Robert Hickson • Mar 08, 2020 •
Many people think that the speed of change today is unprecedented. That’s just because we have short memories. Historians focused on Western civilisation, like Vaclav Smil, point back to the late 19th and early 20th Century when electricity, radio, the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, cars, planes, anaesthetics, and (a bit later) antibiotics emerged. Smil … Read More
Dave Heatley • May 15, 2019 •
The US–China trade war is in the news again. The “war” is motivated, at least at the US end, by the story that opening US borders to Chinese manufactured goods in the 90s and 2000s gutted US manufacturing firms, destroyed up to 1.5 million manufacturing jobs and led to widespread unemployment. Frustrated workers, particularly in the … Read More
Robert Hickson • Apr 20, 2019 •
New Zealand’s Productivity Commission has developed draft scenarios to examine the future of work. The scenarios are intended to describe a range of future impacts of technological change on the future of work, the workforce, labour markets, productivity and wellbeing. They will be used to test the effectiveness of different policies. The Commission is … Read More