Supposedly, new technology lowers prices, which spurs new demand, which reemploy as the workers. I'm not saying I accept this argument, but I have not seen many economists eating crow. ___________________-
That's Panglossian political economy. The destruction or creation of jobs is not a technical function, but a social one. The expulsion of labor power from the production process is essential to the expropriation of surplus value, to increased rates of expropriation. The derivative effect, of the rising tide raising all boats, or in this case, the reemployment of expelled labor, has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the rate of profitable reproduction. So applications of the same technology reduce jobs in on area of the world markets while increasing jobs in the other. We can look at steel, auto, oil, semiconductor production throughout the world to see the unity of these opposites at work. Still, certain critical moments are reached inside each of these areas when overproduction overwhelms the circulation and realization processes. This is manifested already in Mexico, and Brazil, where job losses in industrial production sectors parallel similar losses in the US, and it is becoming manifest in China where problems in transportation, infrastructure, i.e. ships waiting 30 days or more to unload, ports unable to move unloaded commodities out of ground storage quickly enough, electricity shortages, etc., all facets of circulation, are breaking through the euphoria of rapid growth. International semiconductor companies have reached an impasse, where the technology has advanced to such a level that the comparative advantage of reduced wage levels as in China is in fact minimized by the overwhelming technical inputs which require an elaborate and reliable infrastructure to protect uninterrupted production.
