YouSaid · the spoken record

Simon Johnson

lines on the record: 63
first: 2023-05-17
most recent: 2023-05-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Well, talk a bit about the book is a big part of What's Next, Tyler, because it's immensely fun. You get to go around the country and some other countries and really get feedback and hear the sorts of questions and pushback that you've been giving me today. So that's immense. But I think the next thing I'll do is write another book. I like writing books. I like working with my friends. We've got various ideas and things to explore. And it takes three or four years to bring one of these books to fruition. And then at the end of the day, people may not be interested. Maybe the news is something completely different for a while. So it's a big bet in terms of your personal time, but it's also fun. It's also fulfilling. And I feel it makes a contribution that I enjoy. And I really enjoy talking to people about the book Titan. I've really enjoyed talking to you. I always enjoy talking to you, Tyler. And I really appreciate this opportunity. So hopefully when the next book comes around, you'll have me on your show again.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ability to communicate. So, Deron and IH have a course based on the book Teaching at MIT Undergraduates Right Now it's a communications elective, Tyler. And we have a fantastic writing coach working with us and some superb TAs. And we're trying to help the students learn how to write persuasively about technology. Technology policy, sure, but about technology more broadly. It's a lot of fun. And I think a good complement to their other parts of education, which are obviously much more technical, much more mathematical. So I'm interested in can people communicate ideas? Can they communicate with me? Can they communicate with other people, particularly about technical topics, and do it in a way that isn't condescending, a way that's explains things clearly, a way that invites further debate and conversation? And then do they listen to the feedback they get and sharpen the messages?”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think an engineer or a science undergraduate degree is a very strong preparation for the modern world. I also find that for the right people where it's a match, an MBA type qualification, and they come in many shapes and sizes, you know, I find that that can be really quite helpful to them. I know some remarkably talented people who fit exactly that description. I'm sticking with the business model, Tyler.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A great question. I think a big part of what went right in the era of Henry Ford was the so-called engineer managers. The people who created the new task, the people who designed companies, the people who built these organizations, I think they got a little bit of a bad name later, Tyler. It's like middle management. Perhaps that was deserved. Perhaps things became too bureaucratic. But I do think that people who come from engineering or people who like engineering and people who want to be managers, they want to organize things and make things more productive. I do think that's a very important group of people. That's the people who I spend most of my time with in the classroom. And I push them to think about this issue of, you know, what's the social angle? What's the task creation? Why does that matter? If you're just focused on automation and displacing workers, what are the consequences of that? I have to say these people are extremely engaged in that conversation, Tyler. Of course, that's just the classroom conversation. What will they do in their careers 10, 20, 30 years from now? Remains to be seen. I hope I get to see it.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did like everything everywhere all at once. I know that's just the most recent movie I saw, also. It did give me a headache. I had to close my eyes at a certain point. But I did like the whole idea that we have multiple empowering personalities that we can draw on in different circumstances. I thought that was supremely wonderful. And I did really like the fact that the Asian actors won so many Oscars. I thought that was outstanding.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he wrote the book 30 years ago, and I think we've had some dystopian moments along the way, Tyler. I mean, I think the key idea that he has is that technology-powered future will lead to a fragmentation of society and to a collapse of the United States and some sort of political disunion. And there's been plenty of pressures that were, you know, maybe even the pressures today are unimagination compared to when he wrote 30 years ago. I don't think it ends up quite so bad. I think I'm an immigrant to this country. I like a lot about this country. I like the American political system, Tyler, which I know is a deeply unfashionable thing to say. But I like the fact that, you know, people are always taking swings with each other. We don't have a closed elite. Didn't have to go to Oxford and study a certain degree in order to become prime minister. I like the intensity of the back and forth in American politics. And I think, wasn't it Winston Churchill who said, a little condescending, but Churchill's mother was in America, and let's remember, the Americans always do the right thing after first exhausting all the other possibilities.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, Neil Stevenson's snow crash, first of all because Paul Krugman said in 1992 or something that it was the best possible predictor of the future, and it turned out to be pretty much right. But I think Stevenson predicted the metaverse. Stevenson predicted a bunch of things that happened to the sort of political social level. It's an exaggeration. It's a fun novel, but I think I'm still looking for any science fiction of any kind that's a better predictor of the future than that one.