Dani Rodrik is a professor at Harvard University. He argues that the task for policymakers is to boost the productivity of the jobs that are actually growing in the economy—particularly in health-care support and personal care—rather than trying to bring back manufacturing employment, perhaps through the adoption of AI.
In a 1991 paper Rodrik showed how uncertainty about the longevity of reforms can deter investment even when policies look sound on paper. The decisive factor in whether a political rupture leads to economic recovery is whether it convinces households and firms that the economic rules they face have genuinely changed—and will endure. Chile after 1990 illustrates the point: democracy returned, but the new centre-left government preserved the economic framework it inherited, maintaining fiscal discipline, open markets and property rights, and confidence held.
The only person who always got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.