The federal budget has been very much in the news for the past few weeks with a mammoth piece of legislation being talked about in Congress (in fact, it might be passed by the time this posts). So what would you do if you could craft something similarly monumental? As it turns out, several different groups have created online simulators for you to try your hand at adjusting the budget. You’ll see several are coming…
Yes, I am continuing to follow news about the Writers’ Strike and, yes, given my previous posts of Adam Conover videos, there was really doubt I’d post a video with Adam Conover talking about the Writers’ Strike? (I mean, he was one of the WGA folks in the negotiating room): One of the arguments you hear early in the video goes something like this: That got me thinking about how the studios are defining “profitable,”…
Once upon a time, before the Internet was in full bloom, my dad decided to look through the latest U.S. Army guides on countries (now known as “country studies”) and compile economic data to determine people’s standard of living in various countries based on GDP and local buying power. He did this for fun. It was how he rolled. Since I had recently been living and studying in Indonesia (and yes, my dad gave me…
Just like last Friday, I have a longer video to share and –if your curiosity is like mine– there’s a whole host of topics you’ll want to read/watch/study more after checking out this hour.
If you’ve wondered what the point of some jobs are — and if, in fact, there seem to be more jobs out there trying to “maximize innovative enterprise solutions” or just “realize value,” you’re not alone. What’s worse is realizing you might be in one of those positions and then pondering what you can possibly do within the confines of that meaninglessness. (Though I suppose some people long for that.) Over at the Washington Post, Jena…
Between Labor Day and chatting with some very bright people about the future of finance at Escape Velocity this weekend, it felt like a good time to post something about the future and universal basic income (UBI). One of the things I like about Dylan Matthew’s article in Vox about the Roosevelt Institute’s recent study on the potential effects of implementing UBI is that he explores the premises behind both the study and the critics of said…
I’ve been reading and commenting a decent amount about automation this year, enough to make it seem inevitable. A popular topic with journalists and feature writers has been the impending automation of transportation which I noted back in May. Just recently, Vox ran another article about self-driving trucks and pending unemployment. As the topic appears to be developing into a “future trend trope,” I was very intrigued to learn about the work of Robert Gordon, which Vox also…
A couple weeks ago, FiveThirtyEight did an in-depth look on universal basic income and I talked about it briefly here. This is a great group to look at it because they are so wonkily numbers-driven. They’re back with a quick video recap, but the whole thing makes me feel I should be writing more about it here on the blog. As we humans face more and more automation, it seems like we need to find an…
I’ve been reading a lot about basic income over the past year or so, from activist like Scott Santens as well as actual studies that have been and are being done. So I was very pleased to see that the data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight decided to do a feature length article about it. If you want to get an idea about what basic income is all about — and what we really know about what…