Tuesday, February 25, 2014

WBUR -- On Point with Tom Ashbrook: Future with less work ?

Facebook just bought WhatsApp, an instant messenger application, for $19 billion. The company has only 55 employees. If the trend continues, there will be an extreme shortage of jobs in the future.

The panels  in this show acknowledge that automation is destroying jobs faster than ever.  They see the labor market will correcting itself, but that leads to a small number of high wage earners and a large number of low wage earners.

The panelist propose giving people security by de-linking work and survival though a basic subsidy to paid by the government and funded by taxes. Alternatively they government can subsidize private and public job creation. 

They also want to encourage small scale entrepreneurs.

Finally, a caller at the end notes we may need to have less children.

Any way it's a great program on the future of the labor market.


There are also great references.

No comments:

Post a Comment