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Younger generation inheritors of knowledge-based economy: President – Lanka Business Online

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Feb 06, 2017 (LBO) President Maithripala Sirisena has called upon all sections of the society to work with determination and commitment to win economic freedom through achieving the goal of sustainable development and poverty alleviation.

This goal will be achieved through the commitment of intellectuals, the strength of the labour force of workers and peasants, active participation of the youth of the nation as well as efficient utilization of innovative human resource force, the President said.

Addressing the nation on the 69th Independence Anniversary at the Galle Face, Saturday, he said economic freedom could be achieved through a knowledge based economy with innovative technical skill development.

The nation has the capacity and strength of skilled human resources and intellectuals as well as resourceful young generation to carry out such development endeavours, he said.

In the 21st century, the nations need knowledge based education, knowledge economy, innovative economy, digital economy and in this process the youths should play a pivotal role.

The President said the youth of Sri Lanka have the determination and desire for absorbing new technology and innovative skills, he said that the government would provide all the requirements essential for the youths to obtain that knowledge.

The young generation is the inheritors and custodians of the building process of the knowledge based economy.

I am trust that the youths, intellectuals, politicians, all other sections of the society would fulfill their responsibilities and duties with absolute commitment and determination to build the Motherland, President Sirisena added.

He said that there is a new meaning in todays freedom as we are talking about a freedom that blows freely across the skies.

This is an era in which the human freedom, media freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of thought and freedom to gather freely blow across the skies.

The President, pointing out that there are strengths and weaknesses in social democracy and market economy, said that we should understand those strengths and weaknesses in order to adopt a mixed system by obtaining positive segments of both the systems.

When we attempt to achieve economic prosperity, it is essential for the politician to be a character of honesty and commitment. Furthermore I trust the politicians and public servants fulfill the responsibilities and duties honestly and with commitment to build the Motherland.

The President recalled the sacrifices made by all the communities to gain independence during various struggles from 1505 to 1948.

We have to remember that sweet fragrance of their great sacrifices with gratitude today.

During the 30-year old conflict to liberate the country from the LTTE, the heroic soldiers made many sacrifices. Hundreds of thousands people sacrifices, lives and limbs and their families also suffered immense difficulties. Economy was ruined. Today we have to ask the question whether all those who died were the losers and all those who are living are the victors? I believe that all of us should learn a lesson from that.

The President pointed out that the governments endeavour for reconciliation and communal harmony has been praised locally as well as internationally.

He said that he considers the opportunistic forces that are against reconciliation process as the forces against the country.

President Sirisena called upon everybody to fulfill the responsibilities and duties to build a nation which is economically prosperous, fortified in knowledge and maintains international goodwill.

Economic freedom achievable through knowledge based economy, innovative technical skill development – President – Asian Tribune

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Colombo, 04 February, (Asiantribune.com):

Today our country completes 69 years of the freedom from colonial rule (1948 2017). I am very pleased with this occasion to hold this 69thindependence celebration with high dignity, pride and glory.

The 69th Independence Day celebration was held today at the Galle Face Green under the theme of the National Peace, and under the patronage of President Maithripala Sirisena. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, ministers, parliamentarians and diplomats attended the ceremony which also included military parades

Addressing the nation on the 69th Independence Anniversary at the Galle Face this morning, the President said the economic freedom could be achieved through a knowledge based economy with innovative technical skill development. He pointed out that the nation has the capacity and strength of skilled human resources and intellectuals as well as resourceful young generation to carry out such development endeavors.

When we celebrate the freedom, we should talk about what the real freedom is. As far as I know more than 6000 languages are spoken by various nationalities living in the countries across the world. In all those languages the word independence is considered as a significant, incomparable and unconquerable word.

There is a difference between the ideas come into minds when we talk about the freedom during the time our country has been under foreign invaders from 1505 to 1948 and the freedom in the current era.

In 1948, D. S. Senanayake and contemporary national leaders who represented all communities; Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim gave a giant strength to the national struggle for freedom.

During that struggle, there were occasions when our national leaders were imprisoned. Thousands sacrificed their lives for the country and the freedom from 1505 to 1948. On this Independence Day, we should remember the sweet fragrance of the noble sacrifices made by the heroes in that historic era, who sacrificed their lives and shed their blood in the fight against colonial rulers.

During the decades of 1930 and 1940, as a result of the demands made by the leaders of this country, we got rid of some major grievances through the Donoughmore and Solbary Commissions. We succeeded in winning the freedom on the 4th of February 1948.

When we talk about the freedom it is essential to remember the valiant war heroes who fought to save our country from L. T. T. E. terrorism throughout 30 years. They sacrificed their lives. They lost their limbs. They became disabled and their families suffered heavily. Economy was ruined. About 100,000 people including civilians lost their lives. Thousands became disabled. Are the people who lost their lives in the 30 years long war were losers? Are those who saved their lives are winners? I believe that we, who saved our lives from that tragedy, should remember the lessons we learnt.

Today we talk about freedom in a more complex manner than it was discussed in the past. All of us know, at present when we talk about freedom primarily, we talk about a freedom blowing across the sky, including our human freedom, media freedom, the right to expression, right to thought and the right to assemble.

In the process of building our great Motherland as a modern state which is compatible with the twenty-first century, we have to work, giving priority to the political stability and the social development. All of you know that to achieve those goals, it is necessary to strengthen the national as well as religious reconciliation in the country. Specifically, I have to mention that we, as a Government, have given priority in this regard.

I clearly state that even though we receive accolades from locally and internationally for our commitment and determination to establish national reconciliation and peace in the country, there are some opportunistic elements who act against those noble efforts of the Government. I describe those opportunist forces as a section of society who acts against the country.

Today, all of us should commit ourselves to ensure the economic freedom of our country, when we define the word freedom. The knowledge and the ability of the intellectuals and scholars in the country, innovative skills and capabilities, and the efficiency of the skilled workforce as well as the strength of labor of all the people including the farmers and workers plus their commitment is essential to gain economic freedom to our country.

I believe this era as a period where our new generation is extremely interested in obtaining knowledge and the skills in the field of the high technology. I must mention that always as a Government we are giving priority to provide requisite guidance to our young generation to acquire new knowledge to conquer the world also to build this country based on the concept of the knowledge economy.

All of us agreed that to ensure full democracy in the country in this 21st Century, first we should achieve the economic prosperity. In that context, we give priority to our new generation. I should specially mention here the inheritors and custodians in the process of building an innovative economy based on the knowledge, is our young generation.

President Maithripala Sirisena called upon all sections of the society to work with determination and commitment to win economic freedom through achieving the goal of sustainable development and poverty alleviation. This goal will be achieved through the commitment of intellectuals, the strength of the labor force of workers and peasants, active participation of the youth of the nation as well as efficient utilization of innovative human resource force, the President said.

The President said that in the 21st Century, the nations need knowledge based education, knowledge economy, innovative economy, digital economy and in this process the youths should play a pivotal role. Stating that the youth of Sri Lanka has the determination and desire for absorbing new technology and innovative skills, he said that the government would provide all the requirements essential for the youths to obtain that knowledge. The young generation is the inheritors and custodians of the building process of the knowledge based economy.

I trust that the youths, intellectuals, politicians, all other sections of the society would fulfill their responsibilities and duties with absolute commitment and determination to build the Motherland, President Sirisena said.

He said that there is a new meaning in todays freedom as we are talking about a freedom that blows freely across the skies. This is an era in which the human freedom, media freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of thought and freedom to assemble, freely blow across the skies.

He emphasized the imperative need for eliminating corruption, bribery, malpractices, waste and fraud and said it is essential for the politicians and public servants to work honestly and with commitment. When we attempt to achieve economic prosperity, it is essential for the politician to be a character of honesty and commitment. Furthermore I trust the politicians and public servants fulfill the responsibilities and duties honestly and with commitment to build the Motherland.

The President recalled the sacrifices made by all the communities to gain independence during various struggles from 1505 to 1948. We have to remember that sweet fragrance of their great sacrifices with gratitude today.

During the 30-year old conflict to liberate the country from the LTTE, the heroic soldiers made many sacrifices. Hundreds of thousands people sacrifices, lives and limbs and their families also suffered immense difficulties. Economy was ruined. Today we have to ask the question whether all those who died were the losers and all those who are living are the victors. I believe that all of us should learn a lesson from that.

The President pointed out that the governments endeavor for reconciliation and communal harmony has been praised locally as well as internationally. He said that he considers the opportunistic forces that are against reconciliation process as the forces against the country.

President Sirisena called upon everybody to fulfill the responsibilities and duties to build a nation which is economically prosperous, fortified in knowledge and maintains international goodwill.

Soon after President Sirisena's address, the smart parade comprised of tri-service Officers and Other ranks, Police and Civil Security Department personnel, including National Cadet Corps (NCC), dressed in their respective ceremonials was reported by the Parade Commander to the Chief Guest who took the Salute in accordance with military traditions.

Thousands of troops, attired in their ceremonial attire afterwards began their march-past, according their salute to His Excellency, the President, the Chief Guest on the occasion.

Rhythmic cultural troupes, made up of well-known artistes, school students and others from provincial levels added variety and magnificence to the parade as the days programme drew to a close.

Religious dignitaries of all denominations and a massive crowd of spectators witnessed the National Independence Day proceedings in Colombo.

More than two thousand artistes representing Colombo and all other districts in the country, in addition to some five thousand tri-service, Police and Civil Security Department personnel took part in the parade.

Many cultural events and marches by tri forces, police and the civil defence forces colored the event.

- Asian Tribune -

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Economic freedom achievable through knowledge based economy, innovative technical skill development - President - Asian Tribune

Trump’s Flawed Logic Regarding US-Mexico Relations – Fair Observer

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Adrian Calcaneo

E. Adrian Calcaneo is the founder of the Council for North American Policy, a think tank whose mission is to foster an understanding of the contempora

The Trump administrations proposed Mexico policies regarding immigration and trade will make Americas fears a reality.

Minutes after descending from the golden escalator at Trump Tower, Donald Trump fired the first salvo at what would eventually become one of his favorite electoral targets during his presidential campaign: Mexico. Trump attacked the southern neighbor from two different fronts: immigration and trade. In hisfirst speechas a presidential candidate he stated clearly his adversarial vision of Mexico:

When do we beat Mexico at the border? Theyre laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But theyre killing us economically. The US has become a dumping ground for everybody elses problems When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best Theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems with us. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists.

On the surface, these two issuesimmigration and tradecould seem unrelated. In reality, these are two policy areas that are heavily intertwined and, along with national security, are the main pillars of one of the United States most important relations with a foreign nation.

