i am truly and pleased to be able to invite him to and welcome him to conversations into manhattan neighborhood network for the nd time i wonder i wonder dr sure we were to talk about a subject which both you and i and a growing number of people would say would agree is perhaps the leading problem confronting mankind but seems not to be in the normal discourse addressed by nearly enough policies decision makers much less even intellectuals and so forth that being the whole question of the relationship between technology and labor in the overall operation of the economy we want to talk about that subject but i wonder st before we do it will you could share with myself and with the cable television audience your own background please i know you have a doctorate degree in economics you've been to the us but could you talk about your background you were born in france and so how on earth and sort of in a sense establish for the audience you would in a certain sense underscore the fact that you are head of a very important agency which i think is called the office of scientific advisor to the united nations you were the head of that office that was a very responsible job in this age came on prop camera but in general it is the problem of the very very rapid technological and economic potential of our developing world economy version national economies but that we have structural problems that are not adequately addressed in terms of the distribution of income and we're not nearly performing anything like the stage that we might be able to and things are are we have we have a problem in that employment or the general you know back that there has been technological displacement of workers within the economic process and unfortunately from certain perspective it looks like it will continue into the future if it's a future we don't have some answers to or if you could address you know that broad one also because to bring in the distinction of what they call unemployed and under employed now i'm prepared to the numbers get up to where it becomes staggering and it's also a problem if i mean trajectory just on top of this problem that is if they're underemployed they are also as you say unable to have the income in order to consume what the economy is able to produce and so the economy will not perform well united states economy has performed very generally coming out of the term of the united states and i guess it's happening on the place is the fact that the technology and the productive capability of the technological systems is creating the ability to produce more and more goods and services and yet in the in the operation of our economy what it results is for the people for so many of the people if they are fired from their job or downsized because the technology is able to do what it required many more people to do in the past and this is the problem that seems not to be adequately addressed i believe in the one that you are particularly since urban technological displacement of labor in the productive unemployed good now this is a problem for this is the problem so that the economy can function and you you would like to see a free market or a market economy function to be healthy in the world and meet the needs of people right i understand and so on but if you haven't you said since the industrial revolution i i just did a program a while back about the and implications of the steam engine and the industrial revolution itself oh purpose in a certain sense of the industrial revolution was to displace labor from perhaps some of the onerous pasts of creating goods and services and so what some people see it that way that labor is a labor saving devices that we have we don't have to have labor in order to produce and now but and and it was and afflalo in the nd war here in the united states our economy was booming productivity rose very smartly and wages track productivity very well in the united states now i don't know until about nine hundred and seventy three you know after nine hundred and seventy three for some reason that is after i seventy three wages began to stagnate and they are even now coming down even in the united states even though the productivity capability the overall ability of the economy to produce goods and services is rising with the advancement of technology but the labor is not tracking and more and more people which  upward increase in their living standard are seeing a stagnating or even a decreasing standard even in this richest economy you know the world and many people say it's the source of a free floating sense of angsty or political disquietude the distribution via wages or ploy many of the productive overall production of the economy through productivity analysis worked until nine hundred and seventy three and then it began not to work even in the united states after nine dollars and the trends are bad now and it seems not to be working well now the distribution of income by because labor you had and that moment there's a little production and in a capitalist way of thinking or in a traditional free market we think there ought to be not just you know there are not be just one giant monopoly trusters on one country that rules the whole economy of the world the competition is good because and that can make for seas is that to say then that a certain sense on a on a nationals on a world scale that the workers that were being paid such high salaries in the united states immediately after the nd world war  until now until this current phase and that they were being paid artificially high wages in terms of the market and is it now i want to just point of that and that they are going to have to be satisfied with taking us and less income because they're now being brought into competition with labor that work for much less in other parts of the world and that the income levels of people d in the united states are working people are going to be coming down much less going up as they had in the little bit for increasing consumption capability and krugman this is a idea it's an interesting idea it's an interesting idea i don't know who would