Author: automata

How Globalization and Robotics Speed Up Job Losses

How Globalization and Robotics Speed Up Job Losses

The twin trends of globalization and robotics — or globotics — will usher in a period of unprecedented disruption that could displace workers at the fastest pace in history, argues Richard Baldwin, international economics professor at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, in his new book, The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics and the Future of Work.

Like factory workers who lost their jobs to automation, white-collar and service workers are now in danger of being displaced en masse, said Baldwin, also editor-in-chief of policy website VoxEU.org. He recently joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM to discuss this trend and how […]

Here’s What Internet Users Think About The Controversy Around Guaranteed Income

Here’s What Internet Users Think About The Controversy Around Guaranteed Income

Trump says that the idea of a guaranteed minimum is something most people don’t want, AOC feels otherwise. I decided to collaborate with research and consumer profiling company Global Web Index to analyze sentiment around this growing trend narrative. Plan to vote: 82.7% males vs. 73% females Do not plan to vote: 7.2% males vs. 12.1% females Undecided/unsure: 10.1% males vs. 14.9% females By current political support (i.e. how they would vote if there were an election tomorrow): Those with a preferred party were more likely to vote, but which party they supported made little difference in their decision […]

Voters Bombard 2020 Presidential Hopeful Andrew Yang with $1,000 Facebook Invoices

Voters Bombard 2020 Presidential Hopeful Andrew Yang with $1,000 Facebook Invoices

Andrew Yang skeptics are putting the Democratic presidential candidate’s Universal Basic Income (UBI) plan to a dubious test by bombarding him with $1,000 Facebook payment requests. | Source: REUTERS / Scott Morgan Andrew Yang, the New York non-profit entrepreneur and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who’s a bull for bitcoin and ethereum – as well as Universal Basic Income (UBI) – owes 22 political activists $22,000 toward making UBI a reality – at least according to the activists themselves. Universal Basic Income proponents want to create a social safety net that unconditionally and automatically pays every individual in society a […]

Rahul Gandhi: Tamil Nadu being ‘remote-controlled’ by Modi; job creation, farmers priority for Congress

Rahul Gandhi: Tamil Nadu being ‘remote-controlled’ by Modi; job creation, farmers priority for Congress

PTI Photo Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday promised to give a massive boost to Tamil Nadu by supporting entrepreneurship in the state that was not just a centre for job creation but also has the capacity to fight the Chinese in manufacturing.

Kicking off his tour of the state with a dynamic interaction with a group of women students at Stella Maris College in Chennai, Rahul Gandhi addressed the media before flying off to Nagercoil to address the first campaign meeting for the April 18 Lok Sabha polls and said that once elected to power he would be provide […]

Andrew Yang: Universal Basic Income Is Not Socialism, Is Good For Markets

Andrew Yang: Universal Basic Income Is Not Socialism, Is Good For Markets

2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang joined CBS’s "Red and Blue" to discuss why he’s making universal basic income a priority in his campaign platform and why he thinks he’ll make the cut for the first debate in June. ANDREW YANG: A universal basic income is a policy where every citizen in a country gets a certain amount of money free and clear to do whatever they want. So my plan, the Freedom Dividend, would give every American adult $1,000 per month, $12,000 per year, starting at age 18. This would create millions of jobs around the country and […]

PepsiCo Lays Off Employees as They Push Towards Automation

PepsiCo Lays Off Employees as They Push Towards Automation

PepsiCo plans to devote hundreds of millions of dollars to severance pay as they kick off a round of layoffs and initiate their hefty restructuring plan. According to Business Insider , Pepsi filed with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) that they expect to incur $2.5 billion in pretax restructuring costs through 2023. 70% of charges relate to severance and other employee costs and 15% cover factory closings. They predict the restructuring will allow them to save $1 billion annually through 2023 by improving efficiency.

“Our second set of priorities … involves becoming more capable, leaner, more agile and less bureaucratic,” […]

Facebook deletes and then restores Warren’s campaign ads after she announced plans to break up Facebook

Facebook deletes and then restores Warren’s campaign ads after she announced plans to break up Facebook

Facebook has removed several ads placed by 2020 presidential hopeful, Senator Elizabeth Warren, that called for the breakup of Facebook and other tech giants. Last week, Warren announced that if elected president in 2020, her administration will make big, structural changes to the tech sector to promote more competition by breaking up competition killing big mergers. The ads being deleted from Facebook was first revealed by Politico .

The advertisements read, “ Three companies have vast power over our economy and our democracy. Facebook, Amazon, and Google. We all use them. But in their rise to power, they’ve bulldozed competition, […]

Tongue in Cheek with Automation and Jobs

In her New Yorker article, “ Are Robots Coming for Your Job ,” author Jill Lepore takes on the subject of work-force automation with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

To bolster her case, she quotes Martin Ford, who wrote the 2015 book, “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future and lectured on “Confronting Dystopia: The New Technological Revolution and the Future of Word,” Oddly enough, the two quotes contradict one another. Neither Ms. Lepore nor Mr. Ford seem to recognize this.

Conflicting Quotes on Automation In the first quote, Ms. Lepore opines: “…history shows that […]

The German left hates its big jobs achievement

The German left hates its big jobs achievement

By LEONID BERSHIDSKY / Pic By BLOOMBERG

Germany’s Hartz reforms of the early 2000s, often lauded as an exemplary fix to a sclerotic labour market, are now in danger from a leftward shift in the party that instituted them at great political cost.

The labour reform package looms large in the German political and economic agenda. Named for Volkswagen AG personnel chief Peter Hartz, who led the committee that recommended it, and implemented between 2003 and 2005, the benefits shake-up was meant to increase incentives to work.It cost then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder his political career, and set the stage for […]

Here’s What Internet Users Think About The Controversy Around Guaranteed Income

Here's What Internet Users Think About The Controversy Around Guaranteed Income

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, right, reacts during the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, U.S., currently taking place. She critiqued capitalism and more and a packed event. Photographer: Callaghan O’Hare/Bloomberg © 2019 Bloomberg Finance LP

Without a doubt one of the big buzzwords, or shall I say buzz phrases for the 2020 presidential elections will be "guaranteed/universal basic income." The possibility of such an offering and its parameters will more than likely become a political football. Signs of such are already underway given both Ivanka Trump’s recent comments during a Fox News interview and […]