Tag: inequality

Basic Income Might Be The Answer To Society’s Productivity Crisis

Basic Income Might Be The Answer To Society's Productivity Crisis

With the decline of manufacturing jobs, and the onset of automation to take over almost all kinds of work, society is on the hunt for a long-term, scalable solution to our future productivity.

What will happen to displaced workers? How will mass unemployment hurt our increasingly globalized economy?

One concept, a universal basic income, has been debated by thinkers as far back as the 16th century . The theory suggests that a flat income, given to every citizen regardless of employment or societal status, will allow society to pursue the work it really believes in. Can a monthly universal stipend help […]

How computer automation affects occupations: Technology, jobs, and skills

How computer automation affects occupations: Technology, jobs, and skills

A popular notion is that computer automation leads to major job losses. However, this ignores the dynamic economic responses that involve both changing demand and inter-occupation substitution. Using US data, this column explores the effect of automation on employment growth for detailed occupational categories. Computer-using occupations have had greater job growth to date, while those using few computers suffer greater computer-related losses. The real challenge posed by automation is developing a workforce with the skills to use new technologies.

Automation has become a concern not just for blue-collar manufacturing workers, but also for white-collar workers and even professionals. New computer […]

How to Protect Workers From Job-Stealing Robots

How to Protect Workers From Job-Stealing Robots

A robot and a human work side by side. There is a lively debate happening across various corners of the internet and the hallways of academia: In the coming decades, will advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) render human labor unnecessary?

At first blush, economic data suggest little reason to worry. American businesses in recent years have needed more and more humans: 15 million new private-sector jobs have been created since early 2010. At the same time, what economists refer to as labor productivity (economic output per human hour worked) has grown disappointingly slowly. If robots were on track to replace […]

Automation will end the dream of rapid economic growth for poorer countries

Automation will end the dream of rapid economic growth for poorer countries

Humanoid robots working side by side with employees on an assembly line at a factory. Photograph: Issei Kato/REUTERS For a long time – at least since the economic emergence of South Korea in the 1960s – many low-income countries have been able to achieve rapid economic growth through industrialisation.

The process usually starts with low-end manufacturing (apparel, footwear, plastics) and entails large numbers of workers moving from low productivity smallholder agriculture to high productivity export manufacturing.

Industrialisation has helped to drive an unprecedented convergence between rich and poor country wealth levels. By the early 2000s, 83 developing countries were achieving growth […]

Selling free trade is a tall order. But Chris Bowen is doing better than Scott Morrison

Selling free trade is a tall order. But Chris Bowen is doing better than Scott Morrison

‘Arguing for more free trade while also pledging a crackdown on welfare and bemoaning the “taxed-nots”, as Morrison did, is just self-defeating.’ Photograph: Mal Fairclough/EPA Chris Bowen this week set out his plans for winning the fight against the rise of protectionism. It’s a fight in which those in favour of free trade have been shown over the past year – whether in the Brexit vote or the inability to counter Donald Trump – to have been completely inept. Among the best aspect of Bowen’s plan of attack is that he has realised one of the reasons for this […]

Uber will wipe out skills not jobs

Uber will wipe out skills not jobs

Uber’s announcement to add self-driving cars to its usual taxi services in the United States is as unexpected as it is indicative of the automated future of the sharing economy. Governments should limit their efforts to regulate the rapidly-evolving sharing economy and instead focus on developing relevant skills. Ride-hailing app Uber recently announced a pilot project testing the use of self-driving cars in the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The announcement was quite unexpected since the technology of automated passenger cars is not even close to hitting the markets. There are major technological flaws to be resolved and regulators have […]

Robots are after our jobs: what can we do?

Robots are after our jobs: what can we do?

Photo: The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images Will smart automation, intelligent software bots and brainy robots take away our jobs anytime soon?

Pose this question to any Indian working in a company where unions are strong, or to any Indian who has a government job, or to the majority of Indians who work in the unorganized sector—those who drive taxis, trucks pull handcarts, hawk goods on footpaths or are employed as maids—and you will, in all probability, be looked at askance or even dismissed as an uninformed prophet of doom.

The reaction may not be surprising in emerging countries like India, […]

Clinton, Trump and Obama aren’t telling American workers the truth. Here it is

Clinton, Trump and Obama aren't telling American workers the truth. Here it is

Labor Day is the one day every year when we come together as a nation to celebrate the achievements of the American worker and the history of the labor movement in this country. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will join President Obama (who spent the weekend meeting with G20 leaders issued a Labor Day message on September 1) as well as a variety of politicians and public officials from across the country, in commemorating the day.

You can bet that their lofty rhetoric will be accompanied by a promise to restore the nation to its manufacturing heyday.

At the Democratic Convention […]

The new technology revolution – impact on SL

The new technology revolution - impact on SL

( Continued from yesterday )

By C.R. de Silva,
Retired World Bank Official
Artificial Intelligence (AI) -The Second Machine Age is Here.The Nobel Prize winner in behavioural economics Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow, believes that robots will actually replace CEOs, which is well beyond the limits of manual or physical labour. His view is that there is no concrete evidence that expert human cognition does better than intelligently constructed formulas, meaning algorithms conjoined with artificial intelligence(AI) to create good business judgement. So, what is AI ? It is the invention and deployment to actual situations of intelligent or […]

Robots and AI eating into job market for predictable and routine work

Robots and AI eating into job market for predictable and routine work

Robots and early AI are already proficient enough to displace vast tracts of predictable physical work and data process and collection tasks in the US. The effect of automation may see more and more tasks taken away from humans, across a wide range of professions, either creating more time for different tasks – or seeing a reduction in FTE. Management of people remains an area with a low automation potential – given current technologies.

Automation has the potential to free humanity from the fetters of repetitive, physically demanding and, often, unpleasant work. The loss of such work, particularly where […]