the government financed and a postal service bill. both pieces of legislation passed the house last week. some committees will hold virtual hearings. thursday at 3:00 p.m. eastern, the inspector general of the capitol police testifies before the house administration committee on his review of the law enforcement agency in the wake of january 6. next week to live on the c-span networks or on c-span now. head over to www.c-span.org to stream video live or on-demand anytime. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. "washington journal" continues. host: we are back with james pethokoukis, who is a senior fellow at the american enterprise institute. he is with us this morning to discuss the impact automation could have on the future of work. good morning.

guest: good morning. host: let's get some basic definitions. when we talk about automation and work, what are we talking about? are we talking about people using cars, automating factories? what is automation when it comes to work? guest: i think historically you are talking about machines that do what people were doing and then either helping people do that thing better or completely doing what a person used to. a modern example would be something like an automated teller machine, which does a lot of what bank cashiers used to do. that is an example of automation. or a kiosk at a fast food place where you can order what you want rather than going to the counter and talking to a human. those are two examples of automation.

host: you recently wrote a piece called thinking about the automation risk to jobs. can you summarize for us what exactly is the current state of automation in the u.s.? is this good or bad? guest: what is interesting is before the pandemic there were a lot of stories, academic studies about the risk of automation. anyone who stays up on the news knows there is a lot of stories about artificial intelligence and robots. maybe you have seen some of those videos of robots going across balance beams, running and jumping. there was a lot of attention to the issue will these advances and up replacing a lot of human jobs? will we have a lot more unemployment? it was something people were talking about a lot before the pandemic. the strange thing is people

seemed to be worried about that. at the same time in those years right before the pandemic, we had fast falling unemployment, rising wages. there was this weird disconnect between people's concerns and what we actually saw happening in the economy. then we have the pandemic. here we are again. what led me to that story were two things. news that john deere had come out with an autonomous tractor, which goes back to the very beginning of automation concerns with agriculture 150 years ago and news that maybe we are going to replace umpires with automated robots that will call balls and strikes. thinking we are going to have another automation panic in the coming years. i am skeptical as to whether

that is a concern. the history is that while machines replace jobs, we create new jobs. while the concerns of automation have been around forever, since the industrial revolution come in the end we have always created more jobs and found new things for people to do. host: like you said, we are seeing more and more automation showing up, like the kiosk at fast food restaurants. the question becomes we also learned during the pandemic that there were some jobs that could not be automated. there were some jobs that you need human beings to do. what lessons did we learn about automation from the pandemic that we can use going forward? guest: one lesson is that -- the reason i mentioned the kiosk is it forces businesses to think

more about technology and becoming more efficient because of a difficult business environment. it may have pushed some businesses, is this a good thing for my company, to take the risk . you have a lot more open minds in business about new technology. you are right. we also overestimate how advanced this technology is, and we saw there are a lot of jobs that people need to do. those jobs probably are not going away anytime soon. i think that is a good example. we tend to be overly concerned about robots taking all the jobs. you will see those are the kinds of jobs people need to do. i guess they call them high touch jobs, jobs you want a human to do. host: let me remind our viewers they can take part in this

conversation. we are going to open up regional lines for our conversation about automation and the future of work. if you are in the eastern or central time zones, you can call in at (202) 748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, your number is going to be (202) 748-8001. keep in mind, you can always text us at (202) 748-8003. and we are always reading on social media, on twitter @cspanwj, and on facebook at facebook.com/c-span. i watch video sometimes on youtube, and i hear the automated voice reading news articles and doing some of the same things we do here on television, which makes me wonder will one day this be occupied by a robot reading the news and asking questions? what type of jobs are

potentially on the line to be lost to automation in the future? guest: that is interesting. i know some companies, some news organizations, they will have computer software, ai do basic stories, like a company's earnings report, which is similar quarter after quarter. what we are seeing now is an example of things humans can do. they can find somebody, find a program to accurately duplicate a human voice to read the news. what it cannot do is what we are doing now, this back-and-forth. you reacting to what i say and asking more and more interesting questions. those kinds of jobs display what humans do very well, thank, process -- think, process

