Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: New divisions will run deeper than left or right

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: New divisions will run deeper than left or right

Deliveroo riders holding a protest over pay outside the company HQ in London. Could protests like this become more common as our economic model grows increasingly unstable? POLITICS and economics have been going through rapid evolutionary change in the last few years. Future historians may refer to it as a revolution. Political and economic thinking are deeply intertwined and while the economic order of our lifetime has failed and shows no sign of recovery, our politicians have failed to realise the new reality and are still arguing in terms of left and right, because that’s all they understand.

Left and […]

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: New divisions will run deeper than left or right

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: New divisions will run deeper than left or right

Deliveroo riders holding a protest over pay outside the company HQ in London. Could protests like this become more common as our economic model grows increasingly unstable? POLITICS and economics have been going through rapid evolutionary change in the last few years. Future historians may refer to it as a revolution. Political and economic thinking are deeply intertwined and while the economic order of our lifetime has failed and shows no sign of recovery, our politicians have failed to realise the new reality and are still arguing in terms of left and right, because that’s all they understand.

Left and […]

Don’t tax robots to save jobs… they might just create new forms of employment

Don’t tax robots to save jobs… they might just create new forms of employment

An automated welding arm. In a recent interview, Microsoft founder Bill Gates created quite a stir when he suggested that robots be taxed because society will not be able to manage the speed and magnitude of the impending automation of everything.

While his intent was to suggest ways to stave off the massive social unrest that will surely come with wholesale unemployment, it wasn’t a week before the editorial staffs at the Economist and BusinessWeek weighed in on impracticality of the idea, saying it would slow down technology investment and automation rates, and seriously damage American competitiveness.

Curiously, they framed the […]

Robots stealing human jobs isn’t the problem. This is.

Robots stealing human jobs isn't the problem. This is.

Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose discusses work and life in the age of automation. He speaks on "Bloomberg Surveillance." (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini, AFP/Getty Images) A 15-hour work week. That’s what influential economist John Maynard Keynes prophesied in his famous 1930 essay " Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren ," forecasting that in the next century technology would make us so productive we wouldn’t know what to do with all our free time.

This is not the future Keynes imagined.

Many higher income workers put in 50 or more hours per week, according to an NPR/Harvard/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation poll. Meanwhile, lower-income workers […]

Amazon Buys Out Whole Foods Market

Amazon Buys Out Whole Foods Market

Reprinted with permission from Creators .

Excellent news, folks: A decade after Wall Street greed crashed our economy and crushed the working class, jobs are suddenly plentiful!

As an Associated Press article joyously put it, “The U.S. job market has settled into a sweet spot of steadily solid growth.” At long last, the American dream is back for working families, right? Well … in a word: No. Further down in the article, AP’s sweet news turns sour with this little admission: “About all that’s still missing [in the jobs market] is a broad acceleration in pay.”In other words, you can […]

Robots used to be advertised as job-saving technology

Robots used to be advertised as job-saving technology

At a US trade show in 2004, Fanuc, a large supplier of industrial robots, gave a seminar on how to automate factory work. “We had very few attendees,” remembers Scott Melton, a director of sales at the company.

An explanation for his company’s empty room came when he learned that another seminar—this one about outsourcing work to China—had been scheduled during the same time slot. “That room was completely full,” he says.

It didn’t take long for a marketing idea to emerge from the interest gap. There was a need, Melton says, to educate US companies that they “didn’t need to […]

Facebook, Tesla CEOs lead charge for guaranteed income: ‘I don’t think we’re going to have a choice,’ Zuckerberg says

Facebook, Tesla CEOs lead charge for guaranteed income: 'I don't think we're going to have a choice,' Zuckerberg says

WASHINGTON – Across their three presidential debates last year, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump uttered the word “jobs” 86 times – but the word “automation” never came up. And by all accounts, nothing is going to transform the American labor market more dramatically, and likely for the worse, than the increasing trend toward automation: on assembly lines, in self-driving cars , even clerical and white-collar positions once considered unthinkable for robots to occupy.

Credible projections now forecast that 40 percent of all jobs in the United States today could be eliminated by 2030, just 13 years from now, have led […]

America Can Bring Back Factories, But Few Jobs, Says McKinsey

America Can Bring Back Factories, But Few Jobs, Says McKinsey

Manufacturing could rebound without employing many people

Automation makes cheap labor less crucial to producers

President Donald Trump is pushing to revive American manufacturing and bring back U.S. factory jobs. He may be able to deliver on half of that goal.American manufacturing could be poised to rebound as technological disruption shakes up global production chains, but that will offer little relief to displaced factory workers, according to new research by the McKinsey Global Institute.For years, companies have searched for cheap labor, shipping production jobs out of advanced nations and toward their developing counterparts. Now, McKinsey sees conditions […]

Editorial: Robots are here (and they’re coming to take your job)

Editorial: Robots are here (and they're coming to take your job)

In 1967, a prominent Roanoke business leader spoke to the Elks Club about changes that were starting to take place in the economy. Davis Elliott assured his listeners they didn’t have to worry that automation would someday replace actual human workers.

“Never fear automation,” Elliott said, “because if world population doubles in the next 35 to 40 years, they can’t produce people fast enough to look after all the machines.” Technically, Elliott was right — because we’re now long past his 35-40-year time frame. Look what’s happening, though: We’re about to have robots rolling down sidewalks in Virginia.

This is not […]

5 Simple Tips To Help You Survive The 4th Industrial Revolution

5 Simple Tips To Help You Survive The 4th Industrial Revolution

The 4 th industrial revolution is here, and it is completely transforming the way we live and work. This new world is fuelled by data and internet connected devices that are capable of collecting and processing ever-growing amounts of information.

Smartphones, digital cameras, sensors and social media now create more information than ever before. In fact, over the past 18 months we have created more data than in all of prior human history combined. More hours of YouTube videos are now uploaded every three minutes than all Hollywood studios produce in a whole year. Shutterstock This explosion of data is […]