Alex Imas

That meal tastes like garbage.

You haven't succeeded.

So when the tasks are interrelated, screwing up on one or two tasks means you did not complete your job.

And it basically is kind of almost a zero-one sort of relationship.

So the extent of that complementarity at how these tasks are related will determine the extent to which

automation is going to affect the labor market.

And we don't have good numbers on that.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So that's something we need data on.

The other part that we really need much more data on, and I recently was quoted as saying we need almost like a Manhattan Project level effort on this, is this is a term from economists called elasticity of consumer demand.

And that basically means how much will people buy more of something when the price changes?

Mm-hmm.

Let's say a person becomes a lot more productive.

For the same sort of resources, they can make a lot more of the product.

Their wage rises.

What does that mean for the labor market?

If they become more productive, given the same kind of inputs, their wage rises, but also the firm's probably going to be paying less money to produce the same output.

If it's a competitive industry, the prices are going to go down.

If the consumers don't respond by buying a lot more of the product,