information. social cues. unless you are talking sci-fi versions of technology, and maybe that will happen eventually, that is what people can do. also things which are very physical. we overestimate how well robots act in the real world. take autonomous vehicles. a lot of technology companies have spent a lot of money on self driving cars. it has proven to be a lot harder than they thought. elon musk predicted in 2017 or 2018 we would have a million self driving cars on the road within a year. several years later, we do not have a million self driving cars on the road. it turns out to be a difficult thing. when you think of a job that also requires empathy. you could probably automate something say nurse does, but

there are lots of aspects that would be hard for a robot to duplicate. those human skills will be in demand in the future as well as higher level abstract thinking. host: what are companies looking for and looking at when they decide maybe we should look at automation for this task rather than hiring a human being? guest: i think the classic -- we could talk about a customer service job where a lot of the basic questions might be able to be asked in an automated way. if you look at a job and think i can break that job down into discrete steps, like part of the job is doing this or doing that, answering a phone and directing someone to this department. if it is very understandable, and you can write down what that

job is. that is a job you could theoretically automate. if you cannot really write that job down and make it very clear these are the steps to do that job, like what you are doing now, that is a job that is difficult to automate. a lot of these jobs in the middle, back office jobs, or jobs that are subject to a lot of automation, jobs that require reacting to different circumstances. one day is not like the next day. jobs that are physical, those are jobs which are difficult to automate. host: does automation always automatically equal job loss? guest: there can be long periods where automation can cause job loss. it can hurt wages. i don't want to present a utopian story that there is

never any disruption. let me go back to the automated teller example. people thought went automated tellers started coming out, that is it for bank tellers. they are all going to lose their job. that did not happen. any individual bank or bank branch might have had fewer tellers. the atm's allowed banks to open more branches. we have not seen a fall off in the number of bank tellers. thank tellers are doing other things other than helping you withdraw money. a lot of them have become more like customer service representatives or marketing representatives. it requires more skill. they are doing something differently. over time, we may see far fewer bank tellers. sometimes these changes take a long time to play out. if they take a long time to play out, it gives people more time to adjust and look for new

careers. i don't want to paint a picture that there is no disruption. over the longer run, what we have seen is people train. they find new skills. people find different things to do. we don't see mass unemployment. host: let's let some of our viewers take part in this conversation. we will start with sammy calling from north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning. we had -- hot dog place closed in virginia. we offered them $3 million to build a plant. the company is a 100 year old country ham business the chinese had bought out. they put in $17 million of

investment in the building, but it is all automated. not a hand is touching the hot dog creation. it did not create jobs. if a robot is taking jobs, start taxing them or get something if they are replacing jobs. guest: that is actually a super interesting example. first, it shows that efforts to focus -- saying we need a lot more manufacturing in this country, we need to bring manufacturing back from overseas. whether you think that is a good idea, you should not confuse the idea of more manufacturing necessarily with a lot more jobs. a lot of those jobs would be automated. if you like the idea of

manufacturing, things made here, great. don't think there are going to be lots of workers necessarily in those plans. as far as the idea of the robot tax goes, there have been people who have suggested that. bill gates, the cofounder of microsoft, has suggested in the past the idea of a robot tax. to be clear, people that have suggested that are not suggesting it to stop all automation, to make sure that we have -- that we take robots and machines out of plants so people can do more thing. i think their concern is about very rapid automation that would make it difficult for people to adjust. either that may be slowing down a little bit or use that money to help retrain people. if you look at the economy, one of the big problems of the u.s.

