The Luddites Had a Point: Displaced Craft Workers Fell from 70th Percentile to Poverty
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-10-07
Anna Stansbury argues that the generation of craft workers disemployed by machines was genuinely worse off than the counterfactual without the industrial revolution — falling from roughly the 70-80th earnings percentile into poverty. The historical analogy is often invoked in current debates about AI's impact on jobs.
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