The focus on immigration, particularly undocumented, soon gave birth to one of Trumps greatest campaign devices: the building of a wall between the US and Mexico. Taking the issue further, not only was he advocating that the wall be built, but also proposed thatMexico pays for it. Build That Wall became a campaign rallying cry in subsequent months and one of the key promises of the Republican candidate.

The purpose of the wall came along with thepromiseto secure the border and create a deportation force to remove the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the US. Since about half of the undocumented US population is thought to come from Mexico, this narrative quickly added toxicity to the rhetoric that the Trump campaign had toward Mexico.

The electoral benefits of such a stance were evident, as hard talk on immigration remains one of the best ways to mobilize the conservative base. Moreover, adding trade and NAFTA to the rhetoric allowed Trump to break a traditional democratic stronghold and gain support of middle-class workers whose jobs prospects might have suffered due to globalization.

This perception of a southern border being overrun by undocumented people, however, is very different from what the numbers say. The Pew Research center recentlyreportedthat more Mexicans are leaving the country than coming in, and the US Border patrol statistics show that apprehensions at the border, a metric used to calculate undocumented crossings, are currently at a 40-year low. In other words, the facts regarding immigration from Mexico do not match Trumps campaign rhetoric.

Among the most important reasons for this shift is the fact that Mexican population growth has decreased considerably. In 1970, Mexican fertility rate was almost seven births per woman, one of the worlds highest. A couple decades later, about the time where the population born in the 1970s reached adulthood, the US experienced a peak in undocumented immigration from Mexico. The Mexican fertility rate since 2000 has been just above two births per woman and declining. In short, there are simply not enough young Mexican people for the migration levels to return to the levels of the 1990s.

Immigration is usually composed of both push and pull factors. The example of high fertility rates combined with the macroeconomic mismanagement Mexico experienced in the 1980s and 1990s were obvious push factors that led to more Mexican migration to the US. Since the late 1990s, macroeconomic management in Mexico has been prudent and has not experienced any self-inflicted recessions.

Economic growth, while not at the countrys full economic potential, has been consistent and allowed the economy to create enough jobs and stability to produce a pull effect that allowed Mexicans to have other options rather than immigrating to the US. The impact of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the opening of the Mexican economy to the world were key components of this new Mexican reality.

Regarding trade, Trumps statement that Mexico was killing us economically was the preamble of another great campaign device: the desire to renegotiate or repeal NAFTA. Early in the campaign, NAFTA became one of Trumps favorite targets, often referring to it as the worst trade deal ever.

Along with China, Mexicothrough NAFTAwas blamed for the loss of thousands, if not millions, of US jobs, particularly in manufacturing. Through this anti-free trade rhetoric, Trump was able to tap into the anger of certain strata of the population, particularly those in the manufacturing sector, who saw their factories close and move abroad over the last few decades. This allowed him to break the so called Democratic blue wall and capture the support of people in the rust belt and key states like Ohio and Wisconsin that paved the way for his presidency. Mexico, in the eyes of someTrump supporters, is not only a source of undocumented immigration, but also a country that is taking jobs away from the US.

According to theUS Census Bureau,in the first 11 months of 2016 trade between Mexico and the US reached $482 billion dollars, making Mexico the third largest US trading partner and second largest destination for US exports in the world. As a matter of perspective, during the stated period, Mexico bought more US products than China, Japan and the United Kingdomthe third, fourth and fifth export destinations for the US,combined.

One of Trumpsmain argumentsto support his animosity toward Mexico and China is the current trade deficit the US holds with these countries. The US Census Bureaudatashows that while the trade deficit with China is by far the greatest($319 billion),the deficit with Mexico is much smaller ($58.8 billion) and similar to other US trade deficits with Germany ($59.6 billion) and Japan ($62.4 billion). It goes without saying that none of these three countries are part of NAFTA.

Deficits cannot be solely attributed to free trade agreements. One explanation for President Trumps focus on China and Mexico could be outsourcing. Companies are not known to move US jobs to Germany, Canada and Japan, but there is no denying that this has occurred to some extent with China and Mexico.

However, placing outsourcing to China and Mexico in the same category is a gross misunderstanding of current international trade trends and the benefits of regional integrated supply chains. When a company moves jobs to China, it takes the vast majority of the production chain with it. This makes sense from a geographical standpoint, since production requires proximity to the supply chain.

The case of Mexico is very different. As a general rule, companies moved only part of their production to Mexico. In most cases, it was the low-skilled, labor-intensive portions of the production process. This allowed companies to keep higher-skilled jobs in the US by leveraging the cheaper labor in Mexico to produce parts and other necessary components of production. In other words, by moving some low-skill jobs to Mexico, manufacturers are allowed to keep part of their production in the US as opposed to sending the whole production chain to China.

The results are quite clear. According to theWilson Center, a Chinese export has about 3-4% of US made contents/inputs, while a Mexican export product has, on average, 40% of US made content/inputs. Out of the $270 billion Mexican exports to the US, $108 billionaround 40%eventually end up back in US companies due to the benefits of supply chain integration.

As an example, the number one US import and export with Mexico is the automobile. Due to supply chain integration, cars cross the border multiple times during production. One can argue that there is no such thing as a US, Mexican or Canadian-made automobile but rather a North American one. In the words of President John F. Kennedy: A rising tide lifts all boats.

President Trump continuously boasts his business acumen and credentials. Is it good business to ostracize your second largest customer? Furthermore, supply chain integration with Mexico makes the US and its exports more competitive worldwide. The US Chamber of Commerce states that trade with Mexico supports up tosix million US jobs. A high percentage of these jobs will be put in jeopardy if relations are meddled with. Is it wise to trade those jobs for the estimated 800,000 low-skilled and low-paid jobs that the US lost to Mexico?

As stated, thinking of immigration and trade policy as two different issues is a mistake. Along with national security, these are deeply intertwined and one must be careful to act without considering the implications across all three realms.

Unfortunately, so far this is what Trumps policy toward Mexico appears to be doing. The historical low levels of apprehension at the border, not seen since 1973, hardly justify building a $25-billion wall on the border. Indicating that NAFTA is the main culprit of the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US without mentioning advances and growth in robotics used in manufacturing only tells a small part of the story.

Mexico has made tremendous strides during the last decade toward creating economic incentives to keep its citizens within its borders. A large part of these economic incentives is derived from the burgeoning trade with the US. In 1993, the year before NAFTA was implemented, US-Mexico trade was$81 billion dollars, according to the US Census Bureau. In comparison, through November 2016, yearly total trade between the countries reached more than $481 billion dollars. Mexico made the transition from a natural resource-based economy into one based increasingly on complex manufacturing.

Prosperity in Mexico has several benefits for the US: less undocumented migration, increased security and higher demand for US products. It is hard to find a better example of a win-win-win.

The frontal attack of the Trump administration on this equilibrium, particularly NAFTAand hence the stability of Mexicocould have dire consequences for both countries. A withdrawal from NAFTA could prove disastrous in the short term for Mexico as 80% of its exports are destined for the US. Mexico could easily end up in a steep recession that could cost millions of Mexicans their jobs and sources of income. It is easy to imagine the consequences of what would happen if up to a million maquiladora workers right across the US-Mexico border suddenly find themselves unemployed. If history serves as guide,Mexico will see a spike in organized crime activity and migration to the US.

While the argument has been that current undocumented immigration numbers do not justify President Trumps focus and escalation on the border, his nationalistic vision on trade could end up destabilizing Mexico to the point where people begin migrating north in numbers large enough to make the need for a wall a reality. His proposed policies are, therefore, counterproductive for both the US and Mexico as they could deteriorate this delicate balance to the point that his pessimistic and largely unsupported by facts vision becomes a reality.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

Photo Credit:Ruskpp

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A response to ‘The dangers of a basic income’ – Basic Income News

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Michael A. Lewis

Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College

A recent post, by Nathan Keeble, which appears on the Mises Institutes website is titled The Dangers of a Universal Basic Income. The main danger seems to be that a basic income (Im paraphrasing) would provide non-productive people with an income they would not have to work for. Non-productive in this context isnt synonymous with lazy, shiftless, or anything like that.

The non-productive among us could be very busy writing poetry, composing music, playing it, or engaging in other pursuits. What makes one non-productive isnt a lack of effort or initiative but the lack of a market for their goods or services. That is, if you create or produce something no one wants to buy, youre non-productive. The problem with a basic income is that it would subsidize such activities. According to the Mises article, this is bad because it would allow people to continue such non-productive pursuits, instead of trying to figure out how to do something thered be a market for. The result, Keeble writes, is that a society with a basic income would be less productive and experience a lower level of social welfare than a society without one.

I think this is a questionable line of reasoning because its based on the shaky assumption that the market is the sole determinant of whats productive. If someone wants to buy your good or service, youre productive; if not, youre not. This is an extremely narrow view.

Consider folks whore currently employed in factories that make cigarettes, firearms, sugary snacks, or alcoholic beverages. There are huge markets for all of these activities. But if a basic income were enacted, folks working in the above industries reduced their labor supply, and this resulted in a decrease in the production of cigarettes, handguns, Twinkies, and liquors; its not clear to me this would amount to a net reduction in social welfare. This is because theres evidence that all these goods contribute to serious public health problems. And if people spent less time producing cigarettes and more time making art, even if there werent markets for their work, this might amount to a net increase in social welfare.

What does or doesnt contribute to net changes in social welfare is far too complex to be reduced to what people are willing to buy in the marketplace.

About the author:Michael A. Lewis is a social worker and sociologist by training whose areas of interest are public policy and quantitative methods. Hes also a co-founder of USBIG and has written a number of articles, book chapters, and other pieces on the basic income, including the co-edited work The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee. Lewis is on the faculties of the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and the Graduate and University Center of the City University of New York.

Image: Mises Crest By ConcordeMandalorian Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31860282

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A response to 'The dangers of a basic income' - Basic Income News

CANADA: Over 10000 people have signed to support Basic Income – Basic Income News

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

(Image credit: Basic Income Canada Network)

The Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) has just passed their goal of signing 10,000 people who support a basic income guarantee in Canada.

This milestone marks the culmination of over a year of collecting supporters. BICN now looks toward its next milestone: reaching the 15,000-person threshold.

BICN is a non-profit organization affiliated to BIEN that advocates for basic income in Canada. It does so by publishing regular news stories as well as annual reports about basic income developments. BICN also disseminates resources for getting involved in the struggle for basic income, in addition to educational sources informing about relevant debates and issues. A central part of this organization is its ongoing petition, open to everyone, which calls for the implementation of a basic income in Canada.

BICNs website was launched in August 2015, when this counter for supporters of basic income began. It has taken BICN almost a year and a half to reach 10,000 supporters, 8,000 of which coming in the last nine months. The 10,000 person threshold was surpassed on December 13th.

