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actually basic economics. The wage that a
job pays is largely determined by supply and
demand. In the early 1970s, a 35-year-old man
with a high school diploma averaged $35,000
per year (in 2001 dollars). In the late 1980s,
when Burtless was writing, a 30-year-old man
with a high school diploma averaged $30,000
per year (incidentally, the same $30,000 fi gure
holds today.) In the interim, the number of
traditional jobs for male high school graduates
had grown slowly – more slowly than the
number of men who wanted them. Wages of
less-educated workers declined as men (and
women) competed for the jobs that were left.
The same declining demand helps to explain
why Mary Simmons and her fellow operators
were not in a position to reject the computer
monitoring of their work.
the details of economic progress
Given these problems, we might ask why U.S.
presidents routinely embrace new technology
and expanded trade (of which outsourcing is
a part). The long-run answer is clear: technology
and trade are both engines of economic
growth that ultimately raise the national standard
of living. But getting to the long run can
be messy since economic growth in the short
run usually creates losers as well as winners.
During the Industrial Revolution, the
short-run impact of growth was almost the
opposite of what we see today. Technology
favored not high-skilled workers but lowskilled
workers, as machines combined with
unskilled labor to make products ranging
from textiles to bicycles to guns. It was higher
skilled workers – weavers, clockmakers and
other craftspeople – whom the technology
displaced.
In some later periods, technology
distributed its benefi ts more evenly.
When John Kennedy was president,
he could say “a rising tide lifts all the
boats” and be substantially correct.
Kennedy governed in a lucky economic
time when technology and trade
did not strongly favor one skill group
over another, and when economic
growth raised incomes for most workers
– even in the short run.
Politicians still invoke Kennedy’s
language, but it no longer applies; the
forces driving economic growth now
increase demand for highly skilled workers
while they reduce demand for less-skilled
workers. In Ronald Reagan’s eight years in
offi ce, the nation’s GDP grew by 23 percent
while the earnings of the average 35-year-old
male high school graduate fell by almost onesixth
and the college/high-school earnings
differential grew from 20 to 45 percent.
During Bill Clinton’s fi rst term, the earnings
of high school graduates fell still more.
While these earnings recovered modestly
in the boom of Clinton’s second term,
the college/high-school differential continued
to grow. This growth continued during
the recent recession as the earnings of college
graduates rose slightly and the earnings
of high school graduates held steady. We pre-
©bob collier photos/corbis sygma
Fourth Quarter 2004 81
dict that this technological bias against lessskilled
workers will continue for at least the
next decade.
Sustained shifts in the demand for labor
lack the drama of mass unemployment. But,
if ignored, these shifts can lead to extraordinary
pain for many workers and can ultimately
threaten the stability of society. In the
current situation, one bad outcome would
be a hardening of the lines dividing economic
classes. The process is easy to imagine. As
income gaps expand, human nature dictates
that higher income groups see that they have
less in common with the rest of the population.
In a political process responsive to
money, the lack of perceived common interests
translates into less redistribution and
less protection for workers who are losing
ground. As technology tilts the playing fi eld
against less-educated workers, these policy
changes would tilt it further, reducing individual
opportunity and upward mobility.
In a different, but equally bad outcome,
job loss and insecurity would fuel a political
movement to turn back the economic clock
– for example, restricting international trade.
To the extent that these policies succeed, the
result would be a frozen economic landscape
that offers some short-run employment protection
at the cost of long-run stagnation and
decline.
how winners treat losers
As these possibilities illustrate, advances in
computerization and computer-assisted trade
have placed us in a potentially precarious
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