About this book:

This book provides a comprehensive historical and policy analysis of how technological innovation—from the mechanized loom to modern artificial intelligence—reshapes labor markets and affects the working poor. By tracing the evolution of automation through the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, the New Deal era, and the digital revolution, the text illustrates a recurring pattern: technology significantly boosts productivity and material abundance while simultaneously displacing traditional skills, devaluing labor's bargaining power, and hollowing out middle-skill occupations. The narrative emphasizes that the economic fate of workers is not determined by technology alone, but by the institutional and policy frameworks—such as unions, education systems, and social insurance—that mediate these transitions.

The analysis delves into the specific challenges of the current era, including the rise of the service economy, platform capitalism, and algorithmic management. It highlights how digital tools and AI have shifted automation from physical tasks to cognitive prediction and decision-making, often increasing worker surveillance and precarity. The text critiques traditional responses, noting that while education and retraining are essential, they are frequently reactive, underfunded, and insufficient to address the structural shifts caused by "routine-biased" technological change and globalization. It further explores the geographic dimensions of this shift, noting how "superstar" cities thrive while deindustrialized regions fall into cycles of disinvestment and social decay.

To address these systemic challenges, the book proposes a multifaceted policy blueprint centered on shared prosperity and worker agency. Key recommendations include the creation of portable benefits systems that follow workers across nonstandard jobs, the establishment of sectoral wage boards to set industry-specific standards, and the implementation of "mission-oriented" public service employment in the green and care economies. Furthermore, the book advocates for new data rights and algorithmic transparency to protect workers from opaque digital management, alongside fiscal reforms like "automation dividends" or sovereign wealth funds to ensure that productivity gains from AI and robotics are distributed broadly.

Ultimately, the book argues that an inclusive automated future is a social and political choice rather than a technological inevitability. By moving from a reactive to a proactive policy posture, the text suggests that society can harness the power of innovation to eliminate working poverty and build a new social contract. The concluding chapters emphasize that the most successful technological transitions in history were those that empowered workers through collective voice and robust public investment, providing a roadmap for navigating the current era of unprecedented technological upheaval.

What You'll Find Inside:

• The book traces how technological transitions from the mechanized loom to AI have reshaped labor markets and poverty patterns, showing that outcomes depend on institutional context rather than technology alone.
• It identifies three core policy families for addressing technology-driven displacement: education/training (general vs. specific human capital), income/wage policies (minimums, subsidies, tax credits), and job creation/guarantees (public service employment, green/care economy investments).
• The current wave of AI and platform capitalism automates cognitive tasks and fragments employment through algorithmic management, creating new challenges for worker voice, data rights, and benefit portability in nonstandard work arrangements.
• Historical case studies reveal that successful policy responses require proactive design, timing alignment with technological change, and complementary approaches—no single tool suffices, but coherent packages can transform displacement into mobility.
• The concluding blueprint proposes an inclusive automated future through portable benefits systems, sectoral wage boards, lifelong learning hubs, mission-oriented public jobs, and place-based industrial policy to ensure productivity gains are broadly shared.

Who's It For:

This book is designed for labor economists, policy planners, and practitioners seeking to understand the historical patterns and policy responses to technology-driven displacement. It will be particularly valuable for those working on workforce development, social insurance reform, and labor market regulation who need evidence-based insights into what has worked—and what hasn't—in past technological transitions to inform current policy design for the AI and platform economy era.