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I play tennis. I find playing tennis to be immensely challenging. It just makes you clear your mind. If you have anything else in your mind at all, you miss the ball and you embarrass yourself. And I just find that to be completely refreshing”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then we'll figure out later if there's consequences we need to deal with. But I think the problem is we don't do enough of the basic science and we don't convert enough of that into commercial products in the US.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that looking for There will be commercial applications of the human genome project is one of our favorites. That was actually turned down by private venture capital in the 1980s because they said, yes, you can do this, map out the human genome, but we don't know how you can monetize it. But that turned out to be a brilliant moneymaker and a great job creator because the basic science then could be appropriated in an appropriate manner by downstream firms who could build technology-based solutions. I think we got 300,000 jobs out of that, most of which are good paying jobs. That requires some imagination. That requires some commercial orientation. But we're not saying that the government should do what the private sector is already doing in terms of financing ventures. We're saying look for those big potential breakthroughs that could have commercial applications and seek solutions that address anything that the private market's not able to do along the way. If the private market can build it, Tyler, let them get on with it.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think what we're flagging there is potential and the potential that could be tapped. On our website, jumpstartingamerica.com, there's an interactive map, and you can put in different criteria. So if you like the idea of ranking places, you can change the ranking or change the weight on different elements. We did not put hours of sunshine in there, Tyler. Maybe we should in the next version. And then you could put that in the index. Totally valid point. I think the bigger argument that we're making there is look beyond the eastern west coast. There are some really great places full of talent in the US. Which ones will surge to the front? I don't know. That depends a little bit on who gets their act together and who gets focused on this. I do think the importance of a good university should not be understated. But that university should also feel pushed to engage with business, engage with finding jobs for graduates, helping startups, the kind of things that my university does in your university does very well, Tyler.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, actually, we've kind of gone the other way. We're a bit more encouraged, Tyler. I mean, you're right about, of course, about those big breakthroughs, and we are all about the breakthroughs there. But I think one of the things that strikes me as being a strength of the US is the depth of the bench. And all these other places where real estate prices are not so high, there's plenty of towns of people who want to live. And of course, there's massive spillover effects from investing in basic science, which is the basis of our argument. So why not, when we make those public sector investments, I mean, that's to get the spillovers, why not look more broadly outside of Boston, outside of New York, outside of San Francisco or Seattle, and attempt to make those places more central, tap into the talent that already exists in those places. And I think the shrinking of distance or are different view of distance, Tyler after the pandemic has got to be a helpful part of that.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there is no constitution exactly. There's just heuristics, and there's just what happens, and then establishing traditions. Look, it's not unusual in the British parliamentary system, certainly, for one party to gain control and keep control for a long period of time. That's what happened, that no party did previously. And so now the conservatives have had this long run. And you kind of run out of steam, I think, Tyler. You run out of ideas. Alternation of power will be good. But the parliamentary system is one in which, well, first you can get a majority with a minority of the vote. And also relatively small shift of the vote can give you a big majority. And those big majorities are unassailable. So I think it is the unfortunate downside of what is otherwise a pretty robust and definitely entertaining parliamentary system.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I see what you're saying. It wouldn't be an emotional. It wouldn't be an emotional breakup. Yes, possibly. That's a very intriguing notion and probably should be considered, I think NAFTA or USMCA as it is now, you know, has enough political baggage as it is in the US. And the U.S., Tyler, we haven't talked about this at all, but I think trade and trade policy and the politics of trade remain immensely complex in the US. And that's not getting easier. So I'm not sure that adding a significant additional piece to USMCA would be helpful or even feasible.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe it would. I mean, I think the people in NAFTA should worry about the British turning their backs on that too, honestly, Tyler”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe financial support to compete with the Germans. They found themselves, you know, the north of England had a rough ride for a while.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An answer, but tell us how I think London, I think London has long been this amazing place, this very dynamic place, a very entrepreneurial place. I mean, if you think about what started to go right in England before the Industrial Revolution, obviously Industrial Revolution was a British Midlands phenomenon, more than a southern phenomenon, but the commerce of London, the power of London as a trading centre, the openness of London to new ideas and new products, that was a very important part of what made Britain susceptible to and open to industrialization. So I think it's the appeal of London and the success of London over more than 500 years, Tyler. The north of England had a very good run, let's be clear, but it was a run that was based on factories and factories that concentrated workforces and all of that turned out to be fairly foot loose, particularly after the Empire declined and the British found they didn't have quite enough scale to compete with the Americans and not quite enough government support and corporate support.