The second, parallelly functioning economic principle is in the invention of new ideas, products and services that dominate our attention, take up our time and lead us to consume.
People long for all these new possibilities and are willing to work hard to achieve them. Even though we have achieved material abundance, our perception of scarcity has never disappeared.
Thanks to automation, we can do more work in less time. The problem, according to Autor, is not that jobs are vanishing.
"The challenge is that many of those jobs are not good jobs, and many citizens cannot qualify for the good jobs that are being created," he says.
On the one hand, there is a group of high-paid and educated professionals with interesting jobs. On the other hand, there is a large number of people in low-paid positions who care about the comfort and health of the rich.
Autor stresses the importance of institutions, especially schools, in showing how we exploit technological development in order to flourish.
Neither machines nor markets define the future; we and our institutions define it. We have faced similar economic changes in the past and we were successful.
Autor's entire video is available here (in English with subtitles in other languages). A transcript in English and other languages is here.
-kk-
Article source TED.com - TED is a nonprofit devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading".