Far too much of the chatter about jobs and technology is built around static analysis. Robot workers replace human workers. Assuming much smarter machines — such as self-driving vehicles — here comes mass technological unemployment.

But the effect of tech on labor markets is dynamic, not static. Automation may increase demand for goods and services, and thus the jobs producing them, by allowing their production to be performed more cheaply.

As machines can do more and more, eventually might the number of jobs flatten, decline, and then disappear? Well, as technology analyst Benedict Evans has explained, the transition might take 20 or 30 years. By that time “effectively all current truck drivers will have quit anyway — you won’t replace them, but you won’t necessarily put anyone directly out of work."

Read the full article on the automation economy by James Pethokoukis at American Enterprise Institute