Updating is underway. There is so much material in this subject, it’s ridiculous beyond belief.
This reading list is part of a compilation we’ll call “The Self-destruct Phase of Capitalism,” because what all these readings illustrate is the end of the old wage-labor system of creating wealth by exploiting a working class and extracting surplus value from their labor. We now live in the era of the robot, and we’re going to have to make other arrangements in order for masses of people to survive.
Links are typically highlighted in color, click to view in new window. Apolgoies for the generally shitty formatting. This is a cobbled-up mess, but you’ll handle that…
Entry on 12/1/2014
Robot Economy Could Cause Up To 75 Percent Unemployment
Read more:
Entry on Sept. 13, 2014
New Federal Reserve report
US median income has plunged, inequality has grown in Obama “recovery”
By Andre Damon
6 September 2014
Vivek WadhwaInfluencer
Fellow, Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University
entered mid-July, 2014
Robots Will Steal 50% of Human Jobs in Near Future, says MIT and Professors
July 2, 2014 17:24 BST
Added 4.1 2014
Jaron Lanier’s “The Internet Destroyed the Middle Class.” from 5/12/2013
added 1/14/2014 – reactionary website praises fast-food robot for wiping out minimum wage workers.
added 12/4/13
Applebees’ plan to do away with servers
added 11/05/2013
Surviving the post-employment economy
About the Author
Sarah Kendzior
Sarah Kendzior is a St Louis-based writer who studies politics and media.
added 7/10/2013
Temp worker nation: If you do get hired, it might not be long
Will smart machines create world without work?
Krugman: Rise of the machines partly to blame for income inequality
Unemployed far outnumber job openings in every sector (nationwide, not merely Wisconsin)
Foundational work for understanding the era of robotics and artificial intelligence and why “this changes everything.”
“Race Against the Machine” by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, two economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is reviewed in Financial Times–
The “great decoupling” of the US economy. Rising productivity and profits not longer connected to rising workers’ living standards or prospects for survival.
60 Minutes: Are robots hurting job growth? (short answer: yes)
“Robotic Nation” by Marshall Brain, explores some of the sociology that comes with a rapidly displaced working class. In particular, pay attention to his comments about what will become of the people made homeless in this onslaught–
On the two-decade-long slide in young people’s labor force participation rate–
Tyler Durden piece on zerohedge asks, “so much for the benefits of college in America’s ‘New Normal?'” –includes graphs showing plunging high school and college student labor force participation rates.
Foundational work on the changing class system in the USA/the World
The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class
entered 12/29/2014
The Next Big Social Idea: Unconditional Basic Income
Director, Total Freedom; Producer, Tree Media
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Weekend Edition March 20-22, 2015
The Idea of “Basic Income” Takes Root
Free Money for Everyone! What’s the World Coming To?
by DANIEL RAVENTÓS and JULIE WARK
Green People's Media 