Tag: Technology

Manufacturing Jobs Aren’t Coming Back

Manufacturing Jobs Aren’t Coming Back

Pundits will debate the wellsprings of Donald Trump’s election triumph for years. Right now, cultural explanations are in the lead. Multiple researchers and journalists are stressing the role of "racial resentments" and xenophobia as the deepest sources of Trump’s appeal. And such explanations cannot be dismissed.

But the decades-long decline of U.S. manufacturing employment and the highly automated nature of the sector’s recent revitalization should also be high on the list of explanations. The former is an unmistakable source of the working class rage that helped get Trump elected. The latter is the main reason Trump won’t be able to […]

Automation is not the end of the world. Here’s why

Automation is not the end of the world. Here’s why

Robots probably will take our jobs. That doesn’t have to be bad news For many people worldwide, the answer is unemployment. Work is not just what allows us to sustain ourselves and our families: it expands our possibilities to be and do what we aspire to; it gives meaning and rhythm to our endeavours as part of a broader social contract. This is why in times of “polycrisis” and broader economic transformations, we dread losing what we hold so dear to a presumed automation apocalypse. What are people most worried about? Note: Representative sample of adults aged 16-64. September […]

Trump’s populism is only the beginning. Here come the robots.

Trump's populism is only the beginning. Here come the robots.

See how Amazon packages ship with less than :60 in human hands Populism is sweeping the nation, but it’s likely just getting started.

Donald Trump’s win is a wake-up call that voters are angry with a system that’s made middle-class jobs tougher to come by, and increased inequality.

As pronounced as the trend already is, it’s only just the beginning, experts say. Looming technological advances will wipe out more jobs, broadening the base of disenfranchised, unemployable and frustrated citizens. Meanwhile, elites with the skills to flourish in the digital economy will get richer. And governments will have to figure out […]

Money for Nothing – it Sounds Like a Utopia

Money for Nothing – it Sounds Like a Utopia

The London-based Apolitical website’s article on basic income (BI) opens with “Money for nothing – it sounds like a utopia” and then looks at some examples of BI concepts that have already been applied around the world.

This phrase, “money for nothing” represents a commonly held bias that, when there is no commodity returned for the money, whether that commodity is a thing or someone’s labour, then there is no tangible value returned for the monies. This bias is widely held and promoted by many adherents of modern-day economic theories – a bias which too often dismisses, or simply ignores, […]

The Future Of Employment: The Automator And Automated

The Future Of Employment: The Automator And Automated

It’s 2030; Internet technology has become ubiquitous in its place in our society reaching a point where human and machine intelligence is indistinguishable. All but the most important jobs are taken over by artificial intelligence. The world is dominated by two categories of worker, those who automate and those who are automated.

Although this may sound a like a story line from a futuristic drama, the reality is this future may be closer than you think. Call any support line or customer service centre today, and you hear a very simple phone bot. It’s an awful experience burned by repetitive […]

Trump’s jobs plan faces a bigger challenge than China

Trump's jobs plan faces a bigger challenge than China

Robots may prevent Trump from bringing back the manufacturing jobs he promised. Source: Reuters President-elect Donald Trump has promised to wage a war against globalization, to bring back jobs that corporations have sent abroad. But what about all the jobs that simply don’t exist anymore, left behind by advances in technology?

For anyone in the US manufacturing economy Trump has been describing, a job lost to China looks and feels identical to a job lost to technology, making it hard to effectively get to the bottom of what’s happening—and how to fix it for the American workforce.

From Federal Reserve data, […]

Dancing With The Robots

The increased use of robotics and automation in the manufacturing and logistics sectors will, over the next decade, limit East-West trade growth and lead to a reduction of supply chain and air freight personnel involved in handling and distribution, according to Wolfgang Lehmacher, Head of Supply Chain and Transport Industries at the World Economic Forum.
Lehmacher told FlyingTypers that the technological means and maturity to create autonomous supply and value chains was now almost here, and the adoption of new technologies could be seen in everything from flying shuttles to driverless cars and rolling robots. Citing Foxconn’s efforts to […]

Reversing Automation

Reversing Automation

Yesterday I asked what parts of NAFTA people on Ricochet would want to see renegotiated or abrogated. After reading the responses, I’m still not sure whether people here think that free trade is good, but NAFTA disadvantages the United States — that it’s not a level playing field, in other words — or whether we’ve got real support here for mercantilism.

I’m open to the idea that Adam Smith was wrong and free trade doesn’t, in fact, benefit everyone. I’ve been arguing, though, that it’s not trade that’s killed manufacturing jobs. It’s automation.

What if both are true? Here’s an interesting […]

No politician can keep a promise to bring back jobs – especially not Donald Trump

No politician can keep a promise to bring back jobs – especially not Donald Trump

‘Donald Trump was addressing widespread anxiety about the loss of jobs to globalisation, to downsizing, and other factors associated with the economic policies of the past 40 years.’ Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images Donald Trump ran for president with the slogan of “Make America Great Again”. Implicit in this was the idea of making America work again.

Trump was addressing widespread anxiety about the loss of jobs to globalisation, to downsizing, and other factors associated with the economic policies of the past 40 years, and he was telling people that he would bring the jobs back.

Two things about this: the first […]

Need to reset economic thinking

Need to reset economic thinking

Peter Lyons. We are living in an age of rising inequalities on a variety of fronts, writes Peter Lyons.

My friend got her "proposed restructuring" letter two years ago. In the mumbo jumbo terminology of modern management, her position was being "disestablished". She had been in customer services with the firm for more than 10 years on a middle income. It took her six months to find alternative work. In her own words, she had been living in a bubble and hadn’t realised how tough the labour market had become. Salaries offered for similar roles had dropped significantly with […]