Tag: conservative

Jobs For All

Jobs For All

Line for unemployment benefits in San Francisco, CA in 1938. Dorothea Lange / Library of Congress The new issue of Jacobin is out now. To mark its release, we’re offering discounted introductory subscriptions . ull Employment . . . has become an aim of Conservative policy and the strongest argument against socialist critics.” That’s famed economist Joan Robinson, in 1962 trolling to her left and her right. British unemployment had been below 2 percent for most of the period since the war, without runaway inflation. Keynes had solved the problem of unemployment, converted the Conservatives, and stolen the communists’ […]

Donald Trump’s victory brings the jobs vs. automation issue into the spotlight

Donald Trump’s victory brings the jobs vs. automation issue into the spotlight

Robots work on Ford F-150 trucks at a factory in Norfolk, Va. The plant was closed in 2007. (Ford Photo) Six months ago, computer scientist Moshe Vardi felt as if he was a voice crying in the wilderness when it came to automation’s anticipated effect on the job market . No political candidate, it seemed, was talking about the potential impact of autonomous cars and automated manufacturing on future employment.

Today, the topic still isn’t quite on President-elect Donald Trump’s radar screen. But his election has gotten a lot more experts talking about the issue.

“It went from being somewhat esoteric […]

Trump or Clinton … half of today’s jobs will be gone in 20 years

Trump or Clinton … half of today’s jobs will be gone in 20 years

The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common ‘platform’ is, to our minds, faintly ridiculous,” said one of the judges on the employment tribunal. So the tribunal ruled that Uber’s 30,000 drivers in London were actually employees, and therefore entitled to be paid the minimum wage, to be given sick pay, even to have paid holidays.

Uber promptly appealed the ruling, because it would wreck its business model in the United Kingdom and, if the example spreads, worldwide. But it was only a temporary victory for workers’ rights, because just as […]

Automation is abolishing jobs

“The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common ‘platform’ is, to our minds, faintly ridiculous,” said one of the judges on the employment tribunal. So the tribunal ruled that Uber’s 30,000 drivers in London were actually employees, and therefore entitled to be paid the minimum wage, to be given sick pay, even to have paid holidays.

Uber promptly appealed the ruling, because it would wreck its business model in the United Kingdom and, if the example spreads, worldwide. But it was only a temporary victory for workers’ rights, because just as […]

with Gywnne Dyer

Half the jobs are going “The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common ‘platform’ is, to our minds, faintly ridiculous,” said one of the judges on the employment tribunal. So the tribunal ruled that Uber’s 30,000 drivers in London were actually employees, and therefore entitled to be paid the minimum wage, to be given sick pay, even to have paid holidays. Uber promptly appealed the ruling, because it would wreck its business model in the United Kingdom and, if the example spreads, worldwide. But it was only a temporary victory […]

Half the jobs are going

“The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common “platform” is, to our minds, faintly ridiculous,” said one of the judges on the employment tribunal.

So the tribunal ruled that Uber’s 30,000 drivers in London were actually employees, and therefore entitled to be paid the minimum wage, to be given sick pay, even to have paid holidays.

Uber promptly appealed the ruling, because it would wreck its business model in the United Kingdom and, if the example spreads, worldwide.But it was only a temporary victory for workers’ rights, because just as the real […]

Smart Machines Will Eat Jobs–Except Where Smart People Create Them

Smart Machines Will Eat Jobs--Except Where Smart People Create Them

Automation will eat employment. That warning has been issued at every turn in history, with the printing press, the advent of electricity, and the rise of robotics. Phases of automation, and the new trade patterns and agreements that accompany them, destroy jobs that involve repetitive tasks while creating new jobs.

“No office job is safe,” said Sebastian Thrun , Stanford CS professor and MOOC pioneer. “Lots of lawyers, accountants, even surgeons will be automated away. Having spent my career watching the long, slow carnage of my own industry, I have some insight into how that will feel, and how to […]

How trade impacts American jobs: Research roundup

How trade impacts American jobs: Research roundup

Container ship (Photo: Pixabay) Economic dogma asserts that free trade improves everyone’s wellbeing. For decades, both major American political parties have hailed free trade with other countries as critical to voters’ well being. But candidates in the 2016 presidential election have raised piercing questions about the benefits, with both major party nominees distancing themselves from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a pact with bilateral support that was seven-years-in-the-making. The Republican nominee is even proposing to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA ), a signature policy of the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations.

Rapidly increasing […]

Unions should be a cornerstone of economic policy

Unions should be a cornerstone of economic policy

If Charles Dickens were time warped into this U.S. election cycle, he would be astonished — not by the vitriol, restrained by 19th century standards, but by candidates extolling the virtues of manufacturing jobs.

When the Industrial Revolution dawned in Dickens’ time, such jobs were not up there with apple pie and motherhood; they were seen as mindless and monotonous, sucking up what was then the bottom of the labor pool — women and children — and putting them in horrific, dangerous conditions.

So, how did these jobs become the ideals of a halcyon past?Simple: they started paying a lot better. […]

Neither Trump nor Clinton is addressing the biggest challenge to jobs: automation

Neither Trump nor Clinton is addressing the biggest challenge to jobs: automation

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both promising to bring good-paying jobs back to America, but analysts say neither of them has addressed one of the biggest challenges looming ahead: the impact of automation and the rise of artificial intelligence.

Some argue that the challenge will soon become impossible to ignore.

“Job losses due to automation and robotics are often overlooked in discussions about the unexpected rise of outside political candidates like Trump and Bernie Sanders,” Moshe Vardi, an expert on artificial intelligence at Rice University, said before this month’s conventions .Vardi pointed out that manufacturing employment has […]