administer that fun i mean would that be a new agency would be developed would  consumption into the because the overall operation of the economy is being heard because there's a lack of consumer purchasing power among the people you know and you need to do it with had this unemployment insurance in the united states somebody would be working and then they would lose their job and they would have a period we've always seen it as and you say you know tempered tide them over until they find another job now so in a certain sense your consumer injection of income would be in a certain sense pie giving them  typing them over and you keep the work ethic and so forth intact if you do not give them too much credit would tide them over in a certain sense until they get together get get get go get going you know what what about like in a sense with an opponent what about the problem and or is it a problem maybe it's wrong maybe i'm wrong or something like that what about the problem that the workers we were talking earlier about structurally technologically displaced workers that the workers who are being displaced by that downsizing movement with the rapid development of technology that can do massive amounts of production and so forth that the struck the unemployment is permanent employees know that it is structural on him that the technology has finally caught up to us to where the real source of production is technology and what a labor is going to be able to claim income for doing in the name of labor is no longer and will no longer are and the trend will be that they will not be needed in fact they will get in the way of their machine so they could produce tremendous amounts of goods and services and that the machine or the technology the robots yeah all sewn that by a relatively small group of people but i would that's another question now what do you do in that case because they're not going to get across there's not going to be job opportunities developing for them that they would be able to compete in the marketplace with d so they're not it's not an employment where you have for a little while and you find a job there are going to be remunerative jobs are going to make it possible for them to live that way in the future it so for instance if you go another way know our depression here in the united states we had and so what but i would propose to a different notion and i want to address if i may this idea work that this idea of a lever and so forth and i would say another pete let me tell you a piece of work that was done in your own home country a piece of a great body of work that was created in your own home country and that was the paintings of vincent van gogh he painted absolute working because that's what he really wanted to do he wasn't working because he was on a job or picking up papers along side of a river road track a mother who loves a child and loves served a child very well coming with a tremendous productive capability that they can produce in the mass market automobiles television sets sarah lee kate and other kinds of things that can be produced in the mass market none of which is much craftsmanship to anything it's just a mass productive economy that has to have consumers to buy which can be bought and is needed you see we need we have that but then you have the possibility of people other realms of human activity karl marx as a sociologist would have said or most and the psychologist it's important that we have something to do that gives us a sense of doing something worthwhile van gogh when he painted felt very worthwhile that even into that painting and others did or most human emotions most of the relationships that there are between people are richer if they are not commodities side if they're not a matter of exchanging money value between them for these things that are going on is it possible for there to be the possibility that as by having them have some make work job or somehow that we did discuss the question of who owns the robots now who owns the capital instruments that are really responsible for production not make work real production they are increasingly responsible for producing things and is it not possible to have policies that could begin to look at economic democracy democracy or spreading ownership of the ownership of the robots well bringing the the people in on the investment you know the logic of business finance so that they can get those those product those those things will pay for themselves out of future earnings and open up an alternative way of distributing income or building consuming power into the mass of people that is in keeping with the way goods are being really really produced now giving them the ability to buy mass produced goods and the freedom to live a human life with isn't you know you know i'd like to paint or to pair with the children to live a human life and that would be a realm of activity that would not become modest size in another row but it would be work and that we don't have to turn every human function into something that is in the economy and grind human people up by trying to make them be sarah got robot function in the mass produced economy is there anything not to be addressed by that and to get away from the idea that we can only distribute income to people by work or by trying to have them be a work force in reserve or w p a or something like that but that they ought to begin to be going to stand what i'm saying is not a problem because the long term trend is they will have things that are pick up those little pieces of trash along with paper to the robots or something or if that is the case but to get away from this idea that the work the idea of work and maybe people are afraid that people might begin to become independently leisure and be able to do things without being but i  didn't standard question now and do understand it as a potential the potential solution or is it something we should insist employment employment employment ownership ownership ownership as a way of creating consumer purchasing power in the mass of his company and then very were to get their results