Tag: conservative

‘Automation replaces human jobs, so should we be taxing robots?’

‘Automation replaces human jobs, so should we be taxing robots?’

© UNIDO/flickr BY ROHIT TALWAR
FAST FUTURE

Unfettered automation could have a seismic impact on jobs in the food industry, and hence unemployment, tax revenues, and the provision of public services. Most do not want to stop innovation or the pursuit of business efficiency. But a growing number – such as leaders in Silicon Valley – also understand that, if the robots are doing the farming and manufacturing, cooking the meals, and serving the drinks, then the money must come from somewhere for former employees to buy what they’re making. One idea is using robot taxes to fund the cost […]

Minimum wage hike will axe 400k jobs in California – study

Minimum wage hike will axe 400k jobs in California – study

A study conducted by the Employment Policies Institute states that a hike to a $15/hr minimum wage will cost California 400,000 private sector jobs. Workers in two industries in particular are purportedly the most vulnerable.

On January 1, California’s minimum wage will increase to $11 per hour, up from the current level of $10.50 per hour for businesses with 26 employees or more. After 2018, the Golden State will increase the minimum wage by $1 every year until 2022, when it will reach $15 per hour.

A new study , conducted by EPI, a fiscally conservative group, analyzed employment trends from […]

Tax Bill Favors Adding Robots Over Workers, Critics Say

Tax Bill Favors Adding Robots Over Workers, Critics Say

Equipment at the Custom Group in Woburn, Mass., includes automated robotic cutting tools. Republicans call their tax bill the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. But critics say maybe it should have been named the Tax Cut and Robots Act.

That’s because it doesn’t create new tax incentives that specifically encourage companies to hire workers and create jobs, some employers and economists say. But it does expand incentives for companies to buy robots and machines that replace workers.

Republicans say that lowering taxes will boost the economy and spur job creation. But critics say that the tax legislation would create an imbalance […]

Britain Needs To Truly Understand The Coming Robot Revolution

Britain Needs To Truly Understand The Coming Robot Revolution

Bloomberg via Getty Images In the 2016 London Assembly elections, I was shortlisted to go to the first round of candidate selections for Lewisham and Greenwich. One of the key aspects of my pitch was to turn London from one of the most toxic environments in terms of air quality to one of the best cities in the world, specifically by removing all diesel vehicles from London by 2021. One of those attending in the audience asked me, “take a taxi driver with their own vehicle, how are you going to convince them to do this?”. My response brought […]

Robots coming for our jobs, Sasse warns Iowans

Robots coming for our jobs, Sasse warns Iowans

A sign on a robotic welding machine at East Iowa Machine Company in Farley on Wednesday, June 10, 2015. (Stephen Mally/The Gazette) Sen. Ben Sasse wants to talk about the robots coming to take our jobs.

The Nebraska Republican delivered a speech this month in Iowa to the Family Leader activist group. It would have been a prime opportunity for the rising GOP star to talk about his nuclear family or his anti-abortion credentials in front of our state’s most conservative crowd. Instead, he warned Iowans about the impending labor revolution.

“We’re entering a world where there’s going to be a […]

Let’s not overlook new source of living-wage jobs for our region

Let’s not overlook new source of living-wage jobs for our region

Linda Jorgenson Like most of rural America, the last three decades have not been particularly prosperous ones for Ashland and Bayfield counties. In 2017, both counties still struggle to replace “living wage” jobs like those we lost in the paper and wood products industries in the 1990s. With some exceptions, retail, human services, health care, agriculture and the tourism hospitality sectors have not been able to compensate at that $20-30/hour manufacturing level. The median wage in Ashland County is $19/hour and in Bayfield County it is $22/hour, meaning half the families earn less than this amount and half earn […]

MSM economics reaches for peak stupid

MSM economics reaches for peak stupid

I’m happy to say that we’ve reached MSM peak stupid thanks to Greg Jericho : So yes, we are seeing a solid increase in employment, but this is not resulting in a rise in overall average incomes like we would expect and as a result we are not seeing a similar boost in spending or consumer confidence. And when you throw in to the mix the fact that wages growth across the board is down it makes for a disconnect between the unemployment rate and our desire to spend. But perhaps there is some hope. Often when talking of […]

World O’ Words: More philippics and jeremiads, please

World O’ Words: More philippics and jeremiads, please

Demosthenes (left) and the prophet Jeremiah: Two angry men fond of tirades. Wikipedia What we need these days, good people, are more philippics and fewer jeremiads. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Let’s examine this intriguing question.

The age we are living in seems perfectly suited to angry tirades and bitter lamentations. But then again, every age can have been defined by their philippics and jeremiads. These two forms of speeches are as old as oratory itself, as old as human language. They’ve been around as long as angry humans have been standing up in public and opening their […]

GEORGE: The Robots are coming

GEORGE: The Robots are coming

(CHRIS GEORGE / iNFOnews.ca) OPINION

Welcome to the information revolution. The utopia of automated production is upon us.

The long foreseen golden age, where people’s material needs will be served by machines, where the planet will become a garden, and each person will be free to spend their time creating great works of art and exploring their human potential.But first, the Puritan work ethic must die."What do you do?" Over the past two and a half centuries, this question has come to dominate our social relationships. The industrial revolution saw the majority of people go from being tied to the […]

Alan Mak: The Fourth Industrial Revolution 3) We must prepare workers for the changes that are coming

Alan Mak: The Fourth Industrial Revolution 3) We must prepare workers for the changes that are coming

Alan Mak is MP for Havant and Founding Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is the third article in a five-piece series on how the Conservatives must seize the opportunities presented by new technologies transforming our economy and society.

Futurists, like Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elon Musk, regularly talk about the risk that artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will trigger a mass wave of automation, causing unemployment as machines replace people. The PayPal founder predicts that in the future there will be “fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better [than a […]