What percentage of luddites/protectionists are rational?
Question B: Rising use of robots and artificial intelligence in advanced countries is likely to create benefits large enough that they could be used to compensate those workers who are substantially negatively affected for their lost wages.
88% agree
that paints a misleading picture tho, here are some select comments:
Though these techs will almost surely ↑ GDP, losers almost surely won’t be compensated.
The key word is "could". It is unclear how effective the political institutions will be in making this happen. I am pessimistic.
But i am skeptical this will be pursued much in the US, witness the program on trade adjustment assistance
It is (alas) by no means clear that we can muster the political will to make the appropriate compensations.
But, of course, it is not likely that those benefits will in fact be used to compensate the losers.
The key word is "could". In the recent years the gains from tech have not trickled down much in terms of money.
(each line is a different comment. There are a couple I didn't pick because copying and pasting is boring)
Automation and globalisation are roughly comparable, in the sense that they both hurt low-skilled workers, or at least depress their wages, but have positive effects on GDP.
Now, since we can all agree that redistribution to the damaged groups is politically very unlikely, and retraining programs have been woefully unsuccessful, is it possible that a subset of Trump voters were rational to vote for his protectionism (if they were purely selfish)? And how many would be maximising their own utility in voting for a protectionist candidate in the future?
I really don't know the answer to this, but papers like this one and data like this make me think the number is quite a bit greater than 0%