Tag: liberal

Minimum wage increases: The opposite of helpful

Minimum wage increases: The opposite of helpful

Like so much of the legislation that comes out of Sacramento, the hike in California’s minimum wage has been touted by Democrats as helping the poor while assuring businesses won’t be harmed. But, like much of that legislation, it’s likely to do the opposite.

In 2014 California’s minimum wage was $8 per hour. Today it is $10.50—a 31 percent increase in just three years. It’s scheduled to increase again in January to $11 an hour followed by annual dollar hikes until it reaches $15 an hour in 2022. That’s an 88 percent increase in the cost of unskilled labor in […]

A new urban economic agenda: how to localise, socialise, and democratise the economy

A new urban economic agenda: how to localise, socialise, and democratise the economy

There are sensible ways through which we can reorganise the UK economy, argues Neil McInroy . He explains how a new urban economic agenda can be implemented and how it can help build a more socially just future.

All things must pass and the dominant urban economic model of the last few years is starting to creak, and a new progressive agenda is threatening to replace it. At its core is a rejection of liberal economics, a questioning of urban economic policy, and a desire to reorganise our city economies: social justice and environmental sustainability are not just hopes […]

After Work: Automation and Employment Law, Part Two

After Work: Automation and Employment Law, Part Two

Cynthia Estlund is the Catherine A. Rein Professor at the New York University School of Law, and a longtime teacher and scholar of labor and employment law. This post is the second in a three-part series. Read the first part here .

Automation and Job Loss: What’s Law Got To Do With It?

The challenge of automation is in many ways continuous with the challenges of “fissured” work – to use David Weil’s influential formulation. In particular, both trends are driven in significant part by the costs and risks of employing human beings. According to investment banker Steven […]

Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian future has come to pass

Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian future has come to pass

Author foresaw the threat to civilisation and the crisis of meaning created by automation

’We could soon reach a point at which our smartest machines become more intelligent than we are and accelerate away from us on an exponential learning curve.’ The self-driving car has become the poster gadget for the next wave of automation powered by artificial intelligence. It is a terrifying idea.

Turning basic transportation over to robots will, almost certainly, cause the greatest job extinction event in labour history, wiping out the already dwindling earning potential for taxi drivers, truckers, delivery people and many more.Tech giants like […]

July 5: In the Khadr case, $10-million talks. Plus other letters to the editor

July 5: In the Khadr case, $10-million talks. Plus other letters to the editor

Omar Khadr answers questions during a news conference after being released on bail in Edmonton on May 7, 2015. He was once the youngest prisoner held on terror charges at Guantanamo Bay. (Dan Riedlhuber/Reuters) Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

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$10-million talks Re Ottawa To Offer Apology To Omar Khadr (July 4): Thank you. Please send the invoice […]

A. Barton Hinkle: There’s more to a job than just making money

A. Barton Hinkle: There's more to a job than just making money

Men at work in New York City. “The most fundamental cause of economic poverty,” said Richmond’s 2013 poverty commission report , “is inadequate access to remunerative employment — that is, to good, steady jobs.”

The absence of work causes other kinds of poverty, too. As Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser points out in a new article for City Journal , “jobless husbands have a 50 percent higher divorce rate than employed husbands.” The loss of a job inflicts a much greater degree of unhappiness than a reduction of income does. A loss of income likewise causes much less divorce, and […]

Facebook, Tesla CEOs lead charge for guaranteed income: ‘I don’t think we’re going to have a choice,’ Zuckerberg says

Facebook, Tesla CEOs lead charge for guaranteed income: 'I don't think we're going to have a choice,' Zuckerberg says

WASHINGTON – Across their three presidential debates last year, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump uttered the word “jobs” 86 times – but the word “automation” never came up. And by all accounts, nothing is going to transform the American labor market more dramatically, and likely for the worse, than the increasing trend toward automation: on assembly lines, in self-driving cars , even clerical and white-collar positions once considered unthinkable for robots to occupy.

Credible projections now forecast that 40 percent of all jobs in the United States today could be eliminated by 2030, just 13 years from now, have led […]

Marching to Dystopia

(photo by helran) It wasn’t that long ago (October 2016) that federal Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau got into trouble when he said that Canadian youth need to “get used to” job churn — the crappy, short-term contract jobs with low pay and no benefits that are the hallmark of the “precariat” future. “We have to accept that,” Morneau pontificated.

Only days later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was heckled by participants at the Young Workers’ Summit organized by the Canadian Labour Congress in Ottawa. Several young people stood and turned their backs on Trudeau, a sign of their frustration over […]

21st Century Automation: Is This Time Truly Different?

21st Century Automation: Is This Time Truly Different?

In recent years, a great deal has been written about the effect of automation on employment. On the one hand, the pessimists predict that we’re nearing a tipping point, where the wealth created by robots will be reserved for an elite few, while a permanent social underclass will remain forever unemployable. Alternatively, the eternal optimists portend that we are on the path to a post-scarcity world, and that the road ahead may be long, but the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. All in all, the optimists probably get a lot more right than the […]

Trump Voters Need Good Economic Policy, Not Empathy

Trump Voters Need Good Economic Policy, Not Empathy

There has been a strange debate among many liberals and progressives since the election as to whether they should have empathy for the people who voted for Donald Trump. After all, Trump is a pretty reprehensible character who has pledged to do some pretty awful things in the White House. Is there a reason that people should have empathy for the voters who put him there?

Whatever answer you pick to that question, there is another set of questions that should be simpler for progressives to answer. What are the right economic policies to be pursuing for the working class? […]