It is more than a bit bizarre reading pieces that talk about automation or job-killing AI as something new and alien. These are forms of productivity growth. They allow more goods and services to be produced for each hour of human labor.

Productivity growth is usually thought of as a good thing. It’s the reason that we don’t have half the U.S. workforce employed in agriculture growing our food. Instead, it is around 1.0 percent of the U.S. workforce, and we grow enough to be huge food exporters.

Productivity growth allows for workers to have higher wages. The period in our history where we had the most rapid productivity growth was in the post-war boom from 1947 to 1973. Productivity growth averaged almost 3.0 percent a year. This was passed on in the form of higher real wages and........

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