automation in the textile industry. Despite cotton textiles becoming one of the largest sectors in the British economy, real … wages for cotton weavers did not rise for decades. As E.P. Thompson emphasized, automation forced workers into unhealthy … factories with close surveillance and little autonomy. Automation can increase wages, but only when accompanied by new tasks …

by the relative wage declines of worker groups specialized in routine tasks in industries experiencing rapid automation … capital. Automation technologies expand the set of tasks performed by capital, displacing certain worker groups from … between 1980 and 2016. Our task displacement variable captures the effects of automation technologies (and to a lesser degree …

were obstacles: the manual switchboard was the fulcrum of a complex system which had developed around it, and automation … profitable for AT&T in larger markets--hence diffusion expanded as costs declined and service areas grew. We show that automation … supported AT&T's continued growth, generating a positive feedback loop between scale and automation that reinforced AT&T's high …

. As a consequence, it has promoted inefficiently high levels of automation. Moving from the US tax system in the 2010s to … restore the optimal level of automation. If moving to optimal taxes is infeasible, more modest reforms can still increase … employment by 1.14-1.96%, but in this case efficiency can be increased by imposing an additional automation tax to reduce the …