Hacker News Reader

Unemployment is low, labor force participation is high. We do not currently have an excess of labor, and a good deal of the reason that we had inflation was that there was no pool of waiting labor to soak up money injected into the economy during covid -- so instead that money bid up prices.

View on HN

We have uber drivers complaining about too many people driving for uber in my area, so I don't think waymo would be welcome. We still have people who are unemployed or underemployed, for whatever reason, and automation pushes have huge resistance (e.g. dock workers in America don't want automation to hit ports like they have in China).

You are never not going to have some people who are unemployed. Don't mistake that for the idea that the economy is demand-constrained. It's clearly not right now, and automation of Uber workers would certainly make someone unhappy, but it would also very clearly lead to economic growth and vastly more people being better off than worse off.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com