from their activities company or under even if it was extended into the general society well then you would be extending in the long term purchasing power into the society if they had of mutual funds or distribution but they had a portfolio and they got money the way the well to do get money now which is by ownership of capital assets yeah i think it does look as if it's good five percent people and we're running into some real structural problems i think but yes i think it would be a good combination and we were graham answer to that their research on a ship and republicans would impact on sales and we will come back from a recession to an expansion and a boom of economy and we have to get a system to recover his  workbook and you give them a consumption moment for five hundred dollars after that is done they they would in the normal course of events and to pay that back pay right back so so i mean they can consume for as long as they can get so in a certain sense you're rear taxing and spending you're going to tax the international capital markets to the tribute to the mast and you intend that to be a permanent tax you intend that  people get to have such a series of the relationship and it has been it seems to me and has been they have been able to let's say purchase or buy the stock that represents the technology that is the source of the production and they have been able to wait for that period of time out of savings let's say and they've been able to wait for that period for those capital instruments to pay for themselves out of their future earnings and they did charles de gaulle had said at one dollar time to stick to wages alone is to stick to an eternal class struggle we must break out of the idea that we can't only have  level of investment be out of savings we asked people to do it but the mass of the people can't do that but the people who are well off have the capital to andy they can a certain saw for sure against loss they can unlock they can do they can and it's because they have that ability to invest in the future that they begin to keep getting more and more wealthy all the time they have all the more how money now this consumer tax that your or this consumer distribution  or is or the mass of the people cannot invest because they have a little left over from container of enough to consume now but it's there's not some way to be able to get them so that they could have the same advantages in a sense of access to capital credit so that they could purchase stocks or purchase robots similar to the way that the people who are well and now do have those robots pay for themselves out of the future earnings but i don't see how you can get around that payback period and then they have a piece of stock ownership of the robot and because they own the robot five years out on the basis of that ownership they have income now not on the basis of distributing a consumption based tax to them because that's not going to build any wealth into them or address the question of long term technological because the people cannot look long term beyond their immediate consumption is what has made it so that they are never that we have such an economic plutocracy the people who have that advantage in are able to gain income from their capital and from the ownership of the well farai is what it is it's part of the problem because the distribution of income to laborers is not working so we have a long term structural problem that a consumption oriented aspect will not address a consumption oriented aspect and we need it in the short term but there has to be also a long term i would suggest a long term there might long term policy direction that will address and bring the mass of the people in accord with the way you know winds are really produced so that it takes five years or so to pay back for your capital investment if you begin to income after that income has that stock has paid for itself the rationale for for the money being given to them is not a fragile tax system that might be devoted to words and it is the base it is the same it is ownership of the robot or the ownership of the stock ownership in the corporation produces the robot producing the goods and services that's the source of the income mall term source of income for the mass of the people in a democratic system problem most people cannot even think about getting any investment income or any of this capital because they can't wait for the capital pay for it's help their immediate live all in their consumption and that's been one of the reasons perhaps they'd never think about it but i don't know that doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't think about it particularly if the downsizing and the displacement of workers by technology is structural and long term and the trend is away from the real import of power i mean problem that confronts the operation of the world economy in the national economies and it's a major problem confronting mankind and it certainly is i'm i'm not sure that many questions are raised obviously it's a big subject and i  do think that conference is one that ought to be held so that people can begin to address that issue i don't know wondering who the agency would be to what degree with that tax because it sounds a little bit like we're taxing and spending taxing the capital markets in order to distribute to people and if it's a little bit like mr dawkins says let's make it a law and you know i don't know but there's a lot of questions but it's absolutely beginning to address the most fundamental question another part of the next but there ought to be a conference of conflicts to discuss as all courts are beyond the normal way in which things are functioning because we're heading for some shoals as it were and we need to deal with that ok well dr shah tell thank  internationally and solve not in new york in new york city contacted then he is up he was a science advisor to the united nations pressing the question is perhaps the major problem confronting mankind in its various dimensions that we're skirting about here coming in thank you ron until until next time