Infotrade

They seem right out of a Hollywood fantasy, and they are: Cars that drive themselves have appeared in movies like “I, Robot” and the television show “Knight Rider.” Now, three years after Google invented one, automated cars could be on their way to a freeway near you. In the U.S., California and other states are rewriting the rules of the road to make way for driverless cars. Just one problem: What happens to the millions of people who make a living driving cars and trucks — jobs that always have seemed sheltered from the onslaught of technology? “All those jobs are going to disappear in the next 25 years,” predicts Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at Rice University in Houston. “Driving by people will look quaint; it will look like a horse and buggy.” If automation can unseat bus drivers, urban deliverymen, long-haul truckers, even cabbies, is any job safe? Vardi poses an equally scary question: “Are we prepared for an economy in which 50 percent of people aren’t working?” ___ EDITO...

China is the Michael Jordan of emerging economies. Just as every up-and-coming basketball hopeful wanted to “be like Mike,” every up-and-coming poor nation wants to “be like China.” And why not? China has boasted an incredible record of alleviating poverty, building industry, creating jobs, and translating economic power into political power. The rise of China has made the West doubt the continued validity of its cherished principles of democratic, fee-market capitalism. Instead, some believe that China’s state-heavy, semi-market economy — or “state capitalism” — is better suited to the demands of the modern world. The old “Washington Consensus,” based on a devotion to free markets and free enterprise, is being replaced by the “Beijing Consensus.” But is China’s Beijing Consensus really the winning formula for poor nations? Larry Summers, Obama’s assistant on economic policy, raised the idea in a recent speech that India’s political-economic model, which he labeled the “Mumbai Consen...

When talking about moving away from a carbon-based economy, one of the biggest arguments you hear is that folks rely on fossil fuels for their livelihoods. Those people are right. Oil and coal production employ quite a lot of people! From the mining or drilling and refining operations and all of the surrounding businesses that support those efforts to folks running gas stations and working at coal plants – we’re talking about a lot of jobs. The thing you don’t hear as much about is that a new, green economy is going need workers, too. I think a big pitfall of the fossil fuel jobs argument is that it seems to assume that we’re going to quit oil and coal tomorrow, which just isn’t feasible at all. The shift to a green economy is going to take time. Workers need training, and there is a lot of infrastructure that needs updating. All of that means green jobs ! Green Energy could power major job growth Just like producing fossil fuel-based energy, the green energy sector needs workers now ...