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NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio

Politicians’ ability to talk a good game is too often inversely proportional to their performance in office. A case in point:

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City went on Tucker Carlson’s show last night to try to resurrect his presidential campaign by warning of how so many people will be thrown out of work by the growth of automation. Like a typical politician, de Blasio had only tepid suggestions on how to counteract this trope. And he had no real answer when Tucker asked, if so many jobs are soon going to disappear, why we are letting so many low-skilled workers enter our country illegally every year?

Now, calling de Blasio an idiot is easy, but somehow experience tells us that this constructed panic over robots taking our jobs is not the lesson we should be taking from history. Robots have been around for 65 years, yet despite this, we have foolishly exported millions of jobs to Mexico and China. Still, the United States unemployment is near the lowest in history ... 3.7%. And this low rate would be even lower if Trump could persuade US manufacturers to return home.

Precisely what will occur to take up the possible employment slack due to automation I can’t exactly predict. But I am fairly certain that accommodations will occur — work week changes, work day duration reductions, more people working from home, service expectation changes. e.g.s, package delivery services, Uber, better healthcare services, leisure-time services, Grubhub, etc,) ... all of which improve our quality of life ... while providing jobs.

So, Mayor de Blasio, I  doubt that your hail-Mary pass will save your campaign and your attempt to ruin the United States like you are ruining the Big Apple.