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I probably blame the Norman conquest for that one, Tyler. I mean, just kidding a little bit in terms of going back a thousand years. No, it's fine.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would love to predict a boom for Northern England, and it certainly is doing much better now than it did in the 1980s when I left the North of England. And, you know, to me, it seemed easier to break in and have success in the United States than in London, actually, at that time. It is a struggle for talent. Absolutely right, Tyler. Where do smart people want to live? Where do they want to settle down? Where do they want to have families? And people are willing to commute, have long arduous commutes into London. I think that it would be great if either the market or maybe the government could induce and persuade people to move to other parts of the country, including further north, but it has been a long-term struggle.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, that's a fantastic topic. I love the idea of more investment in infrastructure, of connecting the people in Northern England. So I'm from a town that's sort of on the border between the Midlands and north of England. And connections to other more prosperous places, reducing travel time, encouraging remote work, moving the high value jobs of headquarters and so on to lower cost real estate places. These are all great ideas. Of course, they have been discussed many times over for decades, and it hasn't happened. London is still an amazing magnet for talent, and that kind of swamps everything else. But Manchester has two good football teams. That might turn things around eventually.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a good question, Tyler. I think that if institutions have some predictive value, it's fairly long term. I mean, this is something I worked on at the IMF and we looked at other people were interested in this as well. I don't think it helps you that much think about one year's, two years, even five years. I do think it helps take a view on whether this is a more robust system, whether it's a system that can handle crises, whether the system that will suffer some sort of relapse and major economic collapse. A collapse will be hard to reverse, of course. So I think US has strong institutions. They don't prevent us from having a very bumpy ride and a ride that's getting bumpier, it seems last couple of decades.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Influence after 1989, 1991, I think those countries have worked long and hard with very mixed results in some places to build better institutions and the EU has helped them in that regard unquestionably.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think of institutions as being part of the sort of histories effect, if you can get it in a positive way, that if you grow and you strengthen institutions, which South Korea has done, it makes it much harder to relapse. There are plenty of countries that had spurts of growth without strong institutions and found it harder to sustain that. I mean, you make a very good point about the early 1960s. Tyler, there wasn't that much discussion that I've seen about institutions per se, but education, yes, absolutely. Culture, people made the same comparisons. They said Confucian culture is no good or won't lead to growth, and that's a problem for, for example, for South Korea. That turned out to be wrong. So I think institutions are sticky. I think history matters a lot for them. They're not predestination, though. You could absolutely carve your own way, but the carve your own way is harder when you start with institutions that are more problematic, less democratic, more autocratic control, less protection of property rights, all of these things can go massively wrong. But building better institutions and making them sustainable, well, I think Eastern Europe, the parts of the former Soviet Empire that managed to escape the Soviet...”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Settings. I mean, you find fantastic Irish leadership all over the place. In fact, I believe the chairman of UBS, which we were talking about UBS a few moments ago, is Irish origin.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think if you think about countries that have really done well but not entirely broken free of being middle income, South Korea is one of my favorite because my wife's parents were born in South Korea and I spent a lot of time talking with them and thinking about the country and talking with Korean economists. I think that you need to spread an education system that really encourages creativity and really helps you break from some of the strictures of the past. I think you need more entrepreneurship. I think you need a lot of integration with the world economy, a lot of exchange of ideas. Ireland, Tyler, is one of my favorite countries and a country that I would say is definitely broken free of the middle income trap. They did it with a lot of direct foreign investment. You don't have to have that. But they did it with an amazingly globalized people. Obviously a lot of integration into American society and other European societies. And I think it's probably at the human capital and probably about language and probably about being able to be productive in multiple different kinds of organizational settings and cultural.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not saying it puts you. Maybe or maybe it should have an impact on a lot of people and there should be niches for some of us that are less impacted by AI. I'm not sure, Tyler. It's a very good question. I was working this morning on a plane editing a document that was shared with a colleague over the internet. It just occurred to me how far we'd come since the 1990s, that I was actually using the internet on a plane to edit a document that was shared with a colleague on the other side of the world. I mean, I didn't expect that 10 years ago, let alone 25 years ago. So I think it remains to be seen. I don't see the future that clearly, Tyler. Perhaps you need to get drawn on the show as well.