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Workplace of the future may require new safety net

Workplace of the future may require new safety net

Buy Photo This past election we heard much about the loss of manufacturing jobs. Columnist George Will puts these job losses in perspective in a recent article . Will cites a Ball State University study. From 2000 to 2010, only 13 percent of manufacturing job losses were due to trade. Productivity improvements accounted for over 85 percent of the losses.

Many fear that automation and robotics will cause economic dislocation for working people. Andy Stern addresses this topic in his book “ Raising the Floor : How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream.” […]

Workplace of the future may require new safety net

Workplace of the future may require new safety net

Buy Photo This past election we heard much about the loss of manufacturing jobs. Columnist George Will puts these job losses in perspective in a recent article . Will cites a Ball State University study. From 2000 to 2010, only 13 percent of manufacturing job losses were due to trade. Productivity improvements accounted for over 85 percent of the losses.

Many fear that automation and robotics will cause economic dislocation for working people. Andy Stern addresses this topic in his book “ Raising the Floor : How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream.” […]

Why Trump Doesn’t Tweet About Automation

Why Trump Doesn’t Tweet About Automation

Since winning the U.S. presidency in November, Donald Trump has tweeted frequently about job loss. He’s railed against corporations that plan to move jobs to Mexico or China. He’s taken credit for persuading companies, including Ford and Carrier Corporation, for keeping jobs at home. He’s been unalterably opposed to both outsourcing and big trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) because of the U.S. job losses they might engender.

Automation, however, does not seem to be on his mind at all. He doesn’t talk or tweet about it, nor does he complain about job losses that result from […]

How Universal Basic Income Could Rescue The Freelance Economy

How Universal Basic Income Could Rescue The Freelance Economy

On January 1 Finland became the first country in history to launch a large-scale universal basic income trial . The two-year trial selected 2,000 unemployed Finnish citizens and will pay them €560 ($587) each month whether or not they find a job during the trial. There are also no requirements for reporting how they spend the money. The experiment aims to see if large-scale UBI programs could actually help boost employment and spur the economy by providing people with a small guaranteed income, which could enable them to take more risks, such as applying for different kinds of jobs, […]

Ontario floats basic income as a solution to persistent poverty

Ontario floats basic income as a solution to persistent poverty

Ron Pietroniro / Metroland File Photo Oshawa This Week

DURHAM — A guaranteed basic income for all adults living below the poverty line may be the solution to persistent poverty in both Durham and the province as a whole.

The Province of Ontario is currently consulting the public about a basic income pilot project, and will hold its Durham consultation session on Jan. 16 at Oshawa’s Jubilee Pavilion, 55 Lakeview Park Ave., from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.Chris Ballard, Ontario’s minister of housing and the minister responsible for the province’s poverty reduction strategy, will be in attendance.He explains that guaranteed basic […]

Everyone to be given dole in ‘basic income’ payment trial

Everyone to be given dole in ‘basic income’ payment trial

A BIG wad of free money could be on the way to YOU soon – whether you work or are on the dole. Last week, Finland became the first country in the world to replace social welfare with a ‘basic income’ payment on a trial basis.

The Finns will now get a guaranteed payment, whether they get a job or spend their days watching the Nordic version of Jeremy Kyle.

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Why Trump Doesn’t Tweet About Automation

Why Trump Doesn’t Tweet About Automation

Since winning the U.S. presidency in November, Donald Trump has tweeted frequently about job loss. He’s railed against corporations that plan to move jobs to Mexico or China. He’s taken credit for persuading companies, including Ford and Carrier Corporation, for keeping jobs at home. He’s been unalterably opposed to both outsourcing and big trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) because of the U.S. job losses they might engender.

Automation, however, does not seem to be on his mind at all. He doesn’t talk or tweet about it, nor does he complain about job losses that result from […]

Don’t want a robot to steal your job? Be creative

If we don’t want machines to take over our jobs, we’re going to have to get creative. Literally.

Cheap computing power and rapidly advancing AI mean that machines already outperform us on tasks that involve retaining, processing, and repeating rule-based information. Traditional schooling , however, still centers on a child’s ability to perform such tasks. As a result, the growing emphasis on STEM-based learning may not adequately prepare children to eventually battle robots for their jobs. As Charlotte Blease , a philosophy fellow at University College Dublin, points out, the workplace of the future will require people prepared to ask—and […]

Universal basic income is becoming an urgent necessity

Universal basic income is becoming an urgent necessity

The 20th century income distribution system has broken down irretrievably. Globalisation, technological change and the move to flexible labour markets has channelled more and more income to rentiers – those owning financial, physical or so-called intellectual property – while real wages stagnate. The income of the precariat is falling and becoming more volatile. And chronic insecurity will not be overcome by minimum wage laws, tax credits, means-tested benefits or workfare. In short, a basic income is becoming a political imperative.

There has recently been a surge of interest in basic income . The idea is that a monthly income should […]

Jan Dhan, Aadhar, mobile paving way for rolling out universal basic income in 2017; here’s how

Without conditionality, it would give people more control over their lives

The government is contemplating the introduction of a basic income. Nobody outside the government knows whether it will move in that direction, and newspaper stories citing me as saying it will happen have no foundation in fact. However, as an economist and advocate for over 30 years, I am delighted that such a move is being contemplated, and that there will be a special chapter on it in the forthcoming Economic Report to be tabled at the time of the Budget.

It is especially exciting since, coordinated by SEWA and […]