Tag: Technology

How fast can our economy grow at full employment?

How fast can our economy grow at full employment?

It’s August, the start of the fall semester, and a good time to figure out what’s going on in the economy. There are some new limits on what can happen, because we’re close to full employment.

When the economy is not at full employment, there are more people searching for work than there are jobs available. When a job opens up, there are people to fill it. There are empty business rentals searching for occupants. When a tenant shows up, a new business will open. There are factories operating at less than full capacity. When an order arrives, production expands.

An […]

First the robots will take our jobs, then they’ll kill us. Really?

First the robots will take our jobs, then they’ll kill us. Really?

Once again, calls to tame the threat from robots have led to headlines evoking the Terminator film franchise . The notion that humans are creating a new species that will turn on us and wipe us out is one that seizes the popular imagination. But it’s science fiction.

The fact is, we don’t need to create a new race of super-intelligent robots to wipe out the human race. We’re perfectly capable of doing it ourselves, whether by instigating all-out nuclear war, or by fueling global warming. AI is simply another tool within our power that has the potential to destroy […]

How will AI shape the workforce of the future?

How will AI shape the workforce of the future?

Will artificial intelligence bring a utopia of plenty? Or a dystopic hellscape? Will we, jobless and destitute, scavenge for scraps outside the walls of a few techno-trillionaires? Or will we work alongside machines, achieving new levels of productivity and fulfillment? The tech world has no lack of prognosticators: Bill Gates and Elon Musk, for example, see in AI an existential threat to the human species, while Ray Kurzweil thinks it can’t come soon enough.

Silicon Slopes and big data

In fact, artificial intelligence is already here, and has been for some time. While many mistakenly equate AI with consciousness—Hollywood […]

History offers a reassuring message on automation

History offers a reassuring message on automation

I am often asked to opine about whether automation will destroy all the jobs. Yes, we talk about tractors, which brought farm employment from something like 70 percent in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century to about 3 percent today. And about cars, which put the horse drivers out of business. And about trains, which put the canal boats out of business.

A more recent case has occurred to me, however. It’s the one represented by the photo at the top of this page. It may look unfamiliar to some today, but this is what offices […]

Higher Minimum Wages Will Give High Tech a Boost

Higher Minimum Wages Will Give High Tech a Boost

David Neumark, an economist at the University of California-Irvine, could safely be called a minimum-wage skeptic . Neumark has written a number of papers on the topic , all of which have found that minimum wages reduce employment by substantial amounts. This makes him a bit of an outlier in terms of the overall research consensus , which tends to find modest or no employment effects.

But unlike many researchers, who maintain a laser-like focus on the question of whether minimum wage cuts jobs in the short term, Neumark has examined the policy from many angles. A recent paper of […]

Robots will not lead to fewer jobs but the hollowing out of the middle class | Larry Elliott

(MENAFN Editorial) iCrowdNewswire – Aug 21, 2017 Weak wage growth could already be a sign automation creating economy in which small number of very rich employ armies of poor Throughout modern history there has been a recurrent fear that jobs will be destroyed by technology. Everybody knows the story of the Luddites, bands of workers who smashed up machinery in the textile industry in the second decade of the 19th century. The Luddites were wrong. There has been wave after wave of technological advance since the first Industrial Revolution, and yet more people are working than ever before. Jobs […]

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 […]

Why I’m skeptical that robots will take all our jobs

Why I’m skeptical that robots will take all our jobs

Over at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum has a quick post rebutting the two worst objections he hears to the fear that AI-empowered robots will take all our jobs. The arguments are: If automation were taking away jobs, we’d see it in high productivity growth figures. But productivity growth is low, not high. Automation creates jobs, it doesn’t eliminate them. Just take a look at the Industrial Revolution. Drum dismisses these as follows. The first, he says, is meaningless, “because AI doesn’t exist yet.” He predicts that “we’ll see the first glimmers of true AI in about ten years, with […]

3 Major Trends Shaping The Global Labor Market

3 Major Trends Shaping The Global Labor Market

Unlike the topography of the country — born out of slow moving glaciers during the last Ice Age — the economic landscape is an ever-changing thing. The trends that come and go can be measured in months rather than millennia, yet their affects can be felt for years to come.

Now that we’re more than half-way through the year, it’s apt timing to look at the latest trends promising to influence the global labor market.

Jobs are going digital We have the Internet of Things to thank for this growing trend. As we expect greater connectivity between devices, the need […]

Want to cut healthcare costs? Try automation

Want to cut healthcare costs? Try automation

© Getty Images In the intense and ongoing debate over federal healthcare policy, the cost of prescription drugs has been a central and constant issue. Lawmakers from both parties have put forward dizzyingly diverse range of plans that aim to reduce costs and respond to constituent’s demands.

But there’s one straightforward technical tool for reducing drug costs that hasn’t appeared in the high-profile debate.

When it comes to manufacturing pharmaceuticals, Americans should consider investing in automation.It’s no secret: automation can be a dirty word in U.S. politics. It’s often synonymous with computers or robots taking jobs and shuttering factories. There’s some […]