economy for the last 50 years has been slow productivity growth, worker productivity growth. over the long run, there is a close linkage between how productive workers are and the amount of wages. it is difficult to say we want people to make more, but we don't want them to be more productive. you can also relate on the robot tax, you can look at it in trades. some people who have been concerned about the impact of trade on the economy in the early 2000's have said that, well, we like trade. we like open trade, but maybe it happened too fast, and people cannot adjust. it is somewhat similar. we are going to have change. companies are going to turn to machines if they are more efficient when they can. the concern is about it happening so fast that people cannot adjust, maybe there will

not be new jobs happening. that is a real concern. over the long-term, you want a more productive economy if you want higher living standards for yourself and your children. host: we talked about bank tellers and atm's. we talked about kiosks and fast food workers. we have talked about umpires and ball and strike calling robots. i remember there was a day where there were gas station attendants where you would come out and they would pump your gas. what other jobs we can look at right now we can say this job is at risk because of automation? guest: it is hard to say because sometimes machines will will place -- will replace a job, and

sometimes the technology will just help people do a job more efficiently. something like a simple spreadsheet. there is no doubt that has made accountants, bookkeepers more efficient and can do their job better, and therefore they can make more money. it clearly cost some bookkeepers and accountants their jobs. it is very easy to say this as an either or situation, and these are jobs that get replaced that people do not do any more like the old telephone operators plugging into the switchboards. those jobs disappeared. some jobs are just made more productive, and the technology complements those jobs rather than replacing. sometimes it can be hard to predict. a really hard thing to predict is what will be the new jobs.

we can look at a job and think maybe a machine will get better and do that. maybe a machine can do your job or my job. it is difficult to protect what the new jobs will be. it requires a leap of the imagination that a fast-growing productive economy will create new things for people to do. sometimes that is not much comfort if you are right about your current situation. host: one of our social media followers wants to know about the security of automation. this person writes in, what happens when the power goes out or the place gets packed and you have automation -- gets hacked when you have automation? guest: you can also worried what happens when a worker gets injured doing a physical job, maybe a job, whether it is a

truck driver, which is a difficult job, or someone working on a garbage truck, very difficult job that maybe it could be easier if you have more machines involved. the key is to focus on those problems. i think focusing on cybersecurity and making sure we have a reliable energy grid, you want a lot more emphasis on that. focus on that rather than saying those risks are too big and people should do more work in society. host: let's go back to our phone lines. let's talk to stephen from lexington, kentucky. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for having me. happy saturday. i am in the automation world. i work with integrators, oems, many factories in kentucky.

many of these facilities are not up to standard or even able to be automated. they are lacking a lot of -- they are stagnant. they want to look forward into the future. i believe they can. i think there is an infrastructure problem kind of keeping us behind. i think a lot of moving parts happen with automation. big word right now is iot, the internet of things, things talking to things. making sure we are being proactive, not just reactive. at the macro level, is our infrastructure capable of handling automation? guest: i think the issue of infrastructure, which there is all kinds of studies that talk about infrastructure, whether it

is roads and bridges, whether it is our energy grid, super important, whether the u.s. has been doing enough to update infrastructure, and what you are referring to is what companies are doing. we want more business investment in this country. that is something we need to focus on when we make changes, whether it is regulation or taxes. if the government does not do its job, which is infrastructure, and if the private sector does not do its job, which is investing, investing in new machines, making workers more productive, then you will probably have a stagnant economy. i think that is what the caller might be getting at. host: let's talk to t calling from atlanta. caller: good morning. i am an engineering teacher. i teach my students engineering.

i tell them, whether you like it or not, automation is not going to stop. you have john talking about automation. grammarly definitely reduces the ability to hire people to look over the work because it is so much easier. you have zoom technology. you don't have to travel to a different state. you can consult with people. i don't want to go to the mechanic and have them spend two hours trying to figure out what is going on with my engine. you can look online and see what the job of the future is going to be. my concern, when you have people like bernie sanders talking about we need to tax some of these companies and generate money to fund the next generation of jobs, the american people don't get it. you cannot stop automation.

