Tag: conservative

Lure of the long-shot

Lure of the long-shot

A few days ago, the Washington Post ran a feature cleverly titled “Random Man Runs for President” quite literally describing Andrew Yang, one of the 20-something candidates running for the Presidential Elections of the United States in 2020—against one Donald Trump. Except he isn’t random anymore. His campaign is powered by young, neoliberal-leaning, meme-ready, predominantly online supporters calling themselves the ‘yang gang’. Pitching himself as the data guy, Yang hails modest success in business. Like Trump, he is an outsider but unlike him, he comes with no baggage, or public notoriety. And though his candidacy is a long-shot, in […]

America’s Finest Economists Have Been Needlessly Undermining Growth, Study Confirms

America’s Finest Economists Have Been Needlessly Undermining Growth, Study Confirms

This board could have been more decorated. For much of the past decade, America’s foremost economic thinkers have been struggling to resolve two “mysteries”:

1. Why was the prime-age labor-force participation rate (i.e., the percentage of workers ages 25 to 64 who have a job or want one) stuck so far below its precrisis level?

2. Why was wage growth tepid , even as the unemployment rate dropped near historic lows? Which is to say: If jobs were relatively plentiful, and available labor relatively scarce, then why weren’t workers feeling more emboldened to demand higher pay? Or, viewed from the other […]

This Lunatic Ten Hour Working Week Idea!

This Lunatic Ten Hour Working Week Idea!

Just when you thought you’d heard it all, along comes the Labour bigwigs backing an absolutely loony-tunes proposal for a ten hour working week.

PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW:

Doesn’t it sound so attractive, no-one will work more than ten hours a week and we can save the environment from the climate emergency and have a much better work-life balance in the process.The numbers in the report by Philipp Frey for Autonomy all crunch out right in the spread sheets and the formulas all add up.What it seems to be saying is that, if the country is economically much […]

Letter — Limited government approach to income inequality

One idea, proposed by conservative economist Milton Friedman. is to provide a minimum income for the poor. Such a program would be more efficient since it would eliminate many welfare programs requiring fewer government workers to run.

Besides the poor, we need to address the problem of disappearing jobs. Globalization has been a factor where some have been displaced by competing workers that pay lower wages as compared to our country. Another factor eliminating jobs has been automation reducing the number of workers required. One example has been the coal industry. Lastly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) threatens to destroy millions of […]

Letter — Limited government approach to income inequality

One idea, proposed by conservative economist Milton Friedman. is to provide a minimum income for the poor. Such a program would be more efficient since it would eliminate many welfare programs requiring fewer government workers to run.

Besides the poor, we need to address the problem of disappearing jobs. Globalization has been a factor where some have been displaced by competing workers that pay lower wages as compared to our country. Another factor eliminating jobs has been automation reducing the number of workers required. One example has been the coal industry. Lastly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) threatens to destroy millions of […]

‘The UK is a long way behind in terms of productivity’: Mike Wilson, BARA

Chairman of the British Automation and Robot Association (BARA) Mike Wilson discusses the ‘underperforming’ state of the UK’s manufacturing robot industry. He says without an increased commitment to automation, it will find itself with bigger problems on its plate than Brexit.

“The UK is a long way behind in terms of productivity,” says Mike Wilson of the British Automation and Robot Association (BARA). “The increased use of robotics is an important element of addressing that shortfall.” Wilson is the chairman of BARA, an organisation that represents “the supply chain for robot and automation products into the UK”. Its membership consists […]

We Must Restore the Dignity of Work. All Work.

We Must Restore the Dignity of Work. All Work.

A McDonald’s employee prepares an order. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) The value and dignity of work—any work—used to be one of the core principles of conservative and Republican thinking. It drove the welfare reform push in the 1990s, and the support for the Earned Income Tax Credit in the present day. It is why people on the right work so hard to remove barriers to work like occupational licensing or required union membership so that opportunity does not remain out of reach for the poorer and more unfortunate. Work, to the mind of the conservative, possesses an intrinsic […]

Maybe the robot will do you a favor and snatch your job

Maybe the robot will do you a favor and snatch your job

Recently, Amazon floated the idea that it would be fully automated in a decade: Not all of the 125,000 people who work at Amazon warehouses have to worry about losing their jobs to robots — not for 10 years or so, anyways.

On Tuesday, Scott Anderson, director of Amazon Robotics Fulfillment, led reporters on a tour of the company’s Baltimore warehouse during which he said it would be “at least 10 years” before Amazon could entirely automate the fulfillment process. When we read further into the story, of course, we find it’s not so simple. Robots are especially bad […]

Globalism v Nationalism: Do we protect the worker or the product?

Globalism v Nationalism: Do we protect the worker or the product?

With globalised wealth where it is, I’m unsure the route of globalism we’re taking cannot continue. With that being said, returning the power totally back to the worker is not the solution either.

Trade has always existed; it’s done through every possible format and method, by water, land or air. It’s part of how we grow and prosper.

The first globalising influences were the European empires, which stretched their trade empires from one side of the planet to the other. Through these, the empires were able to start influencing markets and economic conditions from the other side of the […]

Tax code should not make hiring robots more affordable than people

Tax code should not make hiring robots more affordable than people

1of9Toyota’s basketball robot Cue 3 demonstrates Monday, April 1, 2019 at a gymnasium in Fuchu, Tokyo. The 207-centimeter (six-foot-10) -tall machine made five of eight three-pointer shots in a demonstration in a Tokyo suburb Monday, a ratio its engineers say is worse than usual. Toyota Motor Corp.’s robot, called Cue 3, computes as a three-dimensional image where the basket is, using sensors on its torso, and adjusts motors inside its arm and knees to give the shot the right angle and propulsion for a swish.(AP Photo/Yuri Kageyama)Photo: Yuri Kageyama, STF / Associated Press Walmart and Kroger are deploying robots […]