Economic growth is a product of creative destruction - with each new invention and innovation, old technologies become useless. In this 60 Minutes segment on the impact of robots on the United States economy, Steve Kroft points out the destabilizing effects of this growth mentioned by Acemoglu and Robinson. Kroft interviews MIT economists Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, who believe the current rate of destruction is greater than the pace of creation when it comes to jobs, contributing to the United State's high unemployment rate.
As more advanced robots are developed they are able to do increasingly complicated tasks so that workers doing routine, relatively structured jobs are now easily replaced. Nonetheless, the astonishing scale and pace of creation has led to a massive technology industry and increasing wealth and productivity for the United States. In a nation with extractive institutions this growth could never have occurred.
As Kroft says, "economic evolution has been happening for centuries and society has always adapted to change creating more jobs in the process". This temporary destabilization and imbalance is part of a transformative process necessary for ultimate prosperity.
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