Tag: conservative

It’s time to tax the robots

It’s time to tax the robots

Credit: Pixabay Bill Gates has a modest proposal: Tax robots to slow the growth of automation and fund the kinds of important jobs our economy ignores, such as caring for children and the elderly.

In an interview with the website Quartz , Gates notes that when a human does $50,000 worth of work, that income is taxed and money goes to the government, but when a robot does the work, no tax is paid on it. So he argues that robots need to be taxed to make up for that lost governmental income — and also to slow down the […]

Opinion: Trump sells snake oil to Rust Belt

Opinion: Trump sells snake oil to Rust Belt

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Washington — Donald Trump boasts that his “America First” trade and economic policies are bringing well-paid manufacturing jobs back to America. That’s probably his biggest “deliverable” to Trump voters. But is this claim true?

Trump won the presidency partly because he voiced the anger of American workers about lost jobs and stagnant wages. But in the process, he fundamentally misled the country by claiming that trade is the major cause of job losses, and that renegotiating trade agreements would save the middle class.What Trump is offering is a palliative that has raised false hopes. He implies that a few good […]

Automation, not foreign trade, kills American jobs

Automation, not foreign trade, kills American jobs

At the unveiling of the Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner, the President doubled down on his buy American, hire American campaign promise. Veuer’s Nick Cardona (@nickcardona93) has the story. Buzz60 Donald Trump boasts that his "America First" trade and economic policies are bringing well-paid manufacturing jobs back to America. That’s probably his biggest "deliverable" to Trump voters. But is this claim true?

Trump won the presidency partly because he voiced the anger of American workers about lost jobs and stagnant wages. But in the process, he fundamentally misled the country by claiming that trade is the major cause of job losses, and […]

Trump is selling snake oil to the Rust Belt

Trump is selling snake oil to the Rust Belt

President Trump speaks during a meeting with manufacturing executives at the White House. (Olivier Douliery/Bloomberg) President Trump boasts that his “America First” trade and economic policies are bringing well-paid manufacturing jobs back to America. That’s probably his biggest “deliverable” to Trump voters. But is this claim true?

Trump won the presidency partly because he voiced the anger of American workers about lost jobs and stagnant wages. But in the process, he fundamentally misled the country by claiming that trade is the major cause of job losses, and that renegotiating trade agreements would save the middle class.

What Trump is offering is […]

End of jobs

End of jobs

A friend, who was an office-head, once recounted a poignant story about his stenographer. A vendor had come to his office to demonstrate the use of a speech-recognition software that would allow a note to be dictated directly to the computer. After the vendor had left, the steno asked him, “Sir, does that mean my services are no longer needed?” Stenographers are no longer recruited in any office.

In 2014, a writing software called Quill was developed by an American company; it could convert numerical data into a written story, accomplishing within seconds what it took experienced analysts weeks of […]

In Andrews, hopes for more manufacturing jobs face an industry changed by technology

In Andrews, hopes for more manufacturing jobs face an industry changed by technology

By Wade Spees wspees@postandcourier.com ANDREWS — The history of this town’s economy is enshrined in a fading mural, right off the main intersection downtown.

Workers push big bales of cotton and move long strands to be spun into yarn and knit into fabric. Seamstresses sit side-by-side at sewing machines, stitching together garments. In an artistic flourish, finished T-shirts float above, dyed blue, green and yellow.

But a glimpse of the town’s future whirs away a few miles down the highway. Inside the expanding SafeRack factory, workers set laser-cut pipes together, and a robotic arm follows behind, welding them together to make […]

Bill Gates Has a Trumpian Plan to Make Job-Stealing Robots Pay

Bill Gates Has a Trumpian Plan to Make Job-Stealing Robots Pay

From Getty Images. It is fairly obvious, when looking at the economic data , that Donald Trump is largely missing the point when he blames China or Mexico for the decline of U.S. manufacturing jobs. “We want products made by our workers in our factories stamped with those four magnificent words—made in the U.S.A.,” the president declared during a photo op Friday at a Boeing plant in South Carolina. It was a solid applause line, even if Trump’s proposed solution—reforming the tax code to encourage more companies to build factories in the U.S.—ignores the fact that U.S. manufacturing output […]

Bill Gates Has a Trumpian Plan to Make Job-Stealing Robots Pay

Bill Gates Has a Trumpian Plan to Make Job-Stealing Robots Pay

From Getty Images. It is fairly obvious, when looking at the economic data , that Donald Trump is largely missing the point when he blames China or Mexico for the decline of U.S. manufacturing jobs. “We want products made by our workers in our factories stamped with those four magnificent words—made in the U.S.A.,” the president declared during a photo op Friday at a Boeing plant in South Carolina. It was a solid applause line, even if Trump’s proposed solution—reforming the tax code to encourage more companies to build factories in the U.S.—ignores the fact that U.S. manufacturing output […]

Call to Create Jobs, or Else, Tests Trump’s Sway

Call to Create Jobs, or Else, Tests Trump’s Sway

President Trump summoned the titans of American business to the White House on Monday for what was billed as a “listening session,” but it was the new president who delivered the loudest message: Bring back domestic manufacturing jobs, or face punishing tariffs and other penalties.

The contrast between Mr. Trump’s talk and the actual behavior of corporate America, however, underscored the tectonic forces he was fighting in trying to put his blue-collar base back to work in a sector that has been shedding jobs for decades.

Many of the chief executives Mr. Trump met with have slashed domestic employment in recent […]

When robots take more and more jobs, how will humans get paid?

When robots take more and more jobs, how will humans get paid?

What if governments just gave money to people?

That’s the big question that Thomas Weisskopf ​, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Michigan, is asking. Since automation is replacing human-powered labor in fields like manufacturing, robust employment may be a thing of the past. A permanent surplus of labor has massive consequences, driving down wages and even contributing to social unrest. According to Weisskopf, such a dramatic problem demands a dramatic solution. An automated welding arm Weisskopf said in using “basic income grants,” an amount of money would be handed out to every citizen “without any conditions whatsoever.” […]