politics, economy and employment & labour
Ryan Avent, thank you very much for joining us today. You’ve got a new book out entitled ‘The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century’, and it addresses one of the hottest topics around at the moment – the digital revolution, and what it means for the future of work. So, […]
The idea of a tax on robots was raised last May in a draft report to the European Parliament prepared by MEP Mady Delvaux from the Committee on Legal Affairs. Emphasizing how robots could boost inequality, the report proposed that there might be a “need to introduce corporate reporting requirements on the extent and proportion of the […]
The potential threat of technological unemployment is one of the most hotly debated economic issues of our times: in boardrooms and trade union offices but also increasingly amongst policy-makers. The catch-all term ‘digital’ may have been added to numerous political concepts in recent years but beyond such branding there has been very little debate of […]
In the digital age, there are fewer routine jobs because of a higher risk of automation. But a great paradox of this age is this: workers in most types of jobs, including high-skilled ones, are reporting higher levels of routine at work. This emerges from a new study of the task content of occupations in […]
Recent discussions about the “advent of robots” have some rather unusual features. The threat of robots replacing humans is seen as something truly novel, possibly changing our civilization and way of life. But in reality this is nothing new. Introduction of machinery to replace repetitive (or even more creative) labor has been applied on a […]
The technological revolution is one of today’s most hotly debated topics in politics, economics and business. It makes politicians wary about which preparatory policies to pursue, economists ponder vast productivity increases and the future of labor and business leaders think about how to make use of the new possibilities in their organisational environments. We are […]
The newest technologies seem to be promising us a truly radiant future: robots whose skills become more refined with every passing day; increasingly numerous and wide-ranging digital data aggregated at an ever faster pace to form something resembling an embryonic global artificial brain; algorithms capable of profiling individuals and identifying their cultural and social preferences; […]
What is the future of work, and the future of jobs? For the last several decades, the workers of Germany, the US and Europe have been the most productive and wealthiest in the world. But now that prosperity is in danger. Where is this danger coming from? Is it from hordes of immigrants arriving from […]
In this holiday season it’s especially appropriate to acknowledge how many Americans don’t have steady work. The so-called “share economy” includes independent contractors, temporary workers, the self-employed, part-timers, freelancers, and free agents. Most file 1099s rather than W2s, for tax purposes. It’s estimated that in five years over 40 percent of the American labor force will be in such […]
Before the ‘digital revolution’ things were relatively simple. A taxi equalled a car plus a driver. This driver could be self-employed or employed by a taxi company – or, possibly, a member of a cooperative. He or she paid taxes and social security contributions. Taxi-driving was an occupation, usually both full-time and long-term (except in […]
Novel phenomena like cloud working and crowd sourcing are gaining ground, signalling that digitization is revolutionizing society and economy. On the one hand, they seem to promise new flexibilities and liberties, greater efficiency and reduced costs. On the other hand, an “Amazonization” of work and the emergence of a new precariat of digital peons mediated […]
Dear Branko, thanks for sharing your very provocative post. It’s hard to know what the future will hold, but at the moment I think the most realistic scenario is that work will be carved up in smaller and smaller tasks and gigs/microgigs/nanogigs (what you call task T broken into T1, T2,…Tn) and then many of […]