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have been surprised Drawn has not, I think drawn again because he spends a lot of time with that community and with computer scientists in general. I think he called this in our internal discussions pretty much right. We were lucky that some people gave us sort of a heads up on not exactly what was coming with GPT, but we did have some, let's say, orientation to that. So we were not taken by surprise by some of the things that surprised many people, particularly in December of last year. We took that in stride. I think it would have been quite disorienting if we had not had that fairly clear in our minds already.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to keep up with Ron, to be totally honest. We talked about writing this book and we kicked ideas around for about five years. And then all of a sudden, it was a pre-planned moment, but all of a sudden pretty much January last year, John said, right, let's start writing. We'd got some pieces already, but we worked flat out for six months. And that was super intense. And then we spent a lot of time doing fact-checking and cleaning things up and tightening text. But it was immensely probably the most intense six months of my working life, I would say. And that's more intense than working at the IMF during the financial crisis. So that's quite a benchmark.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think Jeron spends a lot of time thinking about the future of AI. He's very deeply in discussions with that community. He's always looking down the road, and Duron is very good at sort of seeing what's on the horizon, analyzing it, and then putting a sort of structure around it. I think I tend to look back at history.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good point. I think that it was certainly right for several hundred years, whether it started in 800 or 900. I think you can sort of debate that. The record's not very good. But I think the general idea that was put around by Renaissance scholars like Petrarch was that nothing good had happened from the fall of Rome for 900 years. And that turns out not to be true.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That higher, let's say, 5% or 3% of society, and they spent it building cathedrals. Next time you see a cathedral, next time anyone sees a cathedral, think about them as symbols of medieval despair and increasing productivity, but the failure to create shared prosperity in a very particular labor system that was with us not too long ago.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I kind of bought into this idea that you get from school books and so on about there was a dark age of very little innovation between the fall of Rome and the emergence of the Renaissance. Turns out when you look more closely, there was a huge amount of innovation in agriculture, in commerce, even in early industry. But what didn't happen, it didn't filter down to regular people. There was an increase in wealth or money that came to the church and to the state, for example, in medieval England, other parts of Western Europe. But a lot of that was funneled into these massive cathedrals that you see. And actually went in and dug up some of the economics of cathedrals and cathedral building, which is fascinating. I'd never paid attention to that. And you can sort of see, because these were simple economies, how the money was squeezed out of peasants, obviously. They were coerced or oppressed and restricted in their choices of employer. So they became more productive, but they were also squeezed harder. The Normans were very good at squeezing the English, for example. And those resources came to those.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think that was just an attempt to illustrate what market concentration means, Tyler. I'll go back and look and see if we need to insert some errata on that. But I think in general we're just trying to get across the point that if concentration prevents innovation, if concentration prevents development of varieties, if concentration keeps prices high, and of course there's a long history of concentration in various sectors where some aspect of that is true, then it's problematic. If it's fully satisfying the consumers and if you have enough progress innovation in a particular sector, then yes, sure, there's less to object to.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, sure, there's definitely competition in that sector and there's definitely been over-expansion and over exuberance. I think the regret actually there Tyler is much more about the impact of social media on political, economic and social discourse, the way that people talk to each other, the way what has happened to civility, and of course there's lots of concern, which is still concern. I'm not saying this has been completely established about the impact of social media on young people, young people's minds, young people's mental wellness, and so on. I think some of those social media companies could have been and should still be much more responsible and much more careful. Perhaps it's just a natural learning process. Perhaps we have to go through this and figure out how to be more responsible. I think there are some encouraging uses of technology out there. And that's one thing we emphasize in our book, right, Tyler. It's all about choices. The choices that we make, choices that we make socially, and choices that you and I can argue about or discuss on this kind of show that can impact what people develop and how they use it, in addition to whatever the lever.