The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science

Disagreement arises when we begin to discuss the balance, reach and depth of the policies, and who pays for them: who wins and who loses. Often, those on the left worry that the UBI could be used to do away with the other parts of the social safety net.35 Those on the right worry that, if funded through progressive taxation (as they would have to b

As psychologist Daniel Kahneman points out from decades of work on human decision-making, if you want to be happy, pick the right goals and spend a lot of time with friends.31 Both of these require an alleviation of perceived scarcity, and can often be activities with low environmental impacts. Relatedly, happiness researchers Elizabeth Dunn and Mi

Where increasing globalization of production hit industrial towns hard, the automation revolution will hit the service-oriented companies of central business districts around the world, not to mention Indian call centres, Chinese factories and German car plants. Dystopian scenarios could play out, in which control over the automation software and r

As Graeber suggests, this partly came true, but instead of working half the week, we have somehow filled the remaining days with meaningless tasks. The very time and freedom we need to engage in meaningful activities and to imagine a better future is being squeezed by nonsense tasks. Historically, we needed more labourers to produce goods and servi

Economist Mariana Mazzucato provides another good example in Apple’s iPhone, a product that almost entirely depends on technologies that were initially developed by the public sector (including GPS, touchscreens, the internet, etc.).94 The US government also shelters Apple from competition nationally and overseas. After all this, Apple is able to a

Manufacturing a smartphone requires about seventy-five of the 118 elements in the periodic table (the human body needs only thirty), with metals and plastics sourced from so many places in such complex supply chains that it’s difficult for companies themselves to know where their components come from. These materials are then refined into microcomp

The result has been a dynamic of materialism (‘retail therapy’) fuelled by cheap imports as compensation for the lost ability to work towards security (home ownership, for example), along with, increasingly, drugs and depression. Sociologist Wolfgang Streeck calls this ‘coping, hoping, doping and shopping’.

In the US, the hourly wage increased by 91% between 1948 and 1972 almost one-for-one with productivity growth at 97%; between 1973 and 2013, it only grew by 9%, against a 75% growth in productivity.64 It’s quite clear where the productivity gains went: between 1978 and 2013 average US salaries increased 12% in real terms, while those of CEOs increa

It seems we live in a confused economy where price has little relation to value and growth doesn’t necessarily translate into increased welfare or happiness.