Fears over new technologies destroying jobs are nothing new. In fact, it can be traced all the way back to Aristotle in Ancient Greece who raised his concerns about automation. Fast forward all the way to 1589 and the inventor William Lee found himself rebuffed by Queen Elizabeth I over his knitting machine. The Queen refused to grant him a patent as she felt it would lead to mass unemployment among her subjects.
The centuries which followed are littered with similar examples. Whether it’s the luddites during the Industrial Revolution or the doom merchants of the twentieth century who were convinced that computers would make the middle class obsolete, fears over the impact of new technologies on the labour market persist.