This event marks the latest in a series of positive developments for basic income in Canada. Recently, on December 7th, a unanimous decision was reached by the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island, Canada, to pursue a partnership with the federal government for the establishment of a universal basic income pilot project. Also, in Ontario, the regional government is moving forward with plans to test a universal basic income. These plans began in early 2016, when Ontario tasked Hugh Segal with an outline paper concerning the C$25m pilot project. The project is set to start this spring.

More information at:

Ashifa Kassam, Ontario pilot project puts universal basic income to the test, The Guardian, October 28th 2016

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CANADA: Over 10000 people have signed to support Basic Income - Basic Income News

Basic income is superior to the job guarantee – Basic Income News

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

There are studies (such as the Gallup World Poll) which point to a correlation between the unemployment situation and a relative reduction in peoples happiness. At first glance, one might immediately conclude that what we need is to provide jobs for everyone problem solved. However, a rushed conclusion like this under-evaluates the situation, ignores its alternatives and can even become counterproductive.

These studies conclude that, beyond the obvious issue of income, jobs seem to be a source of meaning and self worth for people. This apparently only reinforces the above results, and so it seems that a Job Guarantee (JG) is a policy for the future and that we must implement it as soon as possible.

But lets calm down.

First, lets think awhile on why individuals with jobs show higher relative happiness levels, when compared with unemployed individuals.

Part of the answer lies in the stigma associated with being unemployed. The thing is, in a society so dependent on jobs like ours, being unemployed is, unquestionably, a source of stigma. According to many in society, people are unemployed because he/she is incapable of finding a job, because she has not tried enough, because she not got enough education, because she has deficient social capabilities, or due to a wide range of reasons, real or imagined. Turn it as you like, that person is to blame. If structural unemployment is on a systematic rise due to automation and other factors, if incomes drop so low that people simply give up, if precarity is a daily reality, or if working conditions may be physically or psychologically degradingthose are only considered circumstantial excuses from someone who is lazy, case closed.

However, if proof of this argument is needed, retired people are relatively less unhappy than unemployed people, although they do not have jobs (Clemens Hetschko et al., 2012). Why? Because retirement is socially accepted; it is expected that, after decades of valid contributions to society, through a job, the person can finally rest and became free to spend the rest of his/her life just walking at the park (if so he/she wishes).

And, of course, getting help from the state to ease the income situation does not solve the problem. The reason is because the stigma is still there: now the person has to prove that he/she is factually incapable of gaining his/her own income. Apparently, the unemployment stigma was not enough: on top of that now comes the stigma of receiving a handout in order to survive.

Whats really at stake here, and again beyond the mere income situation, is that we live in a culture based on jobs as a source of meaning and value, and so the lack of a job is seen as a problem. However, the income situation is a major one, since lacking income represents a great source of unhappiness for individuals. So, the unemployeds relative unhappiness when compared to employed individuals is only clear when seen in the context of our present culture, and not necessarily outside it. Basic Income (BI) can and hopefully will create conditions under which that connection does not exist. To guarantee jobs for everyone, in this first sense, does not necessarily generate more happiness for individuals than BI, simply because the cultural environment around work gets totally transformed.

Secondly, it is wrong to assume that people want jobs, as traditionally defined. And, to be clear, that doesnt mean in any way that people do not want to contribute to society through their work. As living proof we observe all those individuals who, despite working in jobs in order to survive, can still (sometimes with great effort and sacrifice) manage to surmount enough energy and time to do voluntary work. That means that, for all those who have trouble believing these people actually exist, jobs are not necessarily a source of meaning and self-worth in humans, which is shown in greater detail in an informal study by Robin Chase (as presented in an article by Kate McFarland).

Thirdly, I think it is not necessary to list the growing quantities of jobs seen as unattractive, monotonous, unchallenging and/or offering no carrier development perspectives, recently labelled as bullshit jobs. Its hardly understandable the point in having people doing jobs that are not interesting to them, from which they do not get satisfaction, that do not allow them to explore their talents and that suck their precious lifetime, only to provide them with an income (which may not even be enough to cover basic expenses). If those jobs are not necessary, then lets have them eliminated. If these are necessary, then lets automate them. If that is not possible, then lets pay more to whoever is willing to accept them.

The JG will only be beneficial to those searching for jobs any job, we can assume in desperation and cannot find them. For those currently and comfortably employed it would be innocuous, and for those who actually choose not to be employed (whether presently employed or not), in order to have time to pursue their passions and talents, it would only cause suffering and would be a waste of time.

On the other hand, BI is beneficial for all those who prefer not to be formally employed, are currently unhappily employed, or are indifferent, such as those individuals who are satisfied with their job at the moment. Moreover, BI will benefit the presently unemployed, offering them the chance to informally contribute to society and/or develop their capacities in order to be fit for jobs they see as more adequate to their profiles and preferences.

On a finer assessment, it seems that BI can be the strategy that will enhance peoples happiness, in respect to their relation to work. Its also worth noting the potentially more complex and policing nature of the EG structure. To guarantee employment, the state will have to create it first, since apparently the marketplace is destroying it; To do that, these jobs must first be invented, and then distributed to people who will, supposedly, be willing to take them. There will have to be an effort to categorize each persons abilities in order to establish a match between them and the jobs being created. It seems to be an enormous task, and a potentially highly bureaucratic one (more than we already have in our present welfare states). Even on the assumption that the state would be able to create all these jobs and to get people on them, it would still be necessary to have some system that would guarantee that the latter would stick to the former. Or at least have a way to generate new jobs for all those who want one or for some other reason had to change jobs. But maybe all this is unnecessary.

Alternatively, because basic income allows everyone to work creates conditions for each person to initiate his/her activity. If, for any reason, that person cannot do it (or does not want to do it that way), BI gives him/her the possibility to pursue education and/or skills to apply for the job he/she really craves. In time, BI will effectively put everyone to work. Thats because, one way or another, everyone wants to contribute to society, given the chance. Unfortunately, our current system prevents many people from working, precisely (and ironically) due to the coercive effect of needing a job any job, even if the person gets actually sick from doing it in order to survive.

To work in something meaningful and aligned with ones values will render a completely different social environment than what we have today. To trust people to do what they think is best for their lives will completely change work, for the better. Unlike the JG, which will only mean more coercion and entrenchment of the present day job culture.

This article draws upon the articles by Kate McFarland:

Kate McFarland, Basic Income, Job Guarantees and the Non-Monetary Value of Jobs: Response to Davenport and Kirby, Basic Income News, September 5th 2016 Kate McFarland, The Greater Happiness for the More Workers: Basic Income vs Job Guarantee Pt 2, Basic Income News, October 21th 2016

More information at: Clemens Hetschko, Andreas Knabe, Ronnie Schb, Identity and wellbeing: How retiring makes the unemployed happier, CEPR VOX, May 4 2012

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Basic income is superior to the job guarantee - Basic Income News

Basic Income as All-inclusive Democratic Subsidy – Basic Income News

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Basic Income as All-inclusive Democratic Subsidy: Securing the Social Freedom and Economic Power for All People

Written by:Katja Kipping

[A long translators note: Katja Kipping is chair of the Left Party (Linkspartei) in Germany and a member of the national parliament. She has served as spokesperson for Germanys Basic Income Network (Netzwerk Grundeinkommen). Within the Left Party, she organized the Emancipatory Left faction and writes for the libertarian socialist magazine Prague Spring (Prager Frhling).

Kipping presented this lecture Grundeinkommen als Demokratiepauschale at the Basic Income Earth Network Congress in Seoul, Korea, July 19th. She has frequently argued for basic income throughout Germany and has helped organize a Basic Income faction that includes most political parties in parliament.

I have translated this with the hope that left organizations worldwide will pay attention to her vision of basic income as a core component for the democratic left. Basic income would provide a clear sign that the left has learned from problems wrought in the past by bureaucracy, technocracy, and authoritarianism. Kipping draws from a constitutional republican tradition of investigating institutions that promote robust citizenship and deliberation. See Casassas and De Wispelaere 2012 and 2015. She also links her hopes with that of the degrowth movement. I see basic income, as Kipping presents it here, as an antidote to alienation and right-populism. Social analysis shows basic income to be part of the design of truly public institutions.

Any lapses in quality or argumentation should be attributed to me.

Please note that Kipping also presented in Dublin at the 12th Basic Income Earth Network Congress in 2008. Moving to Basic Income (BI) A left-wing political perspective can be found at BIENs website.

You can a video of Kipping presenting the original German speech at http://bien2016.org/en/video-basic-income-and-politics-of-democracy/.

The text of her speech can be found at: http://www.katja-kipping.de/de/article/1112.grundeinkommen-als-demokratiepauschale.html. ]

Basic Income as All-inclusive Democratic Subsidy

Securing the Social Freedom and Economic Power for All People

Contents

1. Social Freedom and Democracy radical democratic approaches to basic income.

Radical democratic approaches to basic income pay close attention to the connections between people and to their mutual dependencies within a community. The community is here understood as something public and political. It is oriented towards the well-being of all and should be shaped by all. From this it follows that freedom should not be understood as a mere absence of intervention or interference. On the contrary, freedom should be understand as independence over against any arbitrary authority [Fremdherrschaft]. Freedom, in this sense, implies no arbitrary interventions or interference on the part of state institutions and also no possibility of such interventions and interference. Intervention is arbitrary if an intervention comes whenever the intervener wills it.

Freedom, on the other hand, is fulfilled primarily through self-governance. Self-governance is formed by social and individual organization and also by monitoring these potential interventions and the institutions capable of them. Individual freedom, viewed in such an intersubjective political context, is also social freedom. The highest value is active participation of all in the res publica a collective deliberative democratic self-determination. This naturally implies social equality and the securing of social freedom, which implies preventing any economically grounded dominance and dependency. Laws and institutions also need to reflect, promote, and enable the common good and self-governance. (See Socialist Party South Korea 2009, Patry 2010, Cassasas/De Wispelaere 2012, Cassasas/De Wispelaere 2015).

The following six theses on the establishment of a basic income as an all-inclusive democratic subsidy can be derived from these basic principles of radical democracy and social freedom.

Whoever does not have enough material resources is first of all excluded from political participation and, secondly, doesnt have enough negotiating power within political processes. This means that basic income, like all vital services, needs to be provided long-term. As I see it, this is not a problem in a time of high productivity and surplus. At most, it is a problem for those who do not want to give up economic privileges and political power. There is enough for allworldwide!

