Tag: consumption

Ethiopia: Technology’s Impact On the Labor Market

Ethiopia: Technology's Impact On the Labor Market

Though an outright conclusion cannot be reached on the argument that technological surge affects the labor market adversely and put millions of labors out of the loop, there are many concerns that technological innovation will lead to increased unemployment, suppressed wages and greater inequality.

New technologies, as they hold immense promise, are also seen as a threat, potentially disrupting labor markets and contributing to income inequality. The biggest public fear is that robots and Artificial Intelligence /AI/ will replace human jobs on a large scale, resulting in mass unemployment or underemployment–and, consequently, widespread impoverishment around the globe. In fact, labor […]

Do we need to work less to save the world?

Do we need to work less to save the world?

Open-plan office with dozens of workers in cubicles Since the pandemic hit, how we work has changed. Some of us have had a double load, doing day jobs alongside full-time childcare. Others have found hours we once filled with urgent deadlines suddenly empty. And then there are those of us for whom going to work every day — stacking shelves, emptying bins, caring for the sick — became not just a job but an act of heroism, applauded by society from balconies and doorsteps.

Philipp Frey of the German Center for Emancipatory Technology Studies says there are lessons to be […]

How Automation Creates Jobs

How Automation Creates Jobs

The factories in the global market are widely incorporating automation, which primarily driving the need for skilled manpower. In addition, there is growth in need for the advancement in the human skills to enhance its power across the industrial operation, as no machine can match the skills of human intellect. In the current market, there are a wide number of journals claiming the loss of human need with the rise in adoption of automation, but the increase in consumption of robots, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) will actually create more jobs. Robotic operations usually create opportunities for the personnel […]

A New Age of Feudalism for the Working Class?

A New Age of Feudalism for the Working Class?

In the past, fears of job losses from automation were often overstated. Technological progress eliminated some jobs but created others, and often better-paying ones. In the early days of the high-tech revolution, many of the pioneering firms—such as Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and IBM—were widely praised for treating their lower-level workers as part of the company and deserving of opportunities for advancement, as well as benefits including health insurance and a pension.

The labor policies of the newer generation of tech giants tend to be vastly different. Firms like Tesla have been sued for failing to pay contract workers the legally mandated […]

Why Our Economy May Be Headed for a Decade of Depression

Why Our Economy May Be Headed for a Decade of Depression

The worst is yet to come? Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images In September 2006, Nouriel Roubini told the International Monetary Fund what it didn’t want to hear. Standing before an audience of economists at the organization’s headquarters, the New York University professor warned that the U.S. housing market would soon collapse — and, quite possibly, bring the global financial system down with it. Real-estate values had been propped up by unsustainably shady lending practices, Roubini explained. Once those prices came back to earth, millions of underwater homeowners would default on their mortgages, trillions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities would […]

Made in Africa: African digital labour in the value chains of AI

Made in Africa: African digital labour in the value chains of AI

This series is a partnership with the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

Artificial intelligence is often associated with prophecies of job destruction. Yet an army of workers in the global south is being pressed into action. Mark Graham In discussions about the locations comprising the key productive nodes of artificial intelligence and other next-generation digital technologies, African workers rarely get a mention. Autonomous vehicles, machine-learning systems, next-generation search engines and recommendations systems—how many of these technologies are ‘made in Africa’? The answer, actually, is ‘all of them’.

In a paper from which this […]

State of Disruptive Technologies in Futuristic Market

State of Disruptive Technologies in Futuristic Market

The innovations brought in by industry 4.0 technologies, also termed disruptive technologies are at the core of various businesses, organizations, sectors, industries, countries, and human-tasks as well. New age disruption induced by such technologies sweeps away the systems or replaces consumer or market habits through a recognizably superior behavior. Cloud Consulting, Cyber Security, Business Intelligence and Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual & Augmented Reality are among the top disruptive technologies leading way towards better business prospects.

Besides, McKinsey considers mobile internet, automation of knowledge work, the internet of things, cloud technology, Advanced robotics, Autonomous, and near-autonomous vehicles, next-generation genomics, […]

State of Disruptive Technologies in Contemporary Market

State of Disruptive Technologies in Contemporary Market

The innovations brought in by industry 4.0 technologies, also termed disruptive technologies are at the core of various businesses, organizations, sectors, industries, countries, and human-tasks as well. New age disruption induced by such technologies sweeps away the systems or replaces consumer of market habits through a recognizably superior behavior. Cloud Consulting, Cyber Security, Business Intelligence and Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual & Augmented Reality are among the top disruptive technologies leading way towards better business prospects.

Besides, McKinsey considers mobile internet, automation of knowledge work, the internet of things, cloud technology, Advanced robotics, Autonomous, and near-autonomous vehicles, next-generation genomics, […]

The false bipartisan narrative on the economy

Today’s bipartisan Cassandra caucus includes Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (“ the rich get richer, while everyone else falls behind ”) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (“ our standard of living has fallen ”) and Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (“ we have been left with an economy and a society no one is happy with ”) and Josh Hawley (“ Over the last several decades, inflation-adjusted wages for the working class have barely budged ”). The caucus says the U.S. economy is primarily producing disappointment, even misery. This narrative is largely false, yet can be self-fulfilling.

Fortunately, Michael R. Strain ’s just-published […]

Contra the Skeptics, Trade and Technology Really Do Benefit Most American Workers

Contra the Skeptics, Trade and Technology Really Do Benefit Most American Workers

Figuring out how to help the minority being left behind is policymakers’ most urgent challenge.

As we plunge into another presidential-election year, one key point of contention will be the state of the American worker: Are most Americans getting ahead in today’s increasingly high-tech, globalized economy, or have wages and incomes “stagnated” for middle-class and blue-collar workers?

Progressives on the left and economic nationalists on the right seem to share a common view that most American workers are worse off today than in past decades. Trade and technology, they say, are largely to blame. Their favored policy prescriptions range from […]