Letter NYT Oct 29 200?

Doubts about the usefulness of the work done by Nobel laureates in economics (News story, Oct. 20) seem justified. There is little down-to-earth professional analysis of the serious threat to the health of the American economy from the replacement of human labor by robots, computers, and overseas labor that increasingly attracts investment.
Lengthy divergent explanations have been offered for the problems caused when new technologies gave producers new powers. Robert B. Reich explains the problem in his new book Supercapitalism, as caused by excessive competition, abetted by undue political influence and financial deregulation. In his new book, The Conscience of a Liberal, (Book Review, Oct 21), Paul Krugman clarifies the corrupt political failures and disastrous political consequences of economic dysfunction, without explaining the realities of economic structures underlying both his and Reich’s analyses.
The presidential candidates all seem to be preparing for office in a lost utopia ruled by the classic doctrines of Adam Smith when investment in business meant middle-class jobs for Americans, who paid taxes and joined strong unions. And to make that system work, taxes paid for an infrastructure that is now seriously in disrepair, including roads, bridges, seaports, sewer systems, and public education to the average level employees needed in those days to do their industrial jobs.
We don’t need new academic analyses to explain how new technology and globalization changed all that, abetted by A Dearth of Taxes” (Editorial, Oct. 22). Obviously investment in more productivity means more robots, more computers, cheap foreign labor, fewer American production jobs, and vast profits that have largely gone to the top 5% of the population, creating Reich’s competitive rat-race and Krugman’s political sewer. Our dysfunctional financial, corporate, and political structures provide all the explanation needed.
What we do need is a credible professional analysis of our outdated economic structures and new market realities. That kind of analysis will be needed for any meaningful reform that might create a more sustainable society.