Tag: consumption

English is a life skill

English is a life skill

The advent of society can be traced back to the formation of groups of human beings who had common ways of expressing themselves.Whether through commonality of expression, through the sounds they made, or gestures, or in their behaviour while chasing down prey or resolving conflicts, human beings found a way to communicate successfully with one […]

The evolution of functional societies came about through the evolution of languages through which messages could be communicated by one and interpreted by another. The advent of society can be traced back to the formation of groups of human beings who had common […]

Offshoring, Not Automation, Is Causing America’s Manufacturing Job Loss

Offshoring, Not Automation, Is Causing America’s Manufacturing Job Loss

Don’t Blame Technology Or Robots

People who say that America is losing its manufacturing jobs because of automation (more robots) are either ignorant, or lying—many are both.

Sadly, these people are about as common as they wrong (very, on both counts).Bad “economists” are everywhere, especially in journalism. For example, Wolfgang Lehmacher wrote a column in Fortune on the subject: …what then explains [manufacturing] job losses? It’s simple: factories don’t need as many workers as they used to, because robots increasingly do the work. Let me be clear: that’s not wrong prima facie —factories are getting more efficient. But that’s […]

Carrier & The Broken Window Narrative

Carrier & The Broken Window Narrative

Lance Roberts Trump saves jobs in Indiana before even being President. This is how you make ‘America Great Again. Between promises to cut corporate taxes from 35% to 15%, reduce regulatory burdens and penalize companies who leave the U.S., markets, economists and analysts are all trying to figure out what it means. As I noted on Tuesday , the always-bullish analysts are already pushing up corporate earnings to record levels while the mainstream media is fostering the idea of an economic resurgence to levels last seen during the Reagan Administration. In turn, this will result in higher inflation, higher […]

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’ […]

Welcome to our automated future

Welcome to our automated future

I’ve written a number of pieces now detailing how progress in technology is impacting our lives. The bottom line is that remarkable strides in recent years have made current realities out of things that would have fallen into the category of science fiction not that long ago. Many of these developments will wind up having a direct impact on employment and the work force. This isn’t a new phenomenon. That is what technology does. As long as there has been technology, it has altered the workforce.

The challenges posed by this became clear in the industrial revolution. The term “Luddite […]

Confusion about job creation is obscuring America’s productivity crisis

Confusion about job creation is obscuring America's productivity crisis

Robots work on a new Volkswagen Crafter production line at the newly opened Volkswagen factory in Wrzesnia near Poznan, Poland, in September. There is perhaps no other topic in economics that is more prone to illogical thinking than job creation. It is a wellspring of hysterical nonsense.

Let’s start with the canard that technology and automation kill jobs. Notwithstanding the fact that US productivity growth rates are at an all-time low, a growing chorus blames technology for killing our jobs. Writing in The New Yorker, NYU professor Gary Marcus alleges that, “as machines continue to get smarter, cheaper, and more […]

Divide and Automate

Divide and Automate

Illustration by Lydia Wojack-West

As a species, we are poised at the brink of a transformation unlike any before.

The ancestor of this coming metamorphosis was not political or philosophical in nature; it did not emerge from the ashes of the American Revolution or the Bolshevik’s, nor did it germinate from the teachings of Jesus, Buddha or Muhammad. The predecessor to the singularity we so boldly march toward was something far more primordial, far more tangible. It was industrial.The last three industrial revolutions transformed the fabric of human civilization: The first, borne of steam and coal, powered newly invented […]

The United Nations claims automation will take 2/3rds of jobs in developing nations

The United Nations claims automation will take 2/3rds of jobs in developing nations

What a fitting time. Seeing as America just elected the least qualified party to handle the automation problem in America as well as a candidate promising the return of automatable jobs, we now know the sights and conflict are poised to wreck the fuck out of the developing world. They have it worse than many first world societies, where the concerns are one in three jobs are dissolved. All figures, assuming the worst of them pose true, are concerns for social conflict, insecurity, and instability.

Have some more darkly sobering news today . Some excerpts… Industrialization has historically been […]

Robotics, driverless tech are taking over mining jobs

Robotics, driverless tech are taking over mining jobs

In the next decade, the mining industry may lose more than half of its jobs to automation, according to a new report. That’s not based on future technologies, but on automated equipment being deployed today.

The mining industry is primed for automation. It’s capital intensive, buys expensive equipment and pays relatively well.

This industry is adopting self-driving trucks, automated loaders and automated drilling and tunnel-boring systems. It is also testing fully autonomous long-distance trains, which carry materials from the mine to a port, according to the report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg, Canada.A broader question is whether […]

Robotics, driverless tech are taking over mining jobs

Robotics, driverless tech are taking over mining jobs

Coal is transported via conveyor belt to the coal-fired Jim Bridger Power Plant. The coal is supplied by a mine owned by PacifiCorp and the Idaho Power Company, outside Point of the Rocks, Wyoming. In the next decade, the mining industry may lose more than half of its jobs to automation, according to a new report. That’s not based on future technologies, but on automated equipment being deployed today.

The mining industry is primed for automation. It’s capital intensive, buys expensive equipment and pays relatively well.

This industry is adopting self-driving trucks, automated loaders and automated drilling and tunnel-boring systems. It […]