by
Ryan Avent
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[...] Syriza [...] won control of parliament in early 2015 and attempted to win a reprieve from the austerity policies imposed on Greece by its European creditors (who were, in their defence, helping to finance Greece's unaffordable debts).
you can tell whose side he's on ... the use of "unaffordable" making it seem like Greece somehow deserved austerity. he also neglects to mention the role of the bank bailouts following the financial crisis
[...] As children, the incentives and the sense of purpose to our work were inextricably linked to the context within which we were working; the chores were not simply an economic transaction but a way for my parents to order our day, to impress upon us particular values, and to satisfy themselves that they were raising us well.
Work, done by adults in the global marketplace, is not all that different. [...]
absolutely incredible take from someone who clearly has a nice & meaningful white-collar job
just really fucking tone-deaf
[...] technological revolutions usually generate enormous benefits alongside the disruption they cause. Higher productivity levels means that firms can afford to pay higher incomes. [..]
it means that they can extract more surplus value while throwing the worker some more crumbs u nitwit
It is tempting to believe that this balance of demand and supply for various types of workers is somehow unnatural, that were the economic decisions take by governments more fair and less tilted in favour of the rich and connected, then labour markets might look more like they did in the past, when employers hoovered up cities full of less-skilled workers to do jobs that paid respectable wages. But that is a pipe dream. Policy has in many ways shifted in favour of the 'haves' rather than the 'have nots', adding fortune atop good fortune. But the less comfortable position in which workers now find themselves is mostly due to structural change in the economy. The proof is in the paycheques: which, for a remarkably large share of the working world, have scarcely grown over the last fifteen years.
this sums up his views on political economy. how is the fact that wages haven't risen proof? he seems to believe that the economic landscape kinda just fell from the sky, fully-formed???? does he really not recognise the degree to which structural change depends on the political terrain
[...] Other labour-intensive apps--such as TaskRabbit, which allows users to hire people for short-term gigs as errand runners--work not because they make unskilled labour vastly more productive, but because unskilled labour is abundant and cheap enough to make it more economical to harness workers to do unproductive jobs: waiting in queues, for example.
at least he recognises this
[...] Uber's PR materials like to point out that the service is great for human drivers, offering them access to flexible, well-paid work. To investors, meanwhile, Uber emphasizes its desire to be a pioneer in the development of autonomous cab fleets.
cite this on the contradictory messages Uber provides to investors vs drivers
University is hard. Many of these who don't currently make it through a college programme lack the cognitive ability to do so. Others could be helped through with better preparation and more attention. [...]
uhhh ...
- citation needed
- does he not realise that university "difficulty" is set ARBITRARILY based on what adminstrators/lecturers think suits the function of the school, and that function is inextricably linked to the historical role of universities in weeding out the "unworthy"????
[...] Consider 'green jobs', for example. Within that category there are occupations that are both high-productivity and scalable, such as work on production lines making wind turbines or solar panels. But, unfortunately, such work is easily automatable. [...]
you can tell he's gotten so used to thinking of providing jobs as a telos that he fails to consider 1) the environmental implications of this (earlier, he obliviously compares this to the fracking industry) or 2) the possibility that automatable work is GOOD (which he does acknowledge in other parts but I guess his latent ideology slips out sometimes)
In a very low-wage world, more people will opt out of work. That will inevitably strain the social-safety net; societies will be ever more clearly divided into those who work and pay for social programmes and those who live off them. Societies will face a reckoning: either they will decide that this dynamic is unavoidable and should be made to work as effectively as possible, or the haves will reduce aid to the have-nots, leading to intense political conflict between those two groups.
That conflict will be shaped and determined by which groups most effectively wield power.
this is the closest he gets to being radical
The digital revolution makes it far easier and cheaper to keep an eye on certain sorts of workers and assess their performance. As a result, the boundaries of the typical firm have shifted. [...]
ah yes, the surveillance capitalism aspect which he seems to think of as a good thing