Robots are having a media moment. It seems like everywhere I turn, the specter of robots replacing human labor at a massive scale--and the fear that engenders--is reaching a zeitgeist. Last week’s New Yorker cover shows a human man begging…
The scariest article I have read about the economy lately comes from the AP entitled: "Recession, tech kill middle-class jobs". The article is about the accelerating pace at which smarter and smarter machines and software are replacing workers. Its the new…
Michigan Future's work started with the question “where do we want to go from here?” Our answer: a high-prosperity Michigan – a place with a per capita income consistently above the national average in both national economic expansions and contractions.…
Micheline Maynard wrote an insightful article for Atlantic Cities entitled The Midwest's Big Economic Miscalculation. She writes particularly about Michigan's continuing belief that the auto industry will once again be the engine of economic good times as it was for most…
Two terrific articles describe the present and future of factory work in America. The first from the New York Times on Apple's production system. The second a more comprehensive look at American manufacturing from the Atlantic. Both have the same…
After the 2010 election I wrote two posts on how disconnected our politics are from the new economic realities of a flattening world. (You can find those posts here and here.) In an insightful column New York Times columnist Thomas…
Received a thoughtful comment from former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Watkins to my post that Michigan's lost decade can be explained by the fortunes of the domestic auto industry, not state tax and spending policies. Tom's main point…
Insightful article from Chrystia Freeland in the Atlantic entitled the Rise of the New Global Elite. As Freeland writes a major reason for the rise of the new super rich is globalization and technology. These two mega forces are what…
As I wrote in my previous posts about the upcoming elections, at the core of our work is the belief that globalization and technology are mega forces, far stronger than politics/policy, that are fundamentally changing our economy now and forever.…
In my last post I laid out the case for globalization and technology being the prime drivers of economic change rather than politics or policy. That no matter who wins this or future elections they cannot change the new reality…