It is clear that a person, who must make him or herself a stigmatized petitioner at the social office has a significantly harder time taking an upright path towards the political formation of the community. As Zygmunt Bauman formulated it: The decisive argument in favor of the basic income is that it is the conditio sine qua non of a republic, as it can only exist in the union of people with self-confidence, of people without existential anxiety. A basic income which actually secures existence and allows social participation would establish a principle of citizens rights, rights that are not subject to a divisive and disqualifying access test by need tests. (Bauman 1999). [Note: this is a translation of the Bauman quote as found in Kippings speech. JBM]

Therefore 5 holds: All citizens only have their rights fully recognized reciprocally through a sufficient basic income. This also means that more affluent citizens are comparatively more likely to contribute to the financing of the basic income than the less well-off citizens. This poses the question of the redistribution of economic resources and economic power.

I would like to end this section with a quote from a German supporter of basic income who is also a politician. It is farcical that MEPs [Members of the European Parliament] claim to maintain their substantial independence through relatively high salaries in order to make themselves non-extortionable but most of these deputies do not consider it necessary to ensure such independence and non-blackmail for the sovereign, the people (Spehr 2003, 105). Basic incomes individual guarantee of a secure existence and participation is, alongside other forms of universal security for people (such as free access to public goods, social infrastructure, and social services), an indispensable prerequisite for social freedom, democratic and political engagement and the negotiating power for all people. It is an all-inclusive democratic subsidy!

2. Economic power for all basic income and democratic institutions

Whoever says A must also say B. Who calls for basic income so that people can enter the public sphere with negotiating power must also call for the public shaping of our political foundations, economy, and everyday life (see Casassas and De Wispelaere 2012 and 2015). We need this to secure a basic income and other sorts of public services. Arbitrary interferences in human affairs through economic power, by endangering survival, health, and natural resources is not acceptable. An economy that is deprived of public organization, an economy that is privatized, is unacceptable. That also means that an economy and a financial sector that is immune to democratic control and influence is likewise unacceptable.

An imbalance in power through the deprivation of the public (privatization) in one form or another reaches deeply into real political and social power relations and removes the political and therefore citizens from the formation and control of public affairs. On the one hand, this includes power that arises from economic distributionincome, assets, and investment opportunities. This certainly also includes power in the realm of shaping and administering the economy and the financial sector. Who actually determines the use of natural resources, production resources, investment and the way in which economic activities are taxed? Who is exercising an alienated domination over the people today with real, unequally distributed, forms of design and control, and who subjects society and the economy to the will of a minority?

In addition to basic income and other forms of life and of participation for all people, social freedom requires the self-government of the citizens: by means of joint and individual control and appropriate intervention possibilities, which are secured by appropriately democratic institutions. These institutions must give all people the opportunity to shape social and economic life individually and collectively (see Cassasas / De Wispelaere 2015).

Economic power for all means basic income, including other unconditional support for existence. It also means the safeguarding of the economy and society for all and the institutionally secured public and political shaping of the economy and the society by all. This makes a democratic social transformation all the more necessary and urgent. Tomorrow, I am speaking at another conference about the challenge that this entails for the European left.

3. Concluding Remarks on Socio-Ecological Transformation

Poverty and exclusion, power over the many by the few, and destruction of the natural foundations of human life that is the situation.

The international degrowth movement, which is committed to a world with significantly less natural resource consumption and to a rollback of ecological destruction and damage to our planet, therefore argues for the cohesion of ecology, democracy and social security of all people, and thus for the convergence of the various social movements and political actors (see Blaschke 2016).

It seems to me that only with this complex point of view and a committed relationship between social movements can the challenges of the 21st century be countered. Basic income, which in fact assures material existence and enables social participation, is an important component of a social-ecological transformation, which seeks to also be a democratic transformation!

Literature:

Bauman, Zygmunt (1999), In Search of Politics. Cambridge. Polity Press.

Blaschke, Ronald (2016), Grundeinkommen und Degrowth Wie passt das zusammen? http://www.degrowth.de/de/2016/02/grundeinkommen-und-degrowth-wie-passt-das-zusammen/

Casassas, David / De Wispelaere, Jurgen (2012), The Alaska Model: A Republican Perspective. In: Karl Widerquist / Michael W. Howard (Ed.): Alaskas Permanent Fund Dividend. Examining his Suitability as a Model, New York, 169-188.

Casassas, David / De Wispelaere, Jurgen (2015), Republicanism and the political economy of democracy. European Journal of Social Theory, September, 1-18.

Kipping, Katja (2009), Ausverkauf der Politik. Fr einen demokratischen Aufbruch, Berlin.

Patry, Eric (2010), Das bedingungslose Grundeinkommen in der Schweiz. Eine republikanische Perspektive, Bern, Stuttgart, Wien.

Socialist Party South Korea, Unconditional Basic Income and General Social Care, Party Program, Supplement No. 1, 2009 (Translation of Socialist Party of South Korea, Basic Income for All und Universal Welfare, translation by Min Geum, https://www.grundeinkommen.de/ Content / uploads / 2010/08 / 10-05-22-bge-program-socialist-party-korea-endrb.pdf

Spehr, Christoph (2003), Gleicher als andere. Eine Grundlegung der freien Kooperation, in: Christoph Spehr (Hg.), Gleicher als andere. Eine Grundlegung der freien Kooperation, Berlin, S. 19-115.

Translated by Jason Burke Murphy, Elms College

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Basic Income as All-inclusive Democratic Subsidy - Basic Income News

Voices Reinventing enterprise finance by overhauling AP automation – Accounting Today

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Digital disruption is making way for new entrants and new models in the banking and financial services arena, a.k.a. fintech. While fintech is revolutionizing banking and finance for the business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer markets, enterprise finance departments can get the fintech bug too to innovate and streamline their workflows and supply chains for better, faster outcomes and to empower both customers and suppliers.

One area ripe for enterprise fintech innovation is accounts payable. Considering that the current market approach to invoice automation and the associated digitization and OCR technologies have been around for over 30 years, its no wonder that AP operations are in dire need of a major overhaul to meet todays modern-day requirements.

Aberdeen Groups survey report, Reap the Benefits of Invoice Excellence with AP Automation, highlights this need. Forty percent of respondents said the need for real-time availability of data is a key AP challenge, and 29 percent said difficulty locating/managing paper-based documents was a struggle. Given this state of the AP nation, its not surprising that most organizations, even after investing significantly in legacy AP Automation solutions, are only realizing 20 percent automation in their invoice processing.

The quest for improved automation is only half the journey for finance however. As initiatives such as dynamic discounting continue to grow in adoption, the nature of the accounts payable function has fundamentally changed from mere overhead to profit center at least for progressive, forward-thinking organizations that are adopting a strategic approach to AP and finance operations.

The struggle is real In the current technology age, how is it possible that AP is still experiencing such poor results?

Part of the answer revolves around the fact that when it comes to invoice automation, the devil is in the details. Industry statistics show that 82 percent of all invoices will have at least one exception. Exceptions are the bane of invoice automation solutions which were originally conceptualized to eliminate paper and manual data entry. When an exception rears its ugly head, no amount of digital imaging or optical character recognition technology will save the day.

To this end, the ideal AP automation solution isnt simply focused on straight-through processing because the path to payment isnt always straight-through. Its over/under, in and around various check points and decision trees. Moreover, it isnt exclusively focused on optimizing exception processing in the classic business process improvement sense, but rather the goal is to make invoice processing as exception-free as possible.

Therein lies the ultimate question: How do we make invoice processing exception-free?

Invoice exceptions are the governor of AP automation you should be cruising over 65 miles per hour in the HOV lane, but instead youre crawling along in rush-hour traffic. Exceptions are caused by legacy invoice automation systems inherent lack of deep and real-time integration with the Enterprise Resource Processing (ERP) system. The prevailing approach is to simply pass the buck over to the ERP system to identify and later resolve exceptions. Many vendors call this integration, which is where data is simply thrown over the fence to the ERP system, forcing manual exception processing work streams in the ERP system that are costly, time-consuming and error-prone. Some vendors go as far as requiring the periodic replication of AP master file information within their system in an attempt to get around the ERP integration gaponly to still encounter exceptions due to batch processing delays and worse, introduce new data synchronization challenges. Net-net, these loose integrations fail to deliver the degree of automation necessary to deliver optimal results.

In pursuit of AP innovation In the pursuit of AP innovation, organizations must pursue the new i.e., the truly better way that challenges conventional business-as-usual thinking. Implementing incremental improvements in the imaging or ERP system to make accounting more efficient is not innovation. It may produce some productivity gains, but for real change and innovation to occur, organizations must take a fundamentally new approach to invoice automation that breaks away from legacy technology and solutions that merely image paper, collect data and upload information to the ERP system.

The goal: Real improvements and real change. Not just to business processes, but through a whole new transformative approach a reimagining of invoice automation and finance operations as a whole. Given the pressure organizations are under today, they must take make bolder moves. Theres an old saying: Electricity wasnt invented by making incremental improvements to the candle.

This new reimagined approach starts with real-time integration and interaction with the ERP system designed to eliminate exceptions as much as possible and early as possible in the process, as opposed to sending over bad data for the ERP system to address. Resolving exceptions before invoices are vouchered in the ERP system eliminates unnecessary manual intervention, process latency, cost and complexity delivering maximum automation for optimal results.

Cloud, mobile and advanced analytics are key technologies that make this transformation not only possible, but much more accessible as well. These technologies allow next-gen AP solutions to deliver quicker results and more meaningful business insights than ever before.

Another essential ingredient to this transformation is breaking away from conventional siloed solution-think by combining invoice automation with supplier enablement and dynamic discounting to power the business to absolute peak performance. This approach is also ushering in another paradigm shift moving AP away from a focus purely on operational efficiency to one of value creation for greater strategic impact. These next-generation capabilities provide the force multiplier necessary to make this sea change possible and transforming AP into a force majeure within the organization.

Bringing suppliers directly into the process allows invoices to be created, validated and made exception-free from the get-go, eliminating paper and accelerating operational efficiency. However, there are even greater gains to be realized: By providing valuable and frictionless self-service experiences for suppliers, companies will see a tremendous boost in early-pay discounts driven by an equally impressive increase in supplier adoption. This can literally translate into savings of millions of dollars (up to 2 percent of corporate annual spend), generating a new, fast and compelling revenue stream for the organization. Companies that fail to seize this opportunity are simply leaving big money on the table not to mention the potential loss in competitive advantage.

As Aberdeen vice president and principal analyst Bryan Ball noted, [I]n the modern business, the finance function is no longer looked at as simply the cost of doing business, with behind-the-scenes employees performing functions that, which necessary, are not the core components of organizational success.

Rather, success favors the bold in todays forward-thinking finance organizations, where incremental thinking is being left behind in pursuit of real AP innovation and value creation.

