Gibberish

Repeat after me: The world is not a zero-sum game. Technology often creates more jobs than it destroys. The number of jobs in the economy depends on how much people are spending and investing. High-skilled tech workers grow the economic pie by boosting productivity, encouraging more investment and increasing entrepreneurship. Economists call this “the lump of labor” fallacy.

Jennifer Rubin, WaPo

Trump and right-wingers who have never heard of the lump-of-labor fallacy seek to construct a false narrative to explain real hardship caused by a whole variety of issues, including automation, a skills mismatch and education inadequacy. We would hope the poll is a positive sign that Americans grasp that “the world is not a zero-sum game where natives must lose out in order for immigrants to gain — or vice versa.”

Isabel Sawhill, Brookings Institute

One problem is that when people look at the labor market, they often come to the wrong conclusion. They see well-paid jobs in manufacturing or elsewhere disappearing. They conclude that there are simply not enough jobs to employ everyone who wants to work. Their implicit view of the world is that there are a fixed number of jobs and that it will be impossible to supply everyone with a reasonable livelihood. Economists call this “the lump of labor” fallacy. This way of thinking is a fallacy because the number of jobs in the economy depends on how much people are spending and investing, that is on the total demand for goods and services.

Chris Yapp, Open Democracy

Technology advances both destroy and create work. In the long run, technology often creates more jobs than it destroys. In the short term, while we cannot see what those new roles may be the “lump of labour fallacy” often becomes a central concern. The argument is that there is a fixed amount of work, so if some is automated the amount of available work must reduce.

Stuart Anderson, Reason.com

The central flaw in arguments alleging a negative impact on native employment due to the presence of foreign scientists and engineers is that they are based on the "lump of labor fallacy" – or the notion that there is a fixed number of jobs in the economy. Hence, the argument goes, if you increase the number of workers, you get lower wages and rising unemployment. But high-skilled tech workers grow the economic pie by boosting productivity, encouraging more investment and increasing entrepreneurship. Overall, they create jobs.

Economists call this “the lump of labor” fallacy. Trump and right-wingers who have never heard of the lump-of-labor fallacy seek to construct a false narrative to explain real hardship caused by a whole variety of issues, including automation, a skills mismatch and education inadequacy. The central flaw in arguments alleging a negative impact on native employment due to the presence of foreign scientists and engineers is that they are based on the "lump of labor fallacy" – or the notion that there is a fixed number of jobs in the economy. In the short term, while we cannot see what those new roles may be the “lump of labour fallacy” often becomes a central concern. Economists call this “the lump of labor” fallacy.

One problem is that when people look at the labor market, they often come to the wrong conclusion. Economists call this “the lump of labor” fallacy. Their implicit view of the world is that there are a fixed number of jobs and that it will be impossible to supply everyone with a reasonable livelihood. They conclude that there are simply not enough jobs to employ everyone who wants to work.

The argument is that there is a fixed amount of work, so if some is automated the amount of available work must reduce. Economists call this “the lump of labor” fallacy. Hence, the argument goes, if you increase the number of workers, you get lower wages and rising unemployment. They see well-paid jobs in manufacturing or elsewhere disappearing.This way of thinking is a fallacy because the number of jobs in the economy depends on how much people are spending and investing, that is on the total demand for goods and services.

In the long run, technology often creates more jobs than it destroys. But high-skilled tech workers grow the economic pie by boosting productivity, encouraging more investment and increasing entrepreneurship. Overall, they create jobs. Technology advances both destroy and create work. We would hope the poll is a positive sign that Americans grasp that “the world is not a zero-sum game where natives must lose out in order for immigrants to gain — or vice versa.

See also LUMPO'