Useless Mouths
2nd March 2014
John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, explains it all to you.
So what’s it all about? The Second Machine Age is an addition to the growing pile of books about the vanishing middle class, books such as Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and Tyler Cowen’s Average is Over. If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s the message: Great swaths of the pen-pushing middle classes are about to lose their jobs to smart machines.
The authors offer TurboTax as an illustration. Why use an H&R Block tax preparer when, for much less money (the basic version costs $29.99) and a modest investment of time, TurboTax will do the job for you? You get a better service at a lower price. The creators of TurboTax get rich—one is a billionaire. Tens of thousands of tax preparers lose their jobs.
This has been going on for a while. You could ask a travel agent; or, much easier to find, an ex-travel agent.
Gee, there’s an echo in here.