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Voices Reinventing enterprise finance by overhauling AP automation - Accounting Today

The Perks Of Automation And The Risks: Why To Think Twice About Getting Into That Driverless Uber – Forbes

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Forbes

The Perks Of Automation And The Risks: Why To Think Twice About Getting Into That Driverless Uber
Forbes
Automation has become an incredibly hot topic in the tech world lately. It was the theme of the most popular items featured at the annual tech gadget conference, CES 2017, held earlier this month in Las Vegas. The show featured self-driving cars (which ...

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The Perks Of Automation And The Risks: Why To Think Twice About Getting Into That Driverless Uber - Forbes

Automation expected to displace insurance underwriters, real estate brokers – CIO Dive

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Dive Brief:

Insurance underwriters are the most likely to be replaced by automation in the near future, according to Carl Frey co-director of the Oxford Martin program on technology and employment at Oxford University, who published a study on the topic.

Real estate brokers, loan officers and credit analysts were not far behind. Each of the occupations had more than a 97% chance of becoming completely automated within 10 years, according to Frey.

Physicians and surgeons, sales engineers and dietitians and nutritionists were at the bottom of the list, indicating those positions would be harder to replace with automation.

It isnt a big surprise that the insurance industry is at the top of the list. There are many areas within the insurance industry ripe for automation, and businesses within the ultra-competitive industry are always on the lookout for ways to save money.

Last month, Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance in Japan said it was already replacing some human insurance claim workers with an artificial intelligence-based system from IBM. Fukoku said the system will replace 34 human insurance claim workers, saving it $1.1 million per year on employee salaries.

A recentForrester reportpredicted automation supported by intelligent software agents will be on the rise in the next five years, accounting for the elimination of a net 6% of U.S. jobs.

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Automation expected to displace insurance underwriters, real estate brokers - CIO Dive

New telecom transformation goals require service automation – TechTarget

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

The notion that telecom providers had to transform their business models is more than a decade old, and for most of that time, specific initiatives targeted the telecom transformation goal. Positions for chief transformation officers have even been created to get it done. Yet, here we are, watching telecom capital expenditure decline as, unfortunately, profit and cost per bit converge. Software-defined networking was supposed to fix this decline, as was network functions virtualization and even cloud computing. But declining Capex remains unfixed in 2017.

Gain best practices for optical network design including access, metro and core network issues affecting fiber deployment as well as 3-part overview of DWDM optical network transport.

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What will fix it now? Since everything old is new again, operators now think the answer is to go back to transformation.

The idea of fixing an old problem by returning to an old strategy may seem crazy, but there's method behind this choice. Telecommunications is a $2 billion global market, with the greatest financial depreciation inertia of any tech industry. While it's likely that every CFO in the industry looks back at the decades-old transformation strategy concepts taught in business schools, they now realize a strategy that approaches a telecom transformation by replacing legacy gear with something virtualized -- or gear that could be virtualized in the future -- is going to take a long time. They also realize that attacking a systemic problem like revenue or cost per bit with selective technology changes is probably not going to be effective. That's why only about 25% of operators that were confident about network functions virtualization (NFV) strategies at the end of 2015 were confident a year later.

The back-to-transformation movement isn't about repeating the past; it's about starting with the business-school approaches of the past and developing them with principles learned from cloud computing, software-defined networking (SDN) and NFV. It's about being goal-driven first and technology-centric second. If you want to stop the frightening convergence of operator revenue-per-bit and cost-per-bit curves, you have to either reduce costs or increase revenues. These goals were apparent in the beginning, but early transformation planners couldn't get past the abstract goals, and no technical path presented itself.

In the technology-driven SDN and NFV period of telecom transformation, the problem was the opposite. People worked out a new way of building networks using virtual functions and software-defined connectivity. Most everyone agreed this was a better and more flexible approach, but it was also totally different, complicated and didn't seem to have any accepted business-value propositions to drive it. The specific benefits were unclear, as was the path to them. Nobody had a good answer, so the technology-driven model didn't work, either.

The big lesson operators have learned is telecom transformation can't be about changing technology; it has to be about improving operational efficiency. The cost of deploying, selling and sustaining services accounts for almost one-third of every revenue dollar, and capital costs are about 19 cents per revenue dollar. The quickest change operators could make to improve their return on infrastructure would be to make this whole operational process cheaper through service automation. The same automation could also reduce service provisioning times and make it possible to introduce new services faster -- both of which would increase revenue. Lower cost, higher revenue: What's not to like?

The key to obtaining operations efficiency turns out to be one thing from NFV and another from SDN. NFV offers orchestration, while SDN provides the idea of device independence. Orchestration is the term now used to describe modeling of the entire service lifecycle and using software to drive all lifecycle processes, including responses to changes or failures in the service resources.

The quickest change operators could make to improve their return on infrastructure would be to make this whole operational process cheaper through service automation.

In NFV, orchestration is essential because virtual network functions replace traditional devices, and that deployment process has to be coordinated for every single function in a service if the service is to work. Automated software lifecycle management is possible with end-to-end orchestration, and it brings great efficiency and agility.

The big problem with NFV orchestration is that current infrastructure doesn't use virtual functions, so you can't apply the NFV model. SDN stepped in to help with a specific idea that came out of the project work on the OpenDaylight SDN controller -- the idea of device independence. Yes, an ODL controller can control SDN switches, but with the proper plug-ins, it can also control almost any legacy device or even a system of devices accessed through a common network management system.

Operators and vendors have also provided varying support for legacy devices by exposing the management systems of current network hardware directly to the orchestration layer. In some ways, this is a better approach because it doesn't need the intermediate SDN controller. But not all NFV implementations have this kind of capability. Even where a controller is present, it may require custom coding to interface with some network devices.

If you can use SDN ODL or a customized orchestration interface, then NFV orchestration can drive even legacy devices through software-orchestrated service lifecycles. You can then phase in SDN switches or NFV's virtual functions where they make sense, at a pace that makes sense, while getting the operations benefit right away. In fact, you could get enough benefit from doing model-driven software-orchestrated service lifecycle management to fix the problem of profit per bit, without changing out technology at all. If you then added in SDN and NFV in an optimal way, you could save as much as two-thirds of the Opex costs.

We're not quite to the point where this transformational goodness can be achieved, but we're closing in -- largely from the NFV side. The OPEN-Orchestrator NFV open source project is extending NFV automation concepts to operational support system/business support system elements to capture more operations savings. Network giant AT&T has defined its own open source implementation of SDN and NFV-centric infrastructure. Both its projects include the device-independence model from SDN and OpenDaylight.

SDN and NFV have so many different changes and additions that it's hard to make sense of them as a whole. But there's a single driver behind all of them -- the new-model transformation theme. We need benefits to match our challenges, and operators are realizing they have to look at everything through the service lifecycle -- from service design to operations and fault management. They also have to address both new virtualized elements and legacy devices. If they can do all of that, they stand to gain as much as 12 cents of each revenue dollar in overall transformation return. That's more than enough to interest everyone at the C level, and to drive new and exciting projects, even under the old transformation label.

Find out what's driving NFV to be better for the business

SDN and NFV could change telecom

Automating OSS/BSS can kick-start network changes

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New telecom transformation goals require service automation - TechTarget

Automation, robots could replace 250000 public sector workers in the next 15 years – Computer Business Review

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

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Whitehall could save 2.6 billion with automation.

250,000 public sector employees could be replaced by robots over the next 15 years, according to a report by Think Tank Reform.

The report, which addresses the creation of a public services workforce organised around the needs of its users, advocates the reduction of staff in favour of automation and digital technology.

Citing analysis by Oxford academics Frey and Osbourne, in which the academics said that admin roles have a 96% chance of being automated by current technology, the report applied their calculations to current public sector numbers. The report found that, over the next 10 to 15 years, central government departments could further reduce headcount by 131,962, saving 2.6 billion from the 2016-17 wage bill.

The report sells automation as the new approach which is needed, saying:

Public services should deliver outcomes that matter to users, and meet expectations of interacting via technology. This approach would see services designed around users and render at least 248,860 administrative roles redundant. The accuracy of decision-making can be further improved by using artificial intelligence to make complex decisions and by understanding why mistakes that, for example, cause 10 per cent of hospital patients to suffer from medical error, are made.

Further calculations found that the NHS could automate 91,208 of 112,726 administrator roles (outside of primary care), reducing the wage bill by approximately 1.7 billion. In primary care, a pioneering GP provider interviewed for the paper has a clinician-to-receptionist ratio of 5:1, suggesting a potential reduction of 24,000 roles across the NHS from the 2015 total. In total this would result in 248,860 administrative roles being replaced by technology.

These findings were further bolstered by the success HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has had in recent times in regrads to automation. Over the last decade, HMRC has reduced its admin staff from 96,000 to 60,000 through expanding its online services and providing real-time information.

Including all types of roles, not just admin, the report said that even the more complex roles in public services stand to be automated. The report said:

Even the most complex roles stand to be automated. Twenty per cent of public-sector workers hold strategic, cognitive roles. They will use data analytics to identify patterns improving decision making and allocating workers most efficiently.

The NHS, for example, can focus on the highest-risk patients, reducing unnecessary hospital admissions. UK police and other emergency services are already using data to predict areas of greatest risk from burglary and fire.

Some technology, will not replace humans, but enhance the work humans produce, with the report stating that some technology will improve public-service delivery. Artificial Intelligence, drones and facial recognition technology should be evaluated by various public services, specifically policing, as alternatives to current practices.

Experts were quick to criticize the report, with many saying that the stark figures overlooked the human cost of such automation. Other critics, like Redwood Softwares Neil Kinson, pointed out that the obsession of humans vs robots would actually hinder the development of robotics and AI.

The implementation of robotics across the public sector will ensure that efficiencies will be gained, simply by taking the robot out the human. That is, freeing staff up from repetitive manual tasks to allow them to focus their efforts on more value-add, strategic activities. However, as long as we remain fixated on the idea that robots replace humans, or narrowly define the sets of tasks to which we can apply robotics, the true potential of robotic process automation will be overlooked. Robotics brings the opportunity to completely re-imagine how the entire process is executed e.g. cash to billing, record to report, procure to pay as well as the interdependencies between these processes.

Its time for a shift in language on how the robotics revolution is defined and explained.

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Automation, robots could replace 250000 public sector workers in the next 15 years - Computer Business Review

The Evolution of Automation and What It Means for the Integration Industry – Commercial Integrator

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Amazon Echo

Automation is no longer a technology only integrators and AV experts know about. With popular automation products like Amazon Echo and Google Home, customers already know many of the capabilities of this technology.

Despite consumers ability to install many automation solutions on their own, there are still opportunities for integrators to thrive in automation.

