Tag: liberal

The Relevance of Utopianism

The Relevance of Utopianism

Review of Aaron Benanav’s book Automation and the Future of Work One summer during my youth I was hired to work the assembly line at a television manufacturer. This was in the days when America had a manufacturing base and actually produced consumer goods. I found myself working next to a conveyor belt slapping stickers onto large cathode ray tubes as they left an oven from another part of the factory. (From Wikipedia: The cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube that contains one or more electron guns and a phosphorescent screen, and is used to display images.) These […]

Automation and the Future of Work (excerpt)

Automation and the Future of Work (excerpt)

Automation and the Future of Work Excerpted from Automation and the Future of Work by Aaron Benanav (footnotes omitted). Copyright 2020 Verso Books. Used with permission of the Verso Books. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Chapter 6

Necessity and Freedom

Even if one doubts automation theorists’ account of technological progress—as I certainly do—their attempt to imagine and chart a path toward a post-scarcity future remains their thought’s most attractive aspect, because it allows us to pose the question of how the pieces of this defunct […]

RYAN MacRAE: Not only is basic income necessary, it’s also sustainable, achievable

RYAN MacRAE: Not only is basic income necessary, it's also sustainable, achievable

Could there become a time when all our basic needs are paid for by the government? That’s the question many economists and politicians around the world are starting to explore. SUBMITTED PHOTO RYAN MacRAE

Canada has been well overdue for an expansion of its social security. According to the most recent (pre-pandemic) statistics from Statistics Canada, 3.2 million Canadians still live below the national poverty line.

The federal Liberals’ anti-poverty strategy will aim to cut this number in half by 2030, but this is simply too low of a bar.The Latin American Mission Program has consistently called for the complete […]

Jobs of the future, miracles and messing with our university education

Jobs of the future, miracles and messing with our university education

OPINION: Predicting the Jobs of the future is not as straightforward as the government’s uni fees meddling would suggest.

The Morrison government’s Jobs-ready Graduates Package is more tweak than genuine reform.

The government has announced a repricing of university degrees, reducing the cost of supposed job-relevant STEM ( science, technology, engineering , and mathematics) degrees and increasing the cost of supposed job-irrelevant humanities and arts degrees.Underpinning this is the federal government’s projections suggesting that 62 per cent of employment growth over the next five years will be in four areas: science and technology, education, and construction.But predicting the jobs of […]

Keeping Pace with Digitalisation

Keeping Pace with Digitalisation

The forthcoming technological revolutions will transform the very nature of our work. It is unclear whether we will be ready for these changes or whether we will be left behind, marred by our own inertia.

At the same time, economic and technological changes will be catalysts for a new, emerging populism, especially under the circumstances of COVID-19. Will our jobs keep pace? How to prepare economies, and citizens, for fast-approaching technological advances? Can life-long learning and re-skilling be the key to success? The subject of a recent Visegrad Insight Breakfast discussion in partnership with the European Liberal Forum […]

Endgame?

Endgame?

Model of the Dr.Strangelove War Room. | Wikicommons/China Crisis. Some rights reserved. Get our weekly email

As was pointed out on 23 April by the Economist , close to a dozen states, from Azerbaijan to Togo have used the Covid-19 pandemic to arrogate more power to themselves . Indeed, this development has been particularly evident in Washington, Budapest, and Delhi.

Trump has claimed “total authority” for the Oval Office in opposition to state governors who had sought to loosen lockdown measures earlier. While he quickly backtracked on this claim, he has nonetheless more recently called upon his supporters (“Very good people”) […]

The Future Of Work And Employment – And What That Can Mean For Your Career

The Future Of Work And Employment - And What That Can Mean For Your Career

digital composite robot Getty The book The Future Of Work And Employment edited by Australian scholars Adrian Wilkinson and Michael Barry recently caught my eye. It tackles a massive subject and takes that subject seriously. It also provides a wide range of perspectives on the title, and a variety of insights into how your career might soon be affected. Here are some highlights.

Two grand narratives

In their introductory chapter, the editors reflect on “two grand narratives” that underlie competing views of contemporary employment. One stems from World War II era economist John Maynard Keynes, who envisioned knowledge workers […]

A New Age of Feudalism for the Working Class?

A New Age of Feudalism for the Working Class?

In the past, fears of job losses from automation were often overstated. Technological progress eliminated some jobs but created others, and often better-paying ones. In the early days of the high-tech revolution, many of the pioneering firms—such as Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and IBM—were widely praised for treating their lower-level workers as part of the company and deserving of opportunities for advancement, as well as benefits including health insurance and a pension.

The labor policies of the newer generation of tech giants tend to be vastly different. Firms like Tesla have been sued for failing to pay contract workers the legally mandated […]

No Crisis Wasted: MSNBC Uses Corona to Push Universal Basic Income

No Crisis Wasted: MSNBC Uses Corona to Push Universal Basic Income

Liberal MSNBC host Ali Velshi on Sunday used the COVID-19 pandemic to push for Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all Americans. Touting it as a “big idea,” Velshi largely dismissed the critics and glossed over cost. The MSNBC host, who has a history of promoting far-left economic ideas, began, “UBI is a big deal…. There’s lots of versions. But it goes something like this: Every citizen regardless of employment status gets a modest income from the state, no strings attached, which allows them to live above the poverty line.”

Though he started by linking the need for UBI to the […]

Say Hello to the Robo Worker

Say Hello to the Robo Worker

Illustration by Tanmoy Chakraborty MORE FROM THIS SECTION

Right from when I started working with the government in 1956, the approach has been that India must adopt labour intensive methods in manufacturing industries. The logic was that our large population and abundance of low-cost labour would help us manufacture goods at low cost. Quite predictably, labour unions opposed any form of automation or use of technology in factories that would lead to additional jobs not being created.

Everyone is aware that manufacturing in India has stagnated at 15-16 per cent of GDP while some of the bigger countries in […]