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West Exit of Zhengzhou East Railway Station. Zhengzhou, in China's Henan province, is famous for its "iPhone City" (photo by  Windmemories   via Wikimedia Commons) Automation has become a major topic of debate in the United States. A recent study by Oxford Economics claimed that robots could take over 20 million manufacturing jobs around the world by 2030. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has made the fight against automation's disruption of the labour market one of the central themes of his campaign. "Technology is quickly displacing a large number of workers, and the pace will only increase as automation and other forms of artificial intelligence become more advanced," Yang wrote on his campaign website. "⅓ of American workers will lose their jobs to automation by 2030 according to McKinsey. This has the potential to destabilize our economy and society if unaddressed." Amid Donald Trump's "trade war" with ...

New York City Stock Exchange (by LeoTar, via Wikimedia Commons) In mainstream economics free markets are considered the linchpin of a free and prosperous economic and political system. As t he  CATO Institute , a think tank "dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace", explains in his website: "To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement.  Free markets  are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary to create wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimized." However, the concept of "free market" is nothing but a construct created by ideologues more interested in abstract theories than in practical analysis. Indeed, what are "free markets"? As ec...

  Family watching television, c. 1958 (by Evert F. Baumgardner via  Wikimedia Commons ) The era between 1945 and 1975 is often described as the 'Golden Age' of capitalism. During this period the economy of the United States, Western Europe and Japan grew at an unprecedented pace. The post-war economic miracle was made possible by the parallel growth of productivity, capital stock per worker and real wages, which ensured a balanced development of production and consumption. Despite the rapid increase in the volume of international trade, in the post-war period developed countries mostly relied on their domestic market to boost growth (see  The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience , eds Stephen A. Marglin, Juliet B. Schor). But were the nearly three decades that followed the Second World War really a 'golden age'? Were people better off than we are now? Let us look at some facts. In 1960-61 the average  household income  in the U...

"A Nation, Catalan Countries! A Language, Catalan!" - Mural in Vilassar de Mar, El Maresme, Catalonia (by  1997  / Wikimedia Commons) "They have been beaten for trying to hold a referendum, their parliament has been dissolved and their leaders have either fled or been put in prison, but the Catalan independence supporters are not relenting," wrote  The Independent  on December 8 about  Catalan separatists . The Catalan independence movement has been portrayed by many international media outlets as a fight for freedom, while the intervention of the Spanish state to block the October 1st independence referendum is regarded as oppressive and undemocratic.  International media often offer a platform for Catalan separatists to explain their cause from their own perspective. For instance on December 3  Politico Europe  published an op-ed by Oriol Junqueras, the leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia (Esquerra Republicana de Cata...

They steal from us €60 million a day, independence=necessary"; pro-independence march in July 2010 (by  JuanmaRamos-Avui-El Punt  via Wikimedia Commons) Catalan separatism is not a coherent movement that unites the entire population of the region. Not only are Catalan voters split on the issue of independence, with about half of them supporting the preservation of autonomy within Spain. But the Catalan independence movement itself is deeply divided. On the one hand, secessionism is fuelled by a nationalist ideology that views the nation as a community with a distinct language, history and culture which requires an independent state to thrive. According to this view, people who are different cannot coexist within the same state. We have already discussed the contradictions of this concept of  self-determination  in a previous article. However, there is also another element to the independence movement that has not been often explored: a far-left ...