To provide a bit more informationabout the demand for automation and what it means for integrators,Steve Greenblatt of Control Concepts,an audiovisual control system solutions provider specializing in control programming, software development, and specialty services for audiovisual systems in boardrooms, conference rooms, and classrooms, shares his insight in the follow Q&A:

Last year, 2016, seemed like a significant year for automation. Emergence of no-programming solutions in the custom market and popularity of mainstream products like Amazon Echo and Google Home really have people thinking about automation. How would you summarize what we learned about automation in 2016?

The no-programming solutions are nothing new. These concepts were present before I started my company 20 years ago. The motivation is to simplify the process of getting a project done and tackle one of the biggest hurdles, which is defining the scope of work or more simply how the system should function.

Most of the programming cost goes into time spent understanding what the users need and defining functionality that supports the system design. Today, manufacturers are offering pre-developed, configured solutions or systems such as Crestrons AV Framework or AMXs Rapid Project Maker. These offerings accomplish the challenge of providing a functional system with low investment, effort, and risk.

Putting myself in the shoes of a consumer, user, or technology manager, I would seek a proven, easy to use system, with little effort and investment that accomplishes my goals.

This approach allows technology, control, and automation to be used in more places than previously possible. It also provides the ability to independently make basic functionality adjustments, system modifications, and device changes as the system evolves.

With the impact of mobile apps, Amazon Echo, and Google Home, the average person has much more exposure to the world of AV and automation than ever before. Ive been saying for a while that we are no longer pushing technology to our audience. Rather, our audience is now challenging us to keep up with their needs and expectations which have been shaped through todays technology environment.

Essentially, the professional AV industry will lose relevance if we cant offer better solutions than those they already get on their own. We must up our game on all levels to provide a more consistent, easy-to-use, reliable, and robust user experience. This stems from user interface design and operation to functionality and intelligence to the ability to address needs and solve problems that add value and improve productivity or quality of life.

Onto 2017, how do you hope and think automation will evolve?

I see the trend toward increased demand for automation continuing. We live in an impatient world where devices are expected to be smart and make our lives easier. This is apparent in the talk about driverless cars, touchless user interfaces and voice control, and the world of IoT (Internet of Things) where devices interact natively and everything is connected. Automation is a necessary part of our lives and society is now used to the benefits it provides.

I see opportunities for our industry to get involved in processing the data that our systems can collect and providing valuable reports, identifying trends, and starting to get involved in predictable behavior for our systems. The intelligence that we can get from analyzing and utilizing the data will be significant.

Do you want to be called a programmer, a software developer or something else and why?

I look at the title of programmer and software developer being two different roles. A programmer creates the user interface and functionality of a system by programming the components to communicate with each other.

A software developer creates software that has a specified application that is not dependent on a particular platform. It satisfies a need, solves a problem, or provides functionality that was not previously available.

In essence, we are a solutions provider. We help our clients clarify what they need and then we provide a solution that helps them work more effectively and efficiently.

How will automation adapt to the need for high-volume applications (a corporate campus with hundreds of meeting rooms needing automation across the campus)?

One of the solutions for high-volume applications is the no programming required approach where rooms can be delivered quickly, consistently, and in a standard way. Another approach is to develop a customized configurable model where different room variations become part of a master programmed solution.

This master solution can be configured to meet the needs of a large number of room types as long as they stay within the model. The custom configurable approach provides ease of support, maintenance, modifications, and upgradeability while also providing a solution that is specific the user and provides the customization aligns with the way their organization or enterprise conducts business and utilizes technology.

Do you see a future for automation-as-a-service? Why or why not?

I think there is a future for providing a service model that supports ongoing support, maintenance, and upgradeability as well as monitoring and diagnostics for a monthly fee versus an upfront cost. Systems would essentially lease their programming rather than buy it. This would also include ongoing support for Technology Managers who needing to support their users.

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The Evolution of Automation and What It Means for the Integration Industry - Commercial Integrator

Why Do We Take Pride in Working for a Paycheck? – JSTOR Daily

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

If you had to find a single statement that Americans from across the political spectrum can agree on, you might settle on we need good jobs to give people a crucial sense of self-worth. Fight-for-$15 activists assert the right to a higher wage, partly so they can stop taking government handouts like food stamps. Policy commentators, worried that automation could bring a loss of jobs, prescribe everything from subsidized corporate hiring to federal make-work programs. The congressional leaderships pitch for its policies hinges almost entirely on encouraging workand reducing public benefits.

But heres the thing: In historical terms, the pride we take in working for a paycheck is really new. Just 150 years ago, when people talked about the shame of dependency, they were referring to the reality of being forced to hold a job.

* * *

Speaking at the Wisconsin State Fair in Milwaukee in 1859, Abraham Lincoln described wage labor as an unfortunate necessity only for the penniless beginner in the world:

If any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer, it is not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune.

In contrast, Lincoln laid out a vision of respectability that required avoiding a job:

In these free States, a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their familieswives, sons, and daughterswork for themselves, on their farms, in their houses and their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hirelings or slaves on the other.

Farmers and craftsmen valued this independence in part because their time was their own, as it had been for skilled workers for generations. Describing nineteenth-century artisans in Birmingham, England, the historian Douglas A. Reid wrote, high piece-rates could provide good wages for skilled men, but they more often elected to take a moderate wage and extensive leisure.

Leisure meant time in the alehouse, time eating, drinking, playing marbles, or watching cockfights. Reid writes that even less-skilled workers and apprentices observed the informal weekly holiday known as Saint Monday if they could afford it, much to the dismay of elites and government officials. One observer in 1864 complained that an enormous amount of time is lost, not only by want of punctuality in coming to work in the morning and beginning again after meals, but still more by the general observance of Saint Monday.

That was the kind of life craftsmen in Lincolns day might have expected for themselves. But, as the sociologists Helga Kristin Hallgrimsdottir and Cecilia Benoit explain, rising industrialization in the late nineteenth century forced many skilled artisans to work for a factory owner rather than for themselves. The Knights of Labor, an early labor union, saw this dependence on an employerregardless of how much or how little was paidas wage slavery, a condition literally comparable to chattel slavery, which the country had only recently abolished. These unionists argued that working for wages was repugnant because capitalists siphoned off part of the wealth produced by the workers and told them when and how to do their jobs.

The only solution, as Knights of Labor founder Uriah Stephens put it in 1881, was the complete emancipation of wealth producers from the thralldom and loss of wage slavery. Workers and their unions interpreted that goal in many different ways over the next several decades, sometimes trying to return production to independent craftsmen, other times creating cooperative worker-owned enterprises, or advocating a socialist revolution.

* * *

Some workers saw more logic than others in harkening back to a pre-industrial independence. For example, to young, working-class white women, heading to a mill town to work for a wage might have sounded better than staying home on the farm. These women organized strikes to get better pay, but, to many of them, wage work itself was more liberating than not.

They knew as farm wives they would have little control over the farms profits and little disposable income, American literature scholar Julie Husband writes, describing mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1840s. These women explicitly rejected the label of white slaves that some political reformers and male unionists applied to them. Millworker Harriet Farley mocked the notion that to put ourselves under the influence and restraints of corporate bodies is contrary to the spirit of our institutions and to the love of independence we ought to cherish.

There is a spirt of independence which is adverse to social life itself, she added. And I would advise all those [who] wish to cherish it to go beyond the Rocky Mountains and hold communion with none but the untamed Indian and the wild beast of the forest.

Even for skilled white male workers, rhetoric identifying wage labor as wage slavery mostly dried up in the final decades of the century, as large-scale industry came to dominate manufacturing. By 1900, Hallgrimsdottir and Benoit write, both the Knights of Labor and the ascendant American Federation of Labor (AFL) generally used the phrase wage slavery to refer only to particularly awful jobs, especially those held by immigrant and black workers.

* * *

While some unionists still held out hope for the abolition of the capitalist system, many turned their practical attention to improving wage work. That required a dramatic shift in focus, as historian Lawrence Glickman explains in his book, A Living Wage. Mid-nineteenth-century skilled white male workers had believed that wage work not only degraded their economic status but undermined the independence that lay at the root of republican manhood and republican citizenship, he writes.

Wages have stagnated, benefits have evaporated, andreturns to capital have swelled.

As wage workers, they needed to regain pride and status. For some white, male unionistsparticularly those in the relatively conservative AFLthere were two intertwined ways to do that. One was winning higher wages and using the money to construct a respectable lifea carpeted parlor, ornaments on the mantle, a wife who could stay home to care for the family. The other lay in contrasting themselves with female, black, and immigrant workers, who, in their view, lacked both the power and the desire to push for better pay. Glickman quotes one labor leader, W.W. Stone, who drew the division like this: The Caucasian must add to his own individual needs the cost of maintaining a wife and family. There is rent to pay, clothing to be provided, books to buy, and, added to all this, the many little wants that arise out of the condition of a Christian civilization. In contrast, he continued, Chinese workers were content with a fractional interest in the body of a female slave.

* * *

Through the early twentieth century, unionistsincluding not just skilled white men, but also workers of other backgrounds, who organized in spite of the barriers erected by some white male union leaderspushed for better jobs. Glickman notes that this required not only strikes and demonstrations but also a new economic vision. In an age of big factories, workers recognized that it was no longer possible to reimburse any one individual for the value they added to a product. At the same time, they rejected the emerging economic consensus that supply and demand in the labor market would produce a correct wage. Instead, they created a new concept: the living wage, amounting to their rightful share in the products of common toil, as AFL President Samuel Gompers called it.

The labor movement achieved a great deal in this era. Working hours lessened, working conditions improved, and wages rose. By the end of the 1940s, historian David L. Stebenne writes, unions and management had essentially reached a truce. Workers repudiated socialism and stopped trying to win a say in how companies were managed. Companies provided pensions and health insurance to many employees and worked to keep employment rates high. For a few decades, things generally went quite well for workers, particularly white, male union members in urban industrial areas.

In recent years, of course, things have changed. A concerted political attack has hobbled unions, while globalization and automation have reshaped the economy. Wages for all but the best-paid workers have stagnated, and employee benefits have evaporated, while returns to capital have swelled.

Economists and policy analysts have a lot of different ideas about how we might respond to the conditions of laborers. Some suggest reinstating the postwar social contract. Others argue that the government should expand programs that subsidize the incomes of low-paid workers into a European-style welfare state, or even provide a universal basic income to everyone.

With that in mind, here are a few lessons we might draw from the history of workers opposition toand then acceptance ofthe wage system:

The biggest lesson, though, might be this one: things change. Whether we like it or not, technological advances and geopolitical shifts will alter the ways we work, probably in radical ways. Our values, and the places we find pride and shame, will change with them. Theres no guarantee about what any of this will look like, partly because it will depend on the choices we make about what were willing to fight for.

