Tag: liberal

Dutch voter anger about immigrants, yes, but anger about robots, too

Dutch voter anger about immigrants, yes, but anger about robots, too

From the towering offices of Rotterdam’s port authority, you can watch the never-ending stream of barges begin their river journeys to the Rhine and points across Europe, carrying everything from Chinese microwave ovens to iron ore from Brazil.

Rotterdam boasts Europe’s biggest port, which depends on the globalised economy for its success and 130,000 jobs. Yet this North Sea gateway to the world is also the birthplace of an anti-globalization, anti-immigrant and anti-Islam movement that is on course to place first in Dutch elections on March 15.

The appeal of its current leader, the peroxide blond Geert Wilders, seems a paradox […]

Trade, Automation, Cheap Wages Abroad Conspire to Alter U.S. Economic Landscape

Trade, Automation, Cheap Wages Abroad Conspire to Alter U.S. Economic Landscape

President Trump has blamed countries such as China and Mexico for the erosion of U.S. manufacturing jobs, but the industry has been steadily declining for decades. Photo: Tama66 / Pixabay

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump struck a protectionist, populist tone that appealed to Rust Belt blue-collar workers but instilled fear among multinational companies, foreign governments and free trade advocates. Those fears were apparently well founded.

Since assuming office, Trump has wasted no time railing against the perils of globalization. He’s threatened to slap punitive tariffs on key economic partners such as Mexico and China, named and shamed companies that outsource […]

Nowhere to Go: Automation, Then and Now

Nowhere to Go: Automation, Then and Now

Part One

It is in this serious light that we have to look at the question of the growing army of the unemployed. We have to stop looking for solutions in pump-priming, featherbedding, public works, war contracts, and all the other gimmicks that are always being proposed by labor leaders and well-meaning liberals.

– James Boggs, The American Revolution In 1963, James Boggs, a black autoworker employed for over two decades at a Chrysler plant in Detroit, published a short book focused on the nefarious effects of automation on class struggle in the United States. The story told in The American […]

Dutch anger is about robots, and immigrants

Dutch anger is about robots, and immigrants

“Robotization is taking our jobs,’’ says Niek Stam, leader of the FNV Havens labor union that represents the stevedores loading and unloading cargo at Rotterdam’s port. “Dockers won’t vote for [Geert] Wilders because they’re racist — they aren’t. They’ll vote for him because they’re angry.” Stam is shown in his Rotterdam office on. MUST CREDIT: Jasper Juinen — Bloomberg Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, speaks during a Europe of Nations and Freedom meeting in Koblenz, Germany, on. MUST CREDIT: Martin Leissl — Bloomberg

From the towering offices of Rotterdam’s port authority, you can watch the never-ending stream […]

If the robots are coming for our jobs, make sure they pay their taxes

If the robots are coming for our jobs, make sure they pay their taxes

The problem with the future is that it’s unknowable. But of course that doesn’t stop us trying to second-guess it. At the moment, many people – and not just in the tech industry – are wondering about the impact of automation on employment. And not just blue-collar employment – the kind of jobs that were eliminated in the early phase of automating car production, for instance – but also the white-collar jobs that hitherto seemed secure.

In a much-cited 2013 study , for example, economists David Autor of MIT and David Dorn of Spain’s CEMFI institute found that because computers […]

Automated Trucks Threaten Millions of US Jobs

Automated Trucks Threaten Millions of US Jobs

Self-driving vehicles are coming on strong, faster than anyone knowledgeable thought a few years ago. Self-driving vehicles are being tested for real world use, and highway laws are being rejiggered to accommodate the new tech future.

NBC News Channel 02/06/2017 1:26

Self-Driving Semis Hit the Road in Texas But driving is a major jobs category, as shown by the map below, taken from an interactive NPR graphic in the 2015 article Map: The Most Common Job In Every State . Millions of driving jobs still exist in the US because it’s one gig that could not be outsourced to China, […]

Economic advisory council delivers Bill Morneau an odd report: Walkom

Hamilton Spectator

The latest report from Ottawa’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth is an odd document. It foresees a world in which almost half of Canadians will have lost their jobs to automation. Yet it spends much effort trying to figure out how to encourage more workers to compete for this diminishing number of jobs.

Like the council’s first report in October, this one walks a fine line between market economics and activist government.It wants private capitalists to lead the way but it also wants government to both guide and backstop their efforts.In that sense it hearkens back to the Asian […]

The future of American jobs lies with the tech industry

The future of American jobs lies with the tech industry

When Donald Trump won the election, many in Silicon Valley were flummoxed: “How could a bigoted billionaire with no government experience and a twitchy Twitter trigger finger win the U.S. presidential election?” they asked themselves.

Liberal outlets have tried to make sense of the massive divide between “our” (upper-class liberals working in tech) vision of the country and “their” (blue-collar workers) vision of the country. We are facing a collective identity crisis, living in a “ post-truth ” world, utterly perplexed as to how a person so at odds with our Bay Area politics could win the most important […]

The Gradual Disappearance of Jobs

The Gradual Disappearance of Jobs

Stuck Between Fantasy And Reality
From the very beginning of industrial era, the idea of replacing humans with machines caught on and has persisted, to the point of appearing credible today. Indeed, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence are raising concerns about the significance of humankind in the future. That still far event horizon forecasts a society lead by strong artificial intelligences which may bring us to our obsolescence. Homo sapiens will be at best forced to the margins of active duty like the utopian post-work post-scarcity society in Iain M. Banks’s science-fiction The Culture Series,; and at worse, wiped […]

When robots take more and more jobs, how will humans get paid?

When robots take more and more jobs, how will humans get paid?

What if governments just gave money to people?

That’s the big question that Thomas Weisskopf ​, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Michigan, is asking. Since automation is replacing human-powered labor in fields like manufacturing, robust employment may be a thing of the past. A permanent surplus of labor has massive consequences, driving down wages and even contributing to social unrest. According to Weisskopf, such a dramatic problem demands a dramatic solution. An automated welding arm Weisskopf said in using “basic income grants,” an amount of money would be handed out to every citizen “without any conditions whatsoever.” […]