it is always going to go. one last thing. thank you, c-span, today for having a call in about the housing. i want to do mark collins about -- to do more call ins about matters that impact lives. host: go ahead, james. guest: housing may be one area where we could do with a bit more automation as far as the actual construction process. there is one economic status or observation that i could emphasize today and that i write a lot about, if we make the u.s. economy and workers able to be more productive, able to do more, you will see their wages and paygo up. some people don't think that is

true. they think it used to be true. there remains a tight linkage between making people reductive and pay. if wages are something you are concerned about, then you want a society with more technology in it. that means we have to make sure we are not just investing in machines, that we are also investing in people. that includes k-12 education, worker training. we have done a bad job in this society helping workers train and transition to doing new things. you need to invest on both sides of the ledger, not just say we need to have tax breaks so companies by more robots. we need to make sure we are investing human capital as well. host: i can add that i bet t can

agree with this as a professor having automated spellcheckers does not always mean people write better papers. you still need those editors and teachers out there to teach people and teach people how to write and make the writing better. guest: that is a good example. that gives teachers more time if they can quickly find errors, they can do what they do best, which is teaching, instructing, showing people how to write a paper, how to make their writing flow more, how a student can make a point more simply. they can do the more interesting bits of a job if they can quickly find the errors in a paper or assignment. host: hopefully it works like that. a question i have for you,

james, there was a recent survey of warehouse workers that shows their concerns and optimism about automation. i want to go through that quickly with you from the harvard business review. some of the concerns workers had about automation was fear of job loss, inadequate training on the automation, and unreliable technology. some of their optimism about automation was that it would make their jobs safer, they would be able to produce things weaker and more efficient, and be able to do high-quality work. are these the common concerns you see about automation when you talk to workers and businesses? guest: i think that sums up peoples concerns and hopes and another basic economic principle, there are trade-offs. you have benefits and costs.

most people realize we are probably not going to start either removing machines, nor do they think it is likely that we are going to stop adding machines. obviously, there is going to be concerns about jobs. it is tough to tell someone don't worry, there will be some other job for you. it is always sort of a leap of faith. that leap of faith has been justified for 150 years. we have been able to find new things for people to do. there is a competitive aspect. if your company does not want to modernize and add machines, some other will. if companies in your country don't want to do that, companies and some other country will. let's not add any new machines.

that is a false sense of security. it is a temporary feeling because competitive pressures will push companies eventually to update technology where they can. i think the key is that people feel secure that if they lose their jobs that they are going to get the training, that they are going to have the safety net for a while. people have to have confidence in that if they are going to accept the disruption that is natural in any dynamic economy. people that are worried, that is something for government policymakers to address. host: a story recently that they say the states of nevada and south dakota have the highest share of workers at high risk of automation. why is this risk of automation different in some states than others? should this be across-the-board across the u.s. as companies

modernize? guest: i think that has to do with the kinds of companies. different states have different weightings of different business sectors. that is why i would think it is different in one place. i have not seen that study. i am not surprised. there might be a greater risk in different areas. host: let's go back to our phone lines and talk to keith from florida. good morning. caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: we can. go ahead. caller: interesting conversation. one of my things is the interaction of human beings is what we are not keeping up on. at some point the teaching has to end, and life experiences have to start. you have to have skills to get through life. these people change jobs so often that they do not stay there long enough to get the

skills and experience of the job. i have a situation that i could not do now that i did 30 years later. i took $300 in my truck and my dog and i moved from melbourne, florida, in 1990. within one day, i had a place to stay, a job, because i went and rented a hotel room and called places and talk to them personally and got hired on the phone. today, you have to fill out an application online. you don't talk to these people. we educate, but there is no life experiences. now, we are buying things from automation. we could live off our funds sitting in -- our phones sitting in one room. we are not having life experiences with people. we are reading it from paper. all them studies look good on paper, but they never seem to

work out in real life experiences. that is the problem. host: go ahead and respond, james. caller: i -- guest: i think that is important. this is what concerns me. like that dog by the way. you need to have real expenses dealing with humans. my concern with this is the pandemic and the work at home and doing everything over zoom, which can help productivity, especially for younger workers, maybe now their initial jobs will all be remote or via zoom. they missed that experience of being at a workplace and the soft skills of coworkers, understanding expectations of bosses. all those soft skills i am worried younger workers are not gaining.