The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Mar., 1927), pp. 243-258

Wisconsin Historical Society

By: Douglas A. Reid

Past & Present, No. 71 (May, 1976), pp. 76-101

Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society

By: Helga Kristin Hallgrimsdottir and Cecilia Benoit

Social Forces, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Mar., 2007), pp. 1393-1411

Oxford University Press

By: Julie Husband

Legacy, Vol. 16, No. 1, Discourses of Women and Class (1999), pp. 11-21

University of Nebraska Press

By: David L. Stebenne

International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 50, Labor under Communist Regimes (Fall, 1996), pp. 140-147

Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.

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Attending College Doesn’t Close the Wage Gap and Other Myths Exposed in New ‘Asset Value of Whiteness’ Report – The Root

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Since the first iteration of slavery transformed into its more contemporary formsJim Crow, mass incarceration, redlining, employment and education discriminationthe toxic myth that black people can bootstrap their way to success and safety in a country that thrives on their subjugation has continued to thrive.

In a new report, Asset Value of Whiteness, Demos andthe Institute on Assets and Social Policy take a deep dive into the intrinsic link between racism and capitalism; specifically, how whiteness infests the so-called American dream and renders it inaccessible to anyone who doesnt meet the pre-selected criteria.

This is a truth that black and brown people in this country have always known, but one that white people invested in the maintenance of white supremacy have willfully chosen to ignore.

While Franklin Roosevelts New Deal and Harry Trumans Fair Deal laid the groundwork for a vibrant middle class, these sweeping legislations helped widen the economic gap along the racial fault line. This also holds true for the Servicemens Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill of Rights) of 1944, the affirmative action program created primarily for the benefit of white, male veterans.

These programs and their ramifications have exposed how a flat economic analysis does not get to the core of the racial discrimination and animus running through this country.

For centuries, white households enjoyed wealth-building opportunities that were systematically denied to people of color. Today our policies continue to impede efforts by African-American and Latino households to obtain equal access to economic security, explains Amy Traub, associate director of policy and research at Demos and co-author of the report.

When research shows that racial privilege now outweighs a fundamental key to economic mobility, like higher education, we must demand our policymakers acknowledge this problem and create policies that address structural inequity, Traub continues.

A few key points from the Asset Value of Whiteness:

The median white adult who attended college has 7.2 times more wealth than the median black adult who attended college and 3.9 times more wealth than the median Latino adult who attended college.

The median white single parent has 2.2 times more wealth than the median black two-parent household and 1.9 times more wealth than the median Latino two-parent household.

The median white household that includes a full-time worker has 7.6 times more wealth than the median black household with a full-time worker. The median white household that includes a full-time worker also has 5.4 times more wealth than the median Latino household with a full-time worker.

The average white household spends 1.3 times more than the average black household of the same income group. According to the report:

On average, white households spent $13,700 per quarter, compared to $8,400 for black households. Even after accounting for factors such as family structure, income, occupation, and geography, as well as wealth and homeownership, white households at all income levels continued to spend more than comparable black households, with low-income white households spending $1,200 more per quarter than low-income black households and high-income white households spending $1,400 more than their black counterparts.

Equal achievements in key economic indicators, such as employment and education, do not lead to equal levels of wealth and financial security for households of color, notes Thomas Shapiro, director of the Institute on Assets and Social Policy.

White households have a leg up, while households of color face systematic barriers to growing wealth, reproducing our long-standing racial wealth gap over generations, Shapiro continues. Without policies that combat ingrained wealth inequalities, the racial wealth gap that we see today will continue to persist.

Asset Value of Whiteness is the most recent in a series of studies from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy and Demos analyzing policy solutions to close the racial wealth gap and ensure all Americans have an equal opportunity to participate in our economy.

What is clear is that a rising tide does not lift all boats if some of the boats have holes in them. For people of color, a rising tide can sometimes lead to us drowning that much faster.

Click here to read Asset Value of Whiteness.

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Living off the grid: Neo-peasants in Daylesford, Victoria take on … – NEWS.com.au

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Meg and Patrick live an off-grid life most of us couldnt imagine.

HIPSTERS, drop your turmeric latte and turn down The Smiths, theres a new subculture of nonconformists on the block and youll need more than a bushy beard and a fedora to join in.

Enter the neo peasant.

Theyre fit, theyre frugal, theyre foragers, theyre facing our culture of extreme excess head on and they have very strong stomachs.

Think re-usable toilet paper, road kill for dinner, push bike-powered travel, homeschooling and humanure.

Neo peasants from Daylesford in regional Victoria, Meg Ulman and Patrick Jones, are defining the art of voluntary simplicity and reclaiming the skills, resilience and adaptability everyone is going to need in the future.

You wont find them in a supermarket, owning or driving a car, watching television, using a credit card or working the 9-5.

Their days are filled with foraging, hunting, preserving, brewing, bartering and fermenting to keep food on the table.

A neo-peasant is someone whos involved primarily in the household and community economies and resists wage-slavery, debt, and the heavily-militarised global economy, Mr Jones said.

They do not have to go to work to pay down debt, and therefore have time to organise and be accountable for their own food and energy resources.

Sounds better than your office job, right?

But dont be mistaken, a neo peasant hasnt got time to laze about.

Not many of us had to split wood to stoke our stove or hot wash the family cloth today the old flannel bed sheet Meg and Patrick have cut into squares and stitched to replace toilet paper.

By not buying toilet paper we save over $300 a year, Ms Ulman said.

Weve always been frugal, but its been about a decade since weve really concentrated our efforts to become dedicated non-polluters.

Neo-peasants Meg and Patrick with their children Zephr (left) and Blackwood.Source:Supplied

Its hot, heavy, hard work, but they are nauseated by the prospect of running down to the supermarket and buying a hot chicken for dinner dont worry, Ive asked.

We wouldnt touch a chicken from a supermarket because that hen has more than likely come from a prison-like existence and been tortured in death, Mr Jones said.

The packaged food of supermarkets is mostly laced with refined sugars, harmful additives and carcinogens, and the so-called fresh food is long-termed stored, sprayed with harmful methyl bromide, refrigerants or other nasties and has little nutrition.

Excuse me for a moment while I torch the entire contents of my pantry.

One look at the couples four-year-old, Blackwood, will also have you prizing that lollipop out of your toddlers mouth.

Woody has never touched processed sugar.

A treat for Woody is a mandarin picked off the tree, a handful of ripe berries or a sweet red capsicum, Ms Ulman says.

Patrick processing some road kill.Source:Supplied

We dont shop at supermarkets so there are no shiny packets or chocolate bars to entice him and we dont own a television so there are no ads to seduce him.

Ms Ulman said before they committed to a neo peasantry lifestyle they were riddled with anxiety and helplessness about the state of the world.

Mr Jones goes as far as to say its a move they made before they were forced to simplify with global economic contraction and even collapse.

We live in a culture of extreme excess, built on the myth of permanent growth and endless crude oil, he said.

This oil-induced affluence is fleeting; it cant keep growing because we live on a finite planet and the science fictions of mining other planets for resources is far-fetched and wishful thinking.

So lets look at the average Aussie.

We work all week for multinationals to buy appliances that cost us a lot in electricity to turn on.

Lets not get started on how much waste the average household turns out in comparison to Meg and Patrick theyve even found a way to re-use their own poo.

Humanure is composted and recycled, wastewater is filtered and fed into garden swales, food scraps from our own kitchen and local cafes are fed to our worms, chickens and ducks, Mr Jones says.

We shower once or twice a week.

The water is then piped into our garden.

The family also has two composting toilets, a rainwater washing machine powered by solar and strict rules about internet access for their 14-year-old son Zephyr who happens to live in a tiny house in the backyard that he co-built from recycled materials.

Zephyr helped build his own tiny house in the backyard.Source:Supplied

Four-year-old Woody is happily playing in the backyard after his first haircut.Source:Supplied

The neo peasants have a theory about tiny house living too, you see.

It is an expression of people using technology appropriately, and living within their means, Mr Jones said.

While the real estate market remains a giant Ponzi scheme the tiny house movement will continue to grow.

But if shovelling your own poo, washing your toilet paper or cooking up fresh road kill for dinner (as Meg and Patrick did on their 14-month foraging tour of Australia by bicycle) is too much to swallow; Kirsten Bradley from Milkwood Permaculture has some advice.

Start with changing one thing at a time, Ms Bradley said.

If you eat a lot of bread, learn how to make it.

Then stick with making your own bread until youre ready to add a new habit.

If you create these new habits every 6 months or so then within 5 years youll have made a fundamental change to your family life.

Meg making some Kefir milk.Source:Supplied

The boys standing next to the backyard veggie patch.Source:Supplied

Milkwood offer training courses in home gardening, bee keeping, natural building, permaculture and regenerative agriculture making mini neo peasants out of us all.

Murdoch University School of Arts Associate Professor Dr Carol Warren said there was something of a millenarian movement in the extremity of a neo peasants position on some issues but she conceded the idea we are morally-responsible to live within an ecologically-sustainable footprint was laudable.

The current prominence of food and energy security issues in global policy circles indicates that the neo-peasant focus on basic needs in a context of global environmental decline is a legitimate one, Dr Warren said.

You can follow Meg and Patricks journeys in neo peasantry at http://www.theartistasfamily.blogspot.com.

It's here! What we've all been waiting for, right? It's the definitive guide on how to spot a hipster. No need to stare at passersby any more wondering if they are in fact a hipster or not. Watch this video and you will know immediately. And remember: hipsters are grown, not born. Credit: YouTube/billygoatideas

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Scheme for fishing crews is ‘legitimising slavery’ – Irish Times

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

The Governments system of permits for migrant fishing workers is legitimising slavery, a trade union official told a meeting in Liberty Hall, Dublin on Monday. Up to 70 fishermen, mainly Egyptian, heard International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) co-ordinator Ken Fleming demand immediate action to halt abuse and exploitation within the Irish industry.

Egyptian embassy representative Hatem Elsisi also called on the Government to provide a safe and legal system for Egyptian crew to work on Irish vessels.

These are very skilled men, mainly from the Alexandria area, who want to work here but they need a system that protects them and gives them an opportunity to apply for residence which will give them rights, Mr Elsisi said.

Up to 2,000 Egyptians may be working on vessels based at ports north and south of the Border, Mr Elsisi said.

The embassy has received reports of injury and hardship, and was aware of several cases where men who sustained injury could not return home to their families while legal cases were in train.

Instances where many migrant crew were underpaid and overworked were outlined at the meeting, which is the second hosted by the ITF.

Mohamad Abbasy, who took up a berth on a vessel in Union Hall, Co Cork, 18 months ago, said he lost his job last September and his visa was cancelled after he had secured a permit.

This permit system is for slaves, not humans,when you work 150 hours a week and are paid for just 39 hours, he said.

