Economists Invoke Spinning Jenny: Craft Workers Once Smashed Hargreaves' Machines
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-10-07
Economist Anna Stansbury argues that even in the least-disruptive scenario, AI still implies substantial disruption — the Industrial Revolution impoverished swathes of high-paid craft workers. Soumitra Shukla adds the historical detail: once the spinning jenny went on sale, hand spinners fearing unemployment broke into Hargreaves' house and destroyed his machinery, forcing him to flee to Nottingham. Fear of tech-driven job loss has always been a real social force, not an academic abstraction.
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