it is one thing if you are in an office you have worked out for years and then you go hybrid. you know those people. you have been in the workforce for a while. my concern is a lot of younger workers will not get those skills, and that will weigh on them going forward. as someone who has hired a lot of people for various positions, i know i would never hire someone without personal contact. i suppose if you are hiring thousands of people a month like amazon, but i want to know who that human being is. i don't just want a collection of resume lines or have an ai figure out this is a good worker. i want to understand what they can bring to a job. host: let's go to ed calling from indianapolis. good morning. caller: interesting topic today. in the past, i worked on research in automating construction, which as james

said non-repetitive physical things are hard to do. trying to make construction more efficient was our quest. one of the things we stumbled upon was an automated bricklaying machine. at the time it seemed strange to us. it is more prevalent than you would think. when you talk about job loss, it could scare the mason, but as many people in the construction industry no, masons are a dying breed. finding a way to make that technology work might create more opportunities for masons and masonary companies because people would choose a brick facade because they know they can get it done. while it would perhaps be threatening to the mason, in the bigger stream, it leads to

efficiency and more opportunities for that piece of construction. great topic and one that was interesting for me in the construction industry trying to find those automation opportunities. guest: i think that is another interesting example. it shows that another way that automation can create jobs. if you can do something more efficiently and make the existing products more efficient, you can have a greater supply of homes. it can create actual demand for the product and create more jobs than we would have otherwise. that kind of topic, like construction automation, is also a topic i write a lot about in my newsletter on sub stack.

i urge viewers to check it out. host: one of our social media followers has a contingent i want you to tackle. this person writes, the people that lose out to automation are the older workers, the ones over 50. does automation affect one sector of the job market more than other when it comes to age? guest: that sort of situation, what to do -- maybe somebody in their mid-50's, whether they lose the job because of changing technology, or they lost the job because of trade or the company moved to a different country or part of the u.s., that is an extremely difficult situation, which is why -- it is difficult to retrain people.

it is tough to learn new things. it is a difficult -- automation affects the entire workforce, but the ability to adapt and change for some people gets a little difficult when they are older, which is why we need to make sure we have a strong retraining system, a strong safety net to help people as they find that next job. that is why it is not just about the private sector, adding machines, adding robots, but also the government's role in helping soft and or smooth -- soften or smooth those disruptions. host: we have both been in journalism a long time. we know you have to be ready to do something new because your old job can go away at any moment. guest: it is certainly an

industry that has been disrupted by technology. host: let's go to our phone lines. mark from new jersey. good morning. caller: good morning, jesse. good to see you. i take issue with something the gentleman said about how worker productivity has not increased at the rate wages have. i don't know if he is not factoring in for inflation, but if you go to the bureau of labor statistics, it is clear that since 1979 real wages of nonsupervisory workers have only increased by 17% since 1979. productivity has increased by 61.8%. that means productivity has increased three and a half times

faster than real wages. the other thing i want to say quickly is we hear this thing about training and education every time there is some sort of massive downsizing of workers. it is just window dressing. it is just pr. it is meaningless unless there will be jobs available once the people have been retrained. thank you. guest: interestingly enough, the very issue the caller raised, the disconnect between productivity and pay, is the exact thing i wrote about my latest substack. it is an incredible myth that people think there is this long-term disconnect between how productive workers are and their pay. there was a disconnect in the 1970's and 1980's. we don't see that anymore.