The permit system for migrant workers was initiated by the then minister for marine Simon Coveney last year in the wake of a year-long investigation by the Guardian newspaper on exploitation within the Irish fishing industry.

Industry organisations said they had lobbied for such a system to meet crew shortages within the industry. However, the system had failed, Mr Fleming said. Boat owners have used the scheme to move from paying crews on a share system to paying the minimum wage, with crew working over 100 hours for 350 a week, Mr Fleming said.

The permit system closed in June 2016, but at least 20 permits had since been issued illegally, facilitated by the Department of Justice, Mr Fleming claimed.

Only one of the fishermen at the meeting said he held a permit issued before June last year, while two said they held permits issued in December 2016.

Mr Fleming said he was aware of the risks many of the men took to attend the meeting, and issued an information leaflet in Arabic relating to steps to take if contacted by the Garda National Immigration Bureau.

The ITF plans to highlight the situation at the European Parliament later this month and is holding a meeting with the Workplace Relations Commission chairman.

Last October, the WRC, Garda, Naval Service and State agencies held joint inspections of 41 fishing vessels in Castletownbere, Co Cork, and Howth, Co Dublin. The Garda said a relatively small number of suspected breaches were found, all relating to the work permit scheme, employment law and immigration and tax offences.

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Pudzer isn’t looking at the big picture – Las Vegas Sun

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

By Paul Aizley, Las Vegas

Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017 | 2 a.m.

In the article As business owner, labor pick chafed at worker protections (Las Vegas Sun, Jan. 18), Donald Trumps pick for secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder, asks, How do you pay somebody $15 an hour to scoop ice cream? How good could you be at scooping ice cream?

If Pat scoops ice cream for an hourly wage, Pudzer should take a broader view. Consider why Pat is working: to pay for school, buy a car, pay medical bills or put a few dollars away for retirement. Pats wages should allow Pat to have a life. Can Puzder scoop all the ice cream? What is Puzders time worth? Pat is helping Puzder, and Pat is not a slave. Pat does not have a life if all s/he can do is pay for lifes minimal essentials. That is modern slavery.

What should be obvious to Puzder is that there is more to Pats life than scooping ice scream. With an adequate wage, Pat will be able to pay for more than lifes basic essentials and will not have to rely on help from the government to get by.

We hope for a secretary for labor, not a secretary for the corporation.

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Indian sex worker groups slam global conference on abolition of … – Reuters

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Sex workers in India have slammed a global conference on the abolition of prostitution, saying campaigners for the end of the sex trade failed to recognize some women were prostitutes out of choice and not due to coercion, trafficking or force.

Participants at the Delhi conference - including former sex workers from South Africa, Canada, India and the United States - have been sharing stories of sexual slavery and calling for an end to prostitution by punishing clients, pimps and traffickers.

But sex workers' groups in India said there was a difference between voluntary sex work and sexual exploitation, and that not all women in the trade are victims or trafficked sex slaves.

"We are against anyone who does not recognize us as human beings who can take our own decisions," said Kiran Deshmukh, a sex worker from Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad, a collective of sex workers from India's western state of Maharashtra.

"Making us victims with no agency is a violation of our human right to work in sex work. By 'abolishing' us they are not helping us - they are ignoring our need to work and earn a living with dignity."

Sex work is illegal in most countries across the world, yet it exists everywhere. There are an estimated 40 million sex workers globally, according to French charity Fondation Scelles.

Abolitionists say most have been lured, duped or forced into sexual slavery by pimps and traffickers, largely due to poverty, a lack of opportunities and having a traditionally marginalized status in society.

Once forced to work in brothels, on street corners, in massage parlors, strip clubs or private homes, it is difficult for sex workers to leave, activists say.

For many it is the threat of physical abuse from their pimp that keeps them in prostitution, but some stay of their own accord, ostracized by their families with nowhere to go.

"WE ARE NOT COMMODITIES"

Groups from the National Network of Sex Workers in India said abolitionists were being moralistic and judgmental. They said legalizing the trade would regulate the industry and ensure there was no exploitation of women and girls.

"The violence of a judgmental attitude has contributed untold misery on sex workers encouraging lumpen elements to justify the violence meted out to sex workers," said a statement from the group, signed by over 2,000 sex workers, sex workers' children and 20 groups representing their rights.

However, several speakers at the conference said the vast majority of sex workers were exploited.

"So what if there are women out there who are doing this out of their own free will?" said Rachel Moran, an Irish prostitution survivor and founder of the charity SPACE International.

"There are 40 million women and girls on this earth that are prostituted and if you have a tiny sprinkling of those who say they have chosen it fully and voluntarily, that doesn't negate the experience of the vast majority."

Hollywood actress Ashley Judd, attending the conference as a strong advocate for prostitution to be abolished, said women and girls were being bought and sold like commodities and that action had to be taken to end the global sex trade.

"We need to put on the onus and shame where it belongs - which is on the perpetrator, the aggressor and the person who thinks that women and girl's bodies are purchasable," Judd said.

"We are not commodities, we are human beings and we are entitled to bodily integrity, sexual dignity and the right to be free from all forms of body invasion."

The three-day World Congress on the Elimination of the Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls - which brings together 250 charities and activists, as well as academics, trade unions and lawyers from across 30 countries - ends on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla @nitabhalla, Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org)

BEIJING, Feb 7 China is proposing a further tightening of controls over the internet with the possible establishment of a new commission to vet internet services and hardware, Beijing's internet regulator has said.

HONG KONG Citigroup Inc's China unit said on Tuesday that it had received the so-called "Type A" bond settlement agent license from China's central bank, allowing it to add to its offering of sales, trading and research in the fixed-income business.

HONG KONG, Feb 7 Citigroup Inc's China unit said on Tuesday that it had received the so-called "Type A" bond settlement agent licence from China's central bank, allowing it to add to its offering of sales, trading and research in the fixed-income business.

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Donald Trump ‘taking steps to abolish Environmental Protection Agency’ – The Guardian

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Danzig

Myron Ebell, who led Trumps EPA transition team, has described the environmental movement as the greatest threat to freedom in the modern world. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters

Donald Trump will work towards the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency and any employees cleaving to the Obama era should be very worried by the prospect of Scott Pruitt taking over the agency, a key aide of the president has told the Guardian.

In an exclusive interview, Myron Ebell who headed up Trumps EPA transition team, said that agencys environmental research, reports and data would not be removed from its website, but climate education material might be changed or withdrawn.

Ebell also signalled that a review of fuel efficiency standards for cars, rushed through by the departing Obama administration, is likely to be reopened despite its contribution to the USs pledged emissions cuts in the Paris agreement.

A campaign stump pledge by Trump to scrap the EPA in its entirety was an aspirational goal that would be best achieved by incremental demolition rather than an executive order, according to Ebell.

To abolish an agency requires not only thought but time because you have to decide what to do with certain functions that Congress has assigned to that agency, he said.

President Trump said during the campaign that he would like to abolish the EPA or leave a little bit. It is a goal he has and sometimes it takes a long time to achieve goals. You cant abolish the EPA by waving a magic wand.

The EPA was created in 1970 to protect human health and the environment, but Trump favours devolving much of its work and responsibilities to US states.

Ebell has previously said that two-thirds of the agencys 15,000 engineers, scientists and researchers could be axed but not that Trumps campaign pledge of revoking the agency itself was still an objective.

Half of the EPAs $8.2bn (6.47bn) budget is currently passed on to the states and it was quite possible that Trump would initially propose a 10% cut in federal EPA funding, Ebell said.

While he does not speak for the president, his dismissals of climate science and environmental regulation have cut with the grain at the new incumbents of the White House.

A climate action plan Ebell prepared for the incoming president outlines a strategy for withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, and scrapping Obamas signature clean power plan.

Any attempts to abolish the EPA would likely be steered by Pruitt, Trumps nominee who has sued the agency 13 times, although Democrats boycotted his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, preventing a vote.

The former EPA chief administrator in the Bush White House, Catherine Todd Whitman, complained earlier this week that agency staff were feeling nervous about the arrival of Pruitt, a climate science denier who has reportedly accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fossil fuels industry.

If you want to defend the status quo then you should be very worried, Ebell said. I expect Scott Pruitt to be a serious reformer at the EPA.

Fears of a purge of EPA climate data, research, and reports have been fuelled by the removal of climate science material on a White House website and a temporary hold placed on new publications until they have been vetted by political appointees.

Ebell insisted that existing scientific webpages would be protected. I have no doubt that they will not disappear, he said. I dont think President Trump has the least interest in destroying or hiding information. But I do think that a great deal of what the EPA puts out in the way of so-called climate education some of the research that theyve not necessarily done but promoted does not meet the minimal standards legally required by the federal information quality act. It therefore needs to be changed or withdrawn.

Ebell is the director of the ultra-conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the number one enemy of climate change alarmism, according to his Twitter page.

He has gained notoriety for arguing that climate science is based on a tissue of improbabilities and his CEI has been ridiculed by Greenpeace for a video claiming that CO2 is not a pollutant.

As he arrived in Brussels to address a Blue-Green summit on Wednesday, he was jeered by scores of environmental protestors, one of whom was bundled out of the meeting after brandishing a placard saying Resist during his speech.

Ebell has described the environmental movement as the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world.

Asked for his advice to Ebell, Greg Barker, a former climate minister under David Cameron issued a plea: Please stop trashing experts.

It is incredibly dangerous. We live in a very complex and integrated world and the idea that we should denigrate learning and expertise is very worrying, very dark and sinister, Lord Barker added.

Ebell responded from the podium by accusing Barker of having strong economic interests in this [environmental] crony capitalist regime.

The combative stance may not have persuaded EU officials in the audience, but it has won admirers on the US alt-right, the far-right movement in the US who share his hostility to environmental regulation.

In a key speech in North Dakota last May, Trump lashed out at what he said were totalitarian tactics by the EPA, as he promised to save the US coal industry, build the Keystone XL pipeline and cancel the Paris climate agreement.

Doing so would mean we will be ceding global leadership of climate policy to China, Ebell said after the meeting. [But] I want to get rid of global climate policy, so why do I care who is in charge of it? I dont care. They can take it as far as Im concerned, and good luck to them.

A green light given to the 54.5 miles a gallon fuel efficiency standard for new automobiles might also be heading for the kerb, after the Obama administration fast-tracked a measure approving the fuel and emissions-saving rule in its last days.

Ebell said: My view is that the mid-term review should be reopened by the Trump administration because I believe the conclusions by the Obama administration were cooked. I dont think the facts support the conclusion that everything is [proceeding] on target, so I think they will have to reopen that.

The rest is here:

Donald Trump 'taking steps to abolish Environmental Protection Agency' - The Guardian

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