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What Donald Trump Can Learn From China and Robots When It Comes to Jobs

What Donald Trump Can Learn From China and Robots When It Comes to Jobs

President-elect Donald Trump. President-elect Donald Trump may be taking on China’s apparent mercantilism via his Twitter account , but both the U.S. and China are embroiled in a dangerous experiment that could crimp their prospects for employment: investment in automation.

Over the past 70 years, China has had the advantage when it came to manufacturing. The cost of labor, in relative terms, was low while policy makers further boosted the competitiveness of the country’s export structure through the specialization of production, in a nod to Adam Smith’s capitalist treatise "The Wealth of Nations".

But manufacturing jobs in China are massively under […]

They Took Our Jobs! Is Globalization Really to Blame for Job Losses?

They Took Our Jobs! Is Globalization Really to Blame for Job Losses?

There has been a long running debate about the loss of American manufacturing jobs over the last decade. Blame for job losses is largely laid at the door of globalization, specifically China.

The rhetoric was ramped up in the recent presidential election campaign when both candidates came out firmly against more globalization but Donald Trump in particular, strongly criticized China for stealing American jobs and vowed to return those jobs to the U.S., has placed the issue even more sharply under the spotlight. Is globalization really the culprit for moving jobs from the U.S. to elsewhere? Or is it merely […]

Why I’m against Universal Basic Income

Why I’m against Universal Basic Income

Acvitists from "Generation Grundeinkommen" (Generation Basic Income) dump 8 million Swiss 5-cent coins in the main square in Bern, Switzerland, to celebrate a successful petition for a referendum to incorporate Basic Income in the Swiss constitution. However, it was later rejected in a referendum. Recently the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) has gained a lot of traction in Left circles in the UK, with calls for Jeremy Corbyn to adopt it and try and make it Labour party policy. This morning, I saw an article on Medium by Frances Coppola, Why the changing nature of work means […]

Ontario’s Gritville wins, while Toryland struggles

Ontario's Gritville wins, while Toryland struggles

Toronto has gotten the vast majority of new jobs in Ontario since the last recession, and in parts of the province the decline that started eight years ago has never ended, says a new report from the Fraser Institute that explains a whole lot about what’s going on in our provincial politics.

Liberalville is doing pretty well. Toryland’s pain is worse now than ever. A wildly uneven economy helped Donald Trump win the presidency in the United States and things don’t look that different here.

Yes, the study is from the Fraser Institute, the right-wing B.C. think tank. But the work […]

US: Cultural advocacy group releases platform, demands basic income

US: Cultural advocacy group releases platform, demands basic income

The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture , a non-governmental organization that promotes “programs and policies that cultivate creativity, empathy, and collaboration”, released a new platform on November 19, 2016 — aimed at protecting Americans’ right to culture under a Trump presidency.

The platform consists of 10 policy demands — from a public service jobs program to criminal justice reform to investment in arts education — including a basic income grant.

About the basic income grant, the USDAC writes (pp. 22-23): [R]ising costs, falling spending-power, the uncertainty of the economy, macroeconomic policies that have placed corporate success above individual well-being. For […]

Trump’s Trickle-Down Populism

Trump’s Trickle-Down Populism

Last Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump triumphantly celebrated Carrier’s decision to reverse its plan to close a furnace plant and move jobs to Mexico. Some 800 jobs will remain in Indianapolis.

“Corporate America is going to have to understand that we have to take care of our workers,” Trump told The New York Times . “The free market has been sorting it out and America’s been losing,” Vice President-elect Michael Pence added, as Trump interjected, “Every time, every time.”

So what’s the Trump alternative to the free market? Bribe giant corporations to keep jobs in America.Carrier’s move to Mexico would have saved […]

Brits to get FREE MONEY for nothing ‘within 10 years – as work could be abolished’

Brits to get FREE MONEY for nothing 'within 10 years – as work could be abolished'

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Tips for Jonathan Bartley and lessons from Richmond

Jonathan Bartley, the new (Sept 2016) Joint Leader of the Green Party will be on Radio 4 ‘Question Time’ next Friday. Here are some hints from an old hand.

Judging from the hustings which we shared in July and August, he will be an able representative of the Green Party who will enhance its credibility in the minds of the general public. But will he say any of the things which I thought we founded the Green Party in 1973 precisely in order to say, and which no one else will say? Here are some suggestions:

General background The Green […]

/pol/ – Politically Incorrect

>> >Have a friend
>He is a hippie leftest
>He is "bi"–has sex with dudes more often than with girls
>Smokes weed er’day
>Smokes some kind of crystal that is apparently "synthesized weed extract">Works a very hard manual labour industrial job>Believes in free basic incomeWhat the fuck is wrong with him? He’s a nice guy who is very generous and trusting, but something isn’t right in his weed addled brain. I confronted him about it, about how his tax dollars taken off his manual labour job check is going towards people abusing the system, and he just spouted a whole bunch of hippie […]

Automation for the People: The Public, Technology and Jobs

Automation for the People: The Public, Technology and Jobs

A 2012 research brief by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee at MIT renewed an old debate over the effect of new technologies on employment levels. They argued that, counter to the prevailing belief that new technologies and automation simply shift jobs into new sectors after a period of disruption, instead rapid improvements in technology over the past decades have left some workers completely behind, a trend that will continue to accelerate as computers capabilities expand. But what does the public think? Do Americans see technological threats to employment, and have their views changed since the days when robots first […]