someone comes up with a new, provocative, and persuasive theory about the competition between the US and China to be the world’s leading economic and technological superpower. The topic is so salient right now, the source of so much commentary, that it’s hard to say something that hasn’t already been said many, many times. But this episode’s guest, Jeffrey Ding — a scholar of international relations at the George Washington University and the author of a new book called Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition — has done just that.And the short version of Ding’s theory goes like this… It’s not as important as you might think for a country to be the first one to develop the new technologies of the future. What really matters are two things. First, that the technologies a country does develop are General Purpose Technologies. These are technologies that make every sector across the economy more productive, more efficient, more innovative. The personal computer and other information technologies, for example, didn’t just make the tech sector more productive. Workers in every industry use computers to be better at their jobs. And the second thing that matters is that a country be especially good at diffusing, or spreading, those General Purpose Technologies throughout the whole economy, precisely so that those technologies can make everyone more productive. And as Jeff argues, the US already has big advantages over China on both of these indicators. But why? What makes a country better at technological diffusion? What are the leading contenders for the general purpose technologies of the future? And what policies can a country put in place if it wants to become or remain the world’s dominant economic superpower? You’ll find answers to those questions and more in this episode’s chat with Jeffrey Ding. RELATED LINKS:Jeffrey’s GitHub pageTechnology and the Rise of Great Powers (Jeffrey’s book) ChinAI (Jeffrey’s newsletter about Chinese AI) The Illusion of China’s AI Progress (Foreign Affairs essay)
Election freakouts and American workers
48:10|How close is the 2024 presidential election? Here is how the New York Times framed it recently: “Never in modern presidential campaigns have so many states been so tight this close to Election Day. Polling averages show that all seven battleground states are within the margin of error, meaning the difference between a half-point up and a half-point down — essentially a rounding error — could win or lose the White House.” A recent Times-Sienna poll has the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris deadlocked at 48 to 48. Other polls are similarly close — which does not mean they are all telling the same story. Today’s guest, Kristen Soltis Anderson, writes that although “several of them show a dead heat, beneath the surface, they diverge in how they arrive at that result”. What stories can we glean from each poll? What theories of this election can we derive from those stories? Are the polls even right? And why, despite verbal gaffes and incendiary rallies and international conflict and general campaign turmoil, have the polling averages remained so steady in recent months? Kristen is a founding partner of Echelon Insights, an opinion research and analytics firm, and contributing Opinion writer to the New York Times, where she often writes about what is knowable and not knowable based on the polls. We talk about all these themes, including a theory of the election that Kristen came upon while watching football in Phoenix on a Sunday.Finally, we discuss a detailed survey of American workers that Echelon Insights, Kristen’s firm, put into the field for the Economic Innovation Group — and its most surprising findings. All this and more on today’s episode!RELATED LINKS: Opinion | The Polls Show a Dead Heat, but They Don’t All Tell the Same StoryOpinion | Two Weeks to Go, but Only One Way to Stay CalmOpinion | This Year’s October Surprise May Be That There Isn’t OneOpinion | Why the Election Is Coming Down to Defining Kamala Harris - The New York TimesOpinion | I’ve Studied the Polls. Here’s Why Harris Isn’t Running Away With It.The American Worker Project Survey: Key Findings DeckAmerican workers and the 2024 electionKristen’s website