Claim: Buckingham, “Statement (testifying as an economist), in Automation…

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Claim and evidence

Statement (testifying as an economist), in Automation and Technological Change: Hearingscontests ↓Machines cheaper than labour at every task

Buckingham, “Statement (testifying as an economist), in Automation and Technological Change: Hearings” (1955-10-14) contests M05. Speaker: Walter S. Buckingham Jr., associate professor, Georgia Institute of Technology (economist). Concludes his assessment of the employment criterion before turning to stability.

Machine-checked, not reviewed by an editorStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1955-10-14 · event
Role: Earliest located, Contesting
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction
Engagement: Engages a premise. Buckingham gives limited automatable coverage and creation of new jobs as reasons against permanent mass unemployment.
Tier: Tier 1. Prepared statement by an economist ("as an economist", associate professor at Georgia Tech, shown in the text); a substantive argued statement. Tier 1 by maintainer decision of 2026-10-12 (economist testimony).
Conditions: The next sentence qualifies it: there is 'no automatic regulator in the economic system that guarantees full employment', and the gains need continued expansion. He likens the economy to 'a rocket which must continue to accelerate or else fall from the sky'.

Scope and limitsHis premise is that automation's scope is limited (agriculture, mining, professions and most construction and retailing largely excluded, p. 33). This rejects long-run mass unemployment; it does not discuss machines performing all tasks. Checked against the raw djvu text (.html) only. Engagement: (GPT cross-family check of 2026-10-12, accepted by the maintainer on 2026-10-12.) He addresses the prospect of long-run mass unemployment from automation and rejects it: automation will be limited to industries employing about 25 per cent of the labour force, and it creates new jobs whose training delays young people's entry into work.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Statement (testifying as an economist), in Automation and Technological Change: Hearings

U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on the Economic Report, Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization. (1955). Automation and technological change: Hearings … 84th Congress, 1st session, October 14–28, 1955. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 29–37 · 1955-10-14

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt · shown only with its context

“there would appear to be no reason to fear long run, mass unemployment.”

Read it with this context. Conditional on his premises: automation is limited to industries employing about 25% of the labour force, and it creates new jobs that require training. The next sentence warns that no automatic regulator guarantees full employment.

Why: Fresh-context audit (A1) judged that the quotation misleads when shown alone.

Location in source printed p. 35 (prepared statement, 'Impact of automation on the economic system')

Machine-checked · 2026-10-14

Source details and check notes

Authors: Walter S. Buckingham Jr.
Version: Internet Archive OCR text (djvu.txt) of a scanned copy, retrieved 2026-10-09 from https://ia803102.us.archive.org/32/items/congress-automation-and-technological-change/congress-automation-and-technological-changedjvu.txt; OCR errors possible; quotes checked only against clean stretches. Current copy; no earlier capture compared. SHA-256 3962809fbb923be62bf986addb0014ee147934a8767475c1f7cfe051959bff90.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-09
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Walter S. Buckingham Jr., “Statement (testifying as an economist), in Automation and Technological Change: Hearings”, U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on the Economic Report, Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization. (1955). Automation and technological change: Hearings … 84th Congress, 1st session, October 14–28, 1955. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 29–37, 1955-10-14.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage M05-03 (research/economics-mainstream). The quotation (13 words) matched the retrieved current copy (SHA-256 3962809fbb923be62bf986addb0014ee147934a8767475c1f7cfe051959bff90) in the pack's verification. Re-checked at admission on 2026-10-14 against a copy retrieved that day.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor. An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document disputes the proposition or a premise it depends on. The record documents the text’s position, not who is right.

Date. Hearing day of the statement, as printed; the volume was printed by the GPO in 1955. Checked in a current copy; an archive capture was not available, so earlier bytes are not authenticated.

Record ID ec-m05-buckingham-1955-automation-hearings-statement-c

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