Tag Archives: Social economy

Renewing America’s economic promise through older industrial cities

Posted on April 20, 2018 by | Leave a comment

By Alan Berube and Cecile Murray – Despite a robust national economy, deep regional divides persist with technology hubs in the coastal states pulling away from the nation’s industrial Heartland. This growing regional inequality poses serious economic, social, and political consequences for the nation.

The middling performance of communities with historically strong manufacturing cores is a key feature of America’s uneven economic growth. These so-called older industrial cities, predominantly located in the Midwest and Northeast, have struggled over time to grow jobs in new sectors and to boost employment and income, particularly for their communities of color.

They range from very large cities like Baltimore and Detroit, to smaller communities like Schenectady, New York, and Terre Haute, Indiana.

With increasing interest in local, state, and national policies to revive the fortunes of struggling communities, older industrial cities represent promising regions for strategic investment and critical centers for promoting inclusive economic growth. more>

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Posted in Broadband, Business, CONGRESS WATCH, Economic development, Economy, Education, History, How to, Leadership, Net

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Trump’s lies corrode democracy

Posted on April 18, 2018 by | Leave a comment

By James Pfiffner – Previous research has demonstrated that most modern presidents have told lies for a variety of reasons, from legitimate lies concerning national security, to trivial misstatements, to shading the truth, to avoiding embarrassment, to serious lies of policy deception. However, when a president continues to insist that his previous false statements are true, the institutions of government become corroded and democracy is undermined.

Of course, many of Trump’s lies are “conventional” lies similar to those that politicians often tell in order to look good or avoid blame. But the number of these types of lies by Trump vastly exceeds the lies of previous presidents. Glen Kessler of the Washington Post compiled a list of more than 2000 misleading or false statements in Trump’s first 355 days in office.

But aside from volume, Trump’s lies differed significantly from those of previous presidents. Some of his most frequent lies are bragging about his achievements in ways that are demonstrably untrue and contrary to well-known and accepted facts.

Trump’s refusal to admit the truth of widely accepted facts corrodes political discourse and is consistent with the practice of many authoritarian leaders. If there are no agreed upon facts, then it becomes impossible for people to make judgments about their government or hold it accountable. more>

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Posted in Book review, Business, CONGRESS WATCH, Economy, Education, History, Leadership, Media, Net

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Tech Upheaval Means a ‘Massacre of the Dilberts’

Posted on April 16, 2018 by | Leave a comment

By Fergal O’Brien and Maciej Onoszko – The Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said there are a lot of “routine cognitive jobs,” at risk, in what he termed a “massacre of the Dilberts” — a reference to the satirical American comic strip about office workers.

Technology and the fourth industrial revolution are having untold impact, he said, and it’s going to take huge efforts to make sure workers ultimately benefit. The effect of automation is just one part of the change and examples of the seismic shift can be seen in finance, where many “unglamorous” data entry jobs have already been transformed.

“Get a grip on the scale of the problem. Assess and address,” he said.

Carney added that part of the solution could require major social change, with workers having to extend or return to education in later life to prepare themselves for the new world of labor. He acknowledged that wouldn’t be simple, when many people will have mortgages and other financial responsibilities, and added that up to now not everyone is getting training right. more>

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Posted in Broadband, Business, CONGRESS WATCH, Economic development, Education, History, Leadership, Media, Net, Technology

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The Labor Market Basis For Populism

Posted on April 16, 2018 by | Leave a comment

By Carl Melin and Ann-Therése Enarsson – All over the world, populist parties and movements are growing ever more strongly, and established parties appear to lack effective strategies to combat this.

Changes in the labor market will not have the same impact on all groups. Routine tasks are more vulnerable to automation and we can see that many low-skilled men, often in jobs that have had a relatively high status and income, are more vulnerable than others. But traditional working-class jobs are not the only ones affected, as digitization and the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) are also affecting many white-collar employees.

The trend of increased populism that we have seen over the last decade mirrors what happened during the Great Depression in the 1930s when such movements seized power in countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain, with the disastrous consequences we all know.

The question is: what can be done to counteract a similar trend.

Even if automation may mean that some people lose out, there is no alternative as the new technology is a precondition for old jobs not simply disappearing, but also being replaced by new ones.

What can be done, however, is to reduce people’s anxieties and the personal cost of these changes. On the-job-training and other forms of education are the most important tools, but security in times of change is also about effective unemployment insurance.

Far too many politicians have chosen to respond to populist parties by adopting their world view. Instead of trying to deal with the concerns that are driving people to these kinds of movements, many politicians have often chosen to confirm and reinforce them. more>

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This Copyright Dispute Is at the Center of an Education Policy Controversy

Posted on April 16, 2018 by | Leave a comment

By Lindsey Tepe – It’s important to understand how several New York school districts ended up in the center of a copyright infringement lawsuit in the first place. In a way, the conflict between Great Minds and FedEx was set in motion seven years ago, when the state of New York adopted new, more challenging academic standards in English language arts (ELA) and math.

To help educators master the new standards, the state undertook an ambitious new project to build an online library of educational resources aligned with those standards. Using a piece of the state’s $700 million federal Race to the Top grant, state leaders requested proposals from curriculum writers across the country interested in developing these resources for every grade level.

States and school districts are rapidly adopting these curricula because of their quality, but need to more fully understand what they can and can’t do with materials.