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, possibly, and that I think could be quite positive. Of course, we thought that about crypto as well at the beginning, and there were many discussions that I recall, I'm sure you recall around the beginning of the internet where there were thoughts that, oh, this could become a more distributed model, maybe power seeps away from large corporations. I think we tend to recombine things in this country in particular, Tyler. Again, we get big quickly and we let people get powerful quickly. And I think in the case of social media, we kind of regretted that. I think it's very hard to stand in the way of these powerful social processes like the adoption of technology like GPT. We can maybe find some policy adjustments along the way. I think we can certainly push people to find ways to use the technology, develop ways to use the technology that would enhance creativity, enhance productivity in a distributed way so all the intents don't go to corporations, but no guarantee at all we're going to get that outcome.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great question, Tyler. I suppose we should go back and look at when exactly people started to think Microsoft was, or IBM was so valuable, Microsoft was so valuable, Google was so valuable. There is certainly a lot of discussion about the value chain of AI and whether the place to be this more fundamental generative algorithm or whether it's going to be in the applications, sort of the downstream part of AI. I think it's all up for grabs personally. And I think it's also correct that many times it's a cliche, but a correct clich ⁇ that we underestimate the immediate impact. We overestimate the immediate impact of technology and underestimate the longer-term impact of technology, presumably the stock price would reflect people's views of the longer-term impact.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that more workers may be displaced from previously well paying jobs and without creating new tasks, therefore worker productivity doesn't go up. You may pay some people, maybe the designers of AI algorithms, more money, but most people may well be paid less in real terms.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've never been bothered by the top wealth, Tyler. I mean, it's never been a major concern of mine. What bothers me more is lack of good wages, rising wages for people who haven't completed college, let's say, or didn't go to college. I think that's where it's the stagnation of that since the 1970s, which was quite different, of course, from what happened for the 30 or 40 years before that. And I think that's unnecessary and we can do better. But it's a very hard process to reverse. It's not a new process, and it's a process that's very rooted in the fact that earlier in the Industrial Revolution, people like Henry Ford, when they brought in automation, also created a lot of new tasks for workers that didn't previously exist. And workers, even without a lot of skill, became much more productive. That productivity was shared with them through higher wages, through unions and other things.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hope he's right David Dron and I run a little center at MIT for the study of the future of work, so we talk about this a lot and David is always really sharp on the money and into the latest data. I think he would say he does say that after coming out of the pandemic, it's not clear if this is going to be, if this is a trend or a blip. But I think some wage compression would be very helpful at this point, Tyler.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would like more tech advantages and more productivity growth, to be clear. I mean, we're not anti-tech at all, and you're quite right about the coincidence of what's happened since the 1970s. What we say is that a lot of the digital technology, for example, Tyler, was quite disappointing in terms of productivity effects, but it was nevertheless deployed because management thought it would be helpful to displace workers. Duran, as Siborgan, my co-author and Pascal Shrepo coined the term so-so automation, where you automate even though it doesn't boost productivity, marginal worker productivity, and therefore wages, but you do displace workers. And their favorite example is self-checkout kiosks at supermarkets, for example, which you shift the work onto the consumers, you're not making the workers more productive, you don't see increase in the wages in supermarkets where they adopt self-checkout kiosks. So that more broadly, it lines up with what you just described in terms of the macro phenomenon, which is technology changes, doesn't become productivity growth, and is also consistent with widening inequality.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does pay off, and Joe's right about the importance of entrepreneurs tinkering with technology. Love that take on the driving force, but that wasn't enough to generate share prosperity. It took a bit more than that.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we did talk to Joel a lot about that in writing the book, and he was immensely helpful. We'll use his work a lot. I think the difference we would make in terms just in terms of those facts is that if you look at how people lived in cities, for example, Manchester in the 1830s, which Engels wrote about, whether or not you like Marx and Engels, that was a really good powerhood description of working class conditions, it was bad, Tyler. And if you look at the conditions of workers in children working in coal mines in the 1840s, which was subject to a big investigation in the UK, it was also absolutely terrible and much worse than the conditions for children before the Industrial Revolution. So sure, Joel is right that some people definitely had some gains in some areas, but I don't think that the living standards taken in any modern sense of people in and around the textile factories of Manchester or the coal mines of Northumbria or Chan I'm from Sheffield, which was steel that was just starting to emerge at that time, I don't think people really saw much by way of gains until after the 1850s. Our view is it took 100 years for this ruling to pay off. Now, then it”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, I haven't had a chance to ask GPT for that, but it's a great question. We're challenging, I think, some modern