wages have gone up by 30%. when you adjust properly for who the workers are, productivity, wages, you will see that even going back decades that productivity and pay have tracked pretty close. they continue to track pretty close. i urge people to check out the sources i just mentioned. i know the caller has seen this chart showing productivity going up and wages going nowhere in this huge gap. i think that is a myth. i think i make a pretty strong case. as far as education training, we do not do a good job. a lot of what we do at the american enterprise institute's think harder about how to do a better job at that. there is concern always that there will not be jobs around and people worried about automation for 150 years that

jobs will not be around, but we have managed to create more jobs. i remember when people were super worried and a lot of new stories about automation taking jobs during the pandemic, we have the lowest unemployment in 50 years. host: let's talk to alan calling from scottsdale, arizona. caller: thank you for c-span. i have been an owner for 35 years in the mailing technology. it is a simple formula. when i go into analyze anybody to help them in terms of saving money, it is basically this. 15 dollars an hour equals $86,000 of equipment. one employee. i have a customer that is ready to do 100,000 letters a day in his plans.

you take a look at that and provide them with an inserter that folds the stuff and shoots it out. he needs two pieces of equipment. if one goes down, he will never get that 100,000 out a day. the other side of the thing with older people, i am 73. i don't plan on retiring. if i am running around in a wheelchair, might think about it. if you look at the pool of people, we have less people out there in the marketplace to hire, quality people. it is across-the-board, whether it is an 18-year-old not wanting to go to college versus a 65-year-old. i would hire a 65-year-old if he is healthy, or she. it is all about what they bring to the party as an individual to

the company. when you have a piece of equipment that is $180,000 doing 10,000 an hour, you have a scenario where how many people does it take to run the equipment? host: i'm going to let you respond to what he said. guest: he made up one good point. -- he made one good point. if you have a tight labor market, companies will care less about a little gray hair if someone can do the job. it is a classically -- classic cliche that the best social program is a job. during the pandemic we had a tight labor market, and wages were rising across the board for lower skilled, lower income workers. you have to start with the basics.

basics is having a dynamic economy that is creating jobs, where there is a tight labor market. host: let's talk to david calling from georgia. good morning. caller: good morning p how are you? host: just fine. go ahead. caller: [indiscernible] it made no difference who was paying. i am 72. i watched the whole thing change. we gradually went to automation. we eliminated the low skill person. we have access to reach out from the first grade to the 12th grade. you can do anything and

everything in that length of time. we need to be challenging their minds from the very beginning to what they are interested in. technology. they know what to do. when i started out, the first job was a -- every man, woman, and child had a job. at that time, i think everything was based on housing. went away from the thing. gradually ease away from the basics, things we had to have. we had to have clothes. we had to have a place to stay. you have to have somebody lay the bricks. nobody knows how to do a thing. host: go ahead and respond

before we run out of time. guest: i will respond with a quote from one of my favorite economists who says the only music of life's uproar. the only music of life is change. we have to accept it. we need to get ourselves and our children ready for it. in the end, i think you get a better world because of it. host: we would like to thank james pethokoukis, senior fellow at the american enterprise institute, for coming on this one. thanks so much. guest: thanks for having me. host: still ahead, our weekly spotlight on podcast segment will feature brothers diane brock benefiel and their podcast -- brothers ty and brock

benefiel and their podcast the climate pod. you can call and talk about your most important political issue. you see the numbers on screen. start calling now. we will be back with your calls in just a moment. ♪ >> exploring the people and events that tell the american story on american history tv. on the presidency, abraham lincoln scholars talk about the 16th president's speeches and what they revealed about his views on the constitution. we will feature the annual lincoln form with discussions on abraham lincoln and the civil war with lucas wore, and carolyn janie, author of paths of war. watch american history tv every weekend and find a full schedule

on your program guide. >> i can report to the nation america is on the move again. >> live tuesday, march 1, the state of the union. preston bided addresses the nation reflecting on his first year in office and laying out his agenda for the year ahead. live coverage begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern. we will take your phone calls and social media reactions. the state of the union address, live tuesday, march 1, at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we are back. this is our open phone segment where you can call in and talk about the most important political issue on your mind. we are going to open up regular lines for this segment. republicans, yan