As more open curriculum options are published across the country, states, districts, and publishers need to make sure that they fully understand copyright, and the terms of the content licenses. It’s good for students when adults share. That’s beyond question. But it’s bad if the adults can’t agree on, or don’t know, the terms of that sharing. more>

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Posted in Book review, Broadband, Business, CONGRESS WATCH, Economy, Education, History, Net

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We Need More Social Investment But No More PPPs

Posted on April 11, 2018 by | Leave a comment

By Richard Pond – Europe needs to spend €1.5 trillion on social infrastructure between now and 2030 to redress the massive under-spend over recent years and to address the increasing demands on social services. This is one of the main arguments of the report, Boosting Investment in Social Infrastructure in Europe.

While the report is very good in identifying the scale of the problem, it fails to address some of the key reasons why spending on social infrastructure has been too low for too long and so puts too much emphasis on an increased role for private finance.

There is an alternative view that puts public investment at the center of the solution and this requires an analysis of why the cuts in public investment have been so deep for so long.

It identified three key problems:

  1. The relatively low political cost of downsizing/delaying government investment programs compared to current expenditure programs and subsidies;
  2. An undervaluation of the role of government investment for growth, including its crowding-in effect in times of low growth; and
  3. A set of European and national fiscal sustainability regulations that do not incentivize the prioritization and ring-fencing of capital spending, especially at the sub-national level.

more>

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Are We Master or Machine?

Posted on April 6, 2018 by | Leave a comment

By Junko Yoshida – The two AI leaders are the US and China. In the US, it’s entirely driven by the private sector… Chinese players collect a lot of data driven by a government. Neither reflects our principles and values, says French President.

Most U.S. consumers, swept into the era of Big Data, in a prosperous nation where Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have become the definition of Big Business, don’t readily dwell on the constitutional complexities of personal privacy.

Last Thursday, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, laid out a new strategy for artificial intelligence in his country. The French government will spend 1.5 billion euro ($1.85 billion) over five years to support research in the field, encourage startups, and collect data that can be used and shared by engineers.

Macron’s goal is obvious. France is figuring out that they’ve got to start catching up to the U.S. and China. He wants the best and the brightest in the AI field to come to Paris.

To most American observers, Macron’s economic argument is easy to understand. Where things get tricky for most Americans to comprehend is the French argument on “values.”

This is where Macron introduces “digital sovereignty.” more>

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Is Constitutional Localism the answer to what ails American democracy?

Posted on April 4, 2018 by | Leave a comment

By Michael Hais, Doug Ross, and Morley Winograd – We have a different idea.

Specifically, we call for a new civic ethos or governing framework which we call Constitutional Localism, that will shift the greatest number of public decisions possible to the community level—albeit within a clear constitutional framework to protect the individual freedoms and rights won over the past 250 years.

We see the pursuit by Americans of varied lifestyles and cultural preferences as a healthy sign of American freedom and choice, not a destructive force. We need to rebuild public confidence in American democracy, not by insisting on a singular national answer to each problem, but by celebrating the ability of America’s varied communities to find solutions that work best for them. As we see it, the challenge confronting the nation is to find a way to permit this range of opinion and action to flourish while restoring a shared faith in the common democratic values and processes that define American self-government.

Our prescription to provide better governance while restoring faith in democratic processes is to encourage more democracy, not less.

We believe empowering local communities promises greater benefits than simply escape from the frustrating deadlock in Washington. more>

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Posted in CONGRESS WATCH, Economy, History, Leadership, Net

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Will China Really Supplant US Economic Hegemony?

Posted on April 4, 2018 by | Leave a comment

By Kenneth Rogoff – True, it is highly unlikely that President Donald Trump’s huffing and puffing and bluffing will bring about a large-scale return of manufacturing jobs to the US. But the US has the potential to expand the size of its manufacturing base anyway, in terms of output if not jobs.

But China’s rapid growth has been driven mostly by technology catch-up and investment. And while China, unlike the Soviet Union, has shown vastly more competence in homegrown innovation – Chinese companies are already leading the way in the next generation of 5G mobile networks – and its cyber-warfare capacity is fully on par with the US, keeping close to the cutting edge is not the same thing as defining it. China’s gains still come largely from adoption of Western technology, and in some cases, appropriation of intellectual property.

In the economy of the twenty-first century, other factors, including rule of law, as well as access to energy, arable land, and clean water may also become increasingly important. China is following its own path and may yet prove that centralized systems can push development further and faster than anyone had imagined, far beyond simply being a growing middle-income country. But China’s global dominance is hardly the predetermined certainty that so many experts seem to assume.

China might lead the digital future if the US drops the ball, but it won’t become the dominant global power simply because it has a larger population. more>

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Posted in Business, CONGRESS WATCH, Economic development, Economy, Education, Energy & emissions, Healthcare, History, Leadership, Media, Net, Science, Technology

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The Tax Cut Effect

Posted on April 2, 2018 by | Leave a comment

By Andrew Soergel – The legislation heaped new debt onto a country already saddled with more than $20 trillion in outstanding obligations. But the overhaul was touted as an economic growth engine likely to drive investment and wage growth in America, eventually allowing the cuts to pay for themselves by virtue of a stronger economy.

The benefits of the income tax cut are really only now really beginning to hit and have yet to really show up in any significant way in spending figures or retail sales. It’s been estimated that, probably, the annual impact of all of that is somewhere north of $100 billion. And all of that money needs to go somewhere, so some of that will move into the spending category.

But we’re advocating on behalf of consumers and investors that they need to be thinking about how to maximize their finances so that they’re taking advantage of saving opportunities and to pay down debt.

Right now, we do see the benefits of the tax cut coming into individuals’ and corporations’ coffers. But as one who came from the Midwest, I’d seize upon a corny line and say “You need to make hay while the sun shines.” We’re in the ninth year of the economic expansion, and the bull market is nine years old as well. And these things will not last forever.

And we’re in a rising interest rate environment, where the cost of borrowing is rising and likely to rise. more>

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