techno-optimism view, which we had to be quite prevalent, Tyler, which is that technology just kind of happens. It raises productivity, it improves how people live, including their health, and it provides them with more opportunity. And everyone benefits eventually. Well, when we look back over the past thousand and some ways, we can look back 10,000 years, we find it to be more complicated. Sometimes technology is massively beneficial, absolutely. The Industrial Revolution did work out well for many people eventually, but eventually took more than 100 years. And so I think getting better outcomes for more people sooner, including from, for example, artificial intelligence right now, Tyler, is something we need to put our minds to. And we have a number of recommendations about making technology more people-centric and more about generating new tasks, helping people become more productive and creative rather than displacing workers and pushing them out, you know, just using automation.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm not an expert on Indonesia, but I do think they've come a long way in the past 20 years in terms of responsible macro management. And of course, if you have a good reputation for keeping your budget under control, that joke of the IMF and elsewhere is that IMF stands for it's mostly fiscal. So if you're credible on the fiscal side, I think you do create space, Tyler, for extraordinary operations at a time of crisis. COVID was a time of crisis, pretty severe crisis in some places. So let's hope that the Indonesians can keep that going. I think you've got to be very careful when it comes to money finance deficits anywhere and use those kinds of measures only when there's no alternative.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the certain countries don't get excluded, countries that have, let's say, some geopolitical significance and a good enough relationship with the G7, let's say. Sure, I mean, maybe there should be a special recovery arm of something, but it's very hard to create these new institutions. I mean, we haven't really done it or done it well since 1944. So there isn't that much other than the IMF. But I agree, Tyler, it's extremely awkward and not clear that it's good for the people of Pakistan to continue on this sort of trajectory.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think that the fund has long been primarily engaged with emerging markets and developing countries. I understand there's a rhetoric of even-handedness and a rhetoric of the IMF should speak to truth to authority in all countries. I think they struggle with that, just given the power structure of the world. So their ability to lend.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would remove the Russians from the board of directors. I think that having the Russians there in that role is inappropriate, problematic. I think the way that Russia has acted over the past year and arguably longer is outside what's acceptable for nations. I'm very sad that this has not happened. I think when autocrats behave badly and aggressively and invade other countries and otherwise mess with the world and the world economy, you should not have them at the big table. If they want to behave better, sure, let them back in. But I don't think the Russians belong at the IMF right now.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a lot of validity to that. I mean, it was obviously also a derivatives. I don't know if Bubble's quite the right word, but there was a view, and I was at the IMF, as you know, Tyler in 2007, and we had a view that was completely wrong, that derivatives had spread the risk around the world. In fact, they'd concentrated the risk. And it was that concentration of risk in these very large financial institutions in the US and in Europe that caused a lot of the panic, a lot of the problems, and that generated downward pressure on house prices, the negative ball to which you're referring. And certainly in some markets, maybe many markets, house prices did bounce back, but unfortunately not before millions of people lost their homes. So that was a really tragic set of events that we need to try to avoid in the future.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've always said, Tyler, that the US, a strength of the US system from its financial history is that we've had a multitude of banks and we were always very suspicious of big banks. The Europeans went for the big banking model, universal banking, a long time ago, late 19th century actually. And what we're seeing, so there was a sort of a divergence there. The US economy, U.S. innovation, US productivity was not built on big banks. It was not associated with big banks. Large banks or banks that are large relative to our GDP are something that's developed much more recently since the 1980s. And even JPMorgan Church, which is about a three and a half trillion dollar bank, is not big relative to our GDP like Deutsche or UBS's in Europe. So I remain very concerned about the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of those very large banks. But I've always said and argued that that's not the only problem to worry about. You also have to worry about contagion and weaknesses in contagion in other parts of the system.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, absolutely, I think they should be very careful and supervise that bank, extremely carefully. Of course, part of why UBS is so big has very large wealth management. And if wealth management is run properly, it's basically a custodian with fees for rich people. And so when you strip that out, I think their total balance sheet is a bit more than the reserves that the Swiss National Bank has, but they still have enough, a strong enough national balance sheet and a credible enough central bank. Let's not forget the swap lines with the Fed. Tyler, really important in this context to be able to support banking systems. Not that many people have open unlimited swap lines so they can access double liquidity whenever they want, but the Swiss do.”
2023-05-17 · Conversations with Tyler · Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source