Tag: manufactur

Clinton is wrong. You shouldn’t have to work to have a place in America.

Clinton is wrong. You shouldn’t have to work to have a place in America.

Hillary Clinton tours a factory during a campaign stop. (Chris Keane/Reuters) It is only because of audience member Ken Bone’s question about the effect that energy policy would have on employment at power plants that the presidential candidates addressed jobs at all during their debate Sunday night. But the night’s biggest statement about work didn’t come in response to Bone.

It came instead as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton answered a question about Islamophobia. She said, “My vision of America is an America where everyone has a place, if you are willing to work hard, do your part and you contribute […]

Will the ‘Rise of the Machines’ Require a Unique Human Response?

Will the ‘Rise of the Machines’ Require a Unique Human Response?

Automation anxieties have accelerated in recent years, as our increasingly smart machines are now being applied to activities requiring cognitive, physical and social capabilities that not long ago were viewed as the exclusive domain of humans. Concerns surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and its long-term impact may well be in a class by themselves. Like no other technology, AI forces us to explore the very boundaries between machines and humans.

Few topics are as important as the future of work in our 21st century digital economy, given our justifiable anxieties about technological unemployment . “The economic challenge of the future will […]

The Great Unravelling: How Digitalisation will change Society

The Great Unravelling: How Digitalisation will change Society

The digitalisation of industry is a revolution. It will accelerate innovation and drive productivity. It heralds a new era and promises a future of smart manufacturing, customised products and increased coordination between supply and demand.

Some, however, are more cautious about the whole thing. While the Commission presented its strategy to digitise industry and, in essence, support the automation of production, Commissioner for Employment Marianne Thyssen stated that the industrial transition towards a digital revolution entails a “fundamental transformation of the world of work.” How she sees this transformation exactly is not clear. But her statement seems to indicate an […]

Tech Revolution But Few Jobs

Tech Revolution But Few Jobs

The digital and technology revolution has powered up internet searches, social media, smartphone apps and ecommerce over the past decade to the delight of Google, Twitter, Facebook and Apple to name but a few. But although the digital world has expanded, the exploding tech industry has not met expectations in the real world and has created surprisingly few jobs.

The giants Google Alphabet and Facebook had only 74,505 employees between them at the end of 2015, which is much less than Microsoft by about one-third, according to the Wall Street Journal.

For a clearer perspective, Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 for […]

Automation Angst – The Polarization of the Labor Market in the 21st Century

Automation Angst – The Polarization of the Labor Market in the 21st Century

Success achieving the American Dream of homeownership is, in large part, dependent on the ability to earn a good income. For much of the last century, a job in manufacturing provided a stable and solid income. In fact, after World War II, the United States was the manufacturer to the world, as America’s post-war economic boom changed the way we worked, where we lived and our ability to own a piece of the American Dream.

Now, just as the Industrial Revolution transformed the way we worked at the turn of the 20 th century, the “information revolution” is profoundly re-shaping […]

Gandhi And His Economics

Gandhi And His Economics

Gandhi was not an easy man to comprehend, especially when it came to his economics.

His economic ideas are difficult to slot in the Left-Right-Centre range of ideas, or the Communism-Socialism-Capitalism range of ideologies.

Gandhi’s core ideas—swadeshi, village republics, small businesses, self-employment, dignity of labour, and trusteeship of wealth—are all anachronistic in today’s digital world.Gandhi was not an easy man to comprehend, especially when it came to his economics. One reason for this is that he arrived at his conclusions through a moral understanding of the universe, and not by thinking about growth or investment or demand and supply. This is […]

The Skills Delusion

The Skills Delusion

LONDON – Everybody agrees that better education and improved skills, for as many people as possible, is crucial to increasing productivity and living standards and to tackling rising inequality. But what if everybody is wrong?

Most economists are certain that human capital is as important to productivity growth as physical capital. And to some degree, that’s obviously true. Modern economies would not be possible without widespread literacy and numeracy: many emerging economies are held back by inadequate skills. John Andrews views the country’s civil war in the context of the Middle East’s strategic disarray, assessing how Shlomo Ben-Ami, Christopher Hill, […]

Looming threat! Automation threatens 69 per cent jobs in India, says World Bank

Looming threat! Automation threatens 69 per cent jobs in India, says World Bank

Mechanisation and technology have disrupted traditional industrial production, upended manual jobs and call time on the work that has been done by generations of families. WASHINGTON: Automation threatens 69 per cent of the jobs in India , while 77 per cent in China , according to a World Bank research which has said that technology could fundamentally disrupt the pattern of traditional economic path in developing countries.

"As we continue to encourage more investment in infrastructure to promote growth, we also have to think about the kinds of infrastructure that countries will need in the economy of the future. We […]

Two digital worlds

Two digital worlds

Much of the American election rhetoric has focused on the ongoing competitiveness and trade agreements with other countries, notably China, as well as those associated with the Trans Pacific Partnership. India and the US are on opposite sides of a digital divide — and it is not in the way you would expect. India is experiencing a digital deluge in its political and policy discourse whereas the US political and policy establishment is passing through a digital desert. This is odd because one always thinks of America as the centre of all things digital. Consider, first, developments in India. […]

Upgrading skills ‘key to mitigating impact of job automation in OECD countries’

Upgrading skills 'key to mitigating impact of job automation in OECD countries'

What impact has technological change had on job markets since the computer revolution of the 1980s, and how will machine learning and robotics impact on the future of work?

A new report from Carl Frey, Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, and his colleague Thor Berger, gives a comprehensive overview of the subject of job automation as it affects OECD countries, and considers how policymakers might prepare for its potential impact.

The report for the OECD, Digitalisation, Deindustrialisation and the Future of Work , provides a systematic review of the literature examining the impact of digitalisation on […]