Real Majority Rule

I recently finished reading Jeff Madrick's Seven Bad Ideas.  The book is written by an economist who supports the kinds of policies used during the 1950s and 1960s, and presents data critical of more recent "free market"-oriented policies.  Within the context of discussing the merits of 1960s policies versus 2010s policies, there's plenty of information.  However, you won't see efforts to look beyond these horizons. Readers who have limited knowledge of the underpinning of conservative / "free market" economic policies may appreciate the issues being divided into seven "bad ideas."  However, there's considerable overlap between a number of them.  One says individual selfish business transactions will result in a beneficial global economy.  Another says the economy is self-correcting.  Another says little government involvement is needed or desirable...  The book provides historical examples and shows that much of free market claims are si...

Automation - using machines to replace human workers - could be used to provide everyone with better living standards and more free time, but as implemented today it means people are thrown out of jobs or are pressured to work for less pay / benefits.  There are different predictions of how serious the impact will be in the next 20 or so years, but none are really good.  Below is a link to an article about the more optimistic view given by the OECD: AI and robots will destroy fewer jobs than previously feared, says new OECD report Synopsis: The new study offers a counterpoint to an influential 2013 paper by Oxford University academics Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, who warned that around 47 percent of jobs in the US were at high risk of being automated. The OECD report says that only 14 percent of jobs in OECD countries — which includes the US, UK, Canada, and Japan — are “highly automatable,” meaning their probability of automation is 70 percent or higher. That is stil...