Tag: conservative

Let’s prepare now for the job apocalypse

Let’s prepare now for the job apocalypse

Summary: A new Industrial Revolution is beginning. With our experience from the earlier ones, we can navigate through it to a prosperous future. Unlike the previous ones, this time we can do it without massive suffering during the transition. This one of a series of posts about what might be the major economic event of the 21st century. It might make many of our current problems disappear – and introduce new ones.

Let’s seek a safe path to the future. “Danger, Construction Ahead” by Kay Sage, 1940. Prepare for the future by closing our eyes

On September 23 {William the […]

Does Nor Macdonald love Andrew Yang? It’s complicated

Does Nor Macdonald love Andrew Yang? It’s complicated

Universal Basic Income (UBI) calls for an early money transfer for every citizen, usually taken monthly. In the US presidential election, Democratic candidate Andrew Yang proposed the idea and it is now resembling wildfire. His proposal, dubbed the “Freedom Dividend,” plans to give each American citizen $ 1,000 each month. No string is attached.

The idea is not a new one, however. Guy Caron and Martin Luther King Jr. on the left, and Richard Nixon and Milton Friedman on the right, have espoused an idea of ​​a basic universal income. Then the question arises: can this policy work in Canada?

I […]

Economic Possibilities for Ourselves

Economic Possibilities for Ourselves

21 November 2019, Hamburg: A robot interacts with a woman at “Speed Dating with AI – Meet the Robots at AI Days” at the Hammerbrooklyn Digital Campus. On 22 and 23 November, a selection of highly developed robots from various fields will be shown, giving an insight into the current possibilities of artificial intelligence. Photo: Axel Heimken/dpa (Photo by Axel Heimken/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The most depressing feature of the current explosion in robot-apocalypse literature is that it rarely transcends the world of work. Almost every day, news articles appear detailing some new round of layoffs. In the […]

By the numbers: how automation is affecting financial services jobs

By the numbers: how automation is affecting financial services jobs

Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, has regularly hit the headlines for his outspoken opinions on artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. In 2015, Mr Haldane claimed the jobs of up to 15 million people across the country could be replaced by robots in what he called a "third machine age".

Last year, he again emphasised the possibility of a "hollowing out" of the labour market if AI continued to advance and automate roles that require cognitive skills. However, the OECD has downplayed the potential of mass unemployment, arguing that previous studies underestimated how difficult it is to automate […]

Brexit voters more likely to live in areas at risk from rise of robots

Brexit voters more likely to live in areas at risk from rise of robots

Brexit supporters are more likely to live in areas most threatened by the economic impact of automation, according to a study of the impact of robots and artificial intelligence in the workplace.

A map of the parts of the UK likely to be hit by automation fits more closely with the map of leave voters than any other factor, said the Institute for the Future of Work (IFW) .

Up to 15 million workers are expected to have their employment prospects endangered by automation over the next decade, according to a series of reports that have tried to gauge the […]

Editorial: Scary reading for rural America

Editorial: Scary reading for rural America

If you want to read something grim, depressing and sometimes downright scary this Halloween season, you could try a Stephen King novel.

Or you could read the report “The Future of Work” by the New York-based consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The King novel might have more gripping prose, but the McKinsey report is much more frightening because it’s not made up.

Here’s the essence of it: “In the decade ahead, the next wave of automation technologies may accelerate the pace of change. Millions of jobs could be phased out even as new ones are created. More broadly, the day-to-day nature […]

Universal Basic Income: Could It Really Work?

Universal Basic Income: Could It Really Work?

The truth is, poverty is a disease ravaging the world’s economies and universal basic income (UBI) may be the cure. Universal basic income could provide all citizens with the funds to feed, shelter and educate themselves without outside interference. Can universal basic income really work? The utopian ideal may sound like it’s on the bleeding edge, but, in reality, the idea of every citizen receiving an unconditional sum of money is quite old. In fact, American revolutionary Thomas Paine proposed a dividend for all citizens of age in his pamphlet Agrarian Justice, published in 1797. “To preserve the benefits […]

Universal Basic Income: Could It Really Work?

Universal Basic Income: Could It Really Work?

The truth is, poverty is a disease ravaging the world’s economies and universal basic income (UBI) may be the cure. Universal basic income could provide all citizens with the funds to feed, shelter and educate themselves without outside interference. Can universal basic income really work? The utopian ideal may sound like it’s on the bleeding edge, but, in reality, the idea of every citizen receiving an unconditional sum of money is quite old. In fact, American revolutionary Thomas Paine proposed a dividend for all citizens of age in his pamphlet Agrarian Justice, published in 1797. “To preserve the benefits […]

Andrew Yang Is Full of It

Andrew Yang Is Full of It

Andrew Yang’s dystopian warnings about automation and mass unemployment have mostly been a quirky and harmless sideshow throughout this year’s Democratic primary. Like many tech types and TED Talk fans, the former businessman believes that the United States is living through an age of technological upheaval that has already devastated manufacturing work and will soon render millions of other jobs obsolete. His plan to address this grim future is to offer every American a $1,000 per month basic income—he calls it a “freedom dividend”—which he hopes will prevent society from unraveling as everyone from truckers to doctors see their […]

Economic Inequality & Employment

From shifting job categories , the disruption and decimation of industries, and an impending global skills mismatch, to the concentration of extreme wealth, income inequality, and avoidance of corporate taxes, Silicon Valley’s role in furthering economic inequality is hugely important, insufficiently understood, and under-actioned. The role technology plays in changing the conditions and types of employment, as well as reshaping global economics, is not the most publicized problem the industry has weathered, but it will be the next—and it will be the worst. Like other harmful social outcomes in which it is complicit, the tech industry’s mentality, priorities, and […]