Tag: inequality

Automated Inequality

Automated Inequality

Humans have been here before—at least three times before, in fact. At first, it was steam and water power; then came electricity and mass production; and then IT and computerization. Each time, Joseph Schumpeter’s “gale of creative destruction” blustered as rapid advances in technology destroyed some jobs, paved the way for new lines of work, and ultimately provided enhanced productivity and lifestyles for the majority. Researchers predict that over the next decade or so, emerging technological breakthroughs will once again fundamentally alter jobs and manufacturing processes around the world—but this time, the consequences could be drastically different.

There is little […]

Knowledge more crucial than skills in future economy

Knowledge more crucial than skills in future economy

What can the future hold for students seeking majors in a job market moving from part-time employment to emergent automation?

In the United States, neither political party has offered any significant frameworks for the coming challenges of automation displacing workers as economic inequality becomes unsustainable. While one party offers bread-crumb handouts such as education reform and more training for the American workforce, the other peddles the cliché that government is the problem, not the solution, offering fantasy schemes of fewer regulations, a new gig economy and a trickle-down economy by reducing taxes for the mega-wealthy.

A recent article in the […]

Will Artifical Intelligence Mean Massive Job Loss?

This article is from the
September/October 2016 issue. Dear Dr. Dollar:

What’s the story with artificial intelligence and jobs? Will the application of robotics to production really lead to massive unemployment?
—Anonymous, via email In the late 1970s, my early years at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB), the Department of Economics had two secretaries. When I retired, in 2008, the number of faculty members and students in the department had increased, but there was only one secretary. All the faculty members had their own computers, with which they did much of the work that secretaries had […]

Ben Chu: Why a robot is not going to steal your job

We live not so much in the age of the robots as in the age of worrying about the robots. New books and think pieces proliferate about the threat to the world’s workers from the twin forces of digitisation and automation.

The shadow Chancellor John McDonnell this week has cited new technology as a reason why his party is looking closely at a Universal Basic Income.

The Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, last year suggested that 15m British jobs could be automated.Such is the buzz around the subject that one half expects to arrive at the office one morning […]

“Basic Income”: A Solution To Unemployment In The Era Of Automation?

“Basic Income”: A Solution To Unemployment In The Era Of Automation?

The online buzz about the concept of “basic income” is getting stronger and stronger, even within just the last two weeks. What is this all about, and how might this impact you in the future?

Well, let’s say that increasing innovations in AI and robotics start putting more and more of the population out of a job. For example, suppose the self-driving vehicle thing really becomes a thing . That’s millions and millions of people out of work, who will have to learn a new skill in order to get employment—seeking employment in the greatly decreased job pool because automation […]

John McDonnell thinks the chance of a robot stealing your job is so high we need a universal basic income – but he’s wrong

John McDonnell thinks the chance of a robot stealing your job is so high we need a universal basic income – but he's wrong

We live not so much in the age of the robots as in the age of worrying about the robots.

New books and think pieces proliferate about the threat to the world’s workers from the twin forces of digitisation and automation. Read more McDonnell pledges £10-an-hour minimum wage and backs universal income Labour’s Chancellor John McDonnell this week has cited new technology as a reason why his party is looking closely at a Universal Basic Income.

The Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, last year suggested that 15m British jobs could be automated.Such is the buzz around the subject that […]

Why we must embrace digital disruption and ensure no worker is left behind

Why we must embrace digital disruption and ensure no worker is left behind

An industrial robot holds a sports car at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago. The jobs of the future are likely to be in areas where machine thinking and robotics imitate human thought. Photograph: Xinhua / Barcroft Images Disruption in the workforce is hardly a new phenomenon. Mechanisation of manufacturing, mass production and the advent of the internet and computers have all changed the way that work is done.

Earlier waves of industrialisation have primarily affected low-skilled manual labour and past improvements in technology have typically made jobs at the lower end of the skills spectrum obsolete – for […]

The human omission

It’s hard to conceive of a more fundamental topic than the future of work. Economists have grappled with it for centuries. Now slow growth, rising inequality and rapid technological change have raised a new, urgent question. Will robots free us from boring labour, or will they leave many workers permanently redundant?

Ryan Avent’s “The Wealth of Humans” manages to be both optimistic about innovation and gloomy about its consequences. This wide-ranging and highly readable book echoes famous tracts by tackling the biggest challenges facing the human race. The title is a nod to Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” – […]

The human omission

It’s hard to conceive of a more fundamental topic than the future of work. Economists have grappled with it for centuries. Now slow growth, rising inequality and rapid technological change have raised a new, urgent question. Will robots free us from boring labour, or will they leave many workers permanently redundant?

Ryan Avent’s “The Wealth of Humans” manages to be both optimistic about innovation and gloomy about its consequences. This wide-ranging and highly readable book echoes famous tracts by tackling the biggest challenges facing the human race. The title is a nod to Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” – […]

Disappearing factory jobs driving Iowa voter angst

Disappearing factory jobs driving Iowa voter angst

Small business owners and former employees say they continue to struggle to get by after hundreds of manufacturing jobs left Mason City, but city officials insist the jobs are there. Buy Photo MASON CITY, Ia. — It used to be hard to find a seat at the Kozy Korner.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the bar opened its doors at 6 a.m. to serve overnight workers as they finished their shifts in factories on the city’s north end. On Thursdays and Fridays, the Kozy kept piles of money on hand to cash workers’ paychecks. People lined up to play pool, […]