1 Drones, driverless trucks and the jobs threat (Max
Opray in The Guardian) Morgan Stanley has forecast that freight operators could
save $168bn a year by replacing humans with vehicles that drive themselves with
no need for toilet breaks or sleep, and Uber last year bought an automated
truck firm with the intention to roll out a global service.
It is a theory that has been put into practice in
Australia: Rio Tinto has been relying on a fleet of driverless trucks at its
iron ore mines in the Pilbara for years, yielding performance improvements of
12%.
A PWC study in 2015 predicted an 80% chance that
Australia’s 94,946 professional drivers of road and rail vehicles would be
replaced by automation in the next two decades. The prospect has union
officials extremely concerned.
If self-driving vehicles – whether that is lumbering
autonomous trucks driving for days without rest or airborne drones zipping
across the skies – do push human drivers into unemployment queues, unions want
compensation.
2 US growth revised up to 1.2% (BBC) The US economy
grew at a faster pace than initially thought in the first three months of the
year. The latest figures indicated the economy expanded at an annual pace of
1.2% in the quarter, up from the previous estimate of 0.7%.
The initial estimate had been seen as a blow to US
President Donald Trump, who pledged in his election campaign to raise growth to
4%.cHowever, the revised figure still represents a slowdown from the 2.1%
growth rate recorded in the final quarter of 2016.
Ben Herzon, senior economist at Macroeconomic
Advisers, said temporary factors, such as lower spending on heating bills
thanks to a relatively warm winter, restrained first quarter growth.
3 India failing in job creation (Mihir Sharma in
Gulf News) Three years ago, Narendra Modi was sworn in as prime minister of
India amid much hope and tremendous expectation. But Modi’s tenure cannot yet
be judged a success for one central reason: He’s signally failed to create jobs
for the desperate young people who gave him his massive mandate.
Three years in, some important steps forward have
been taken, including the passage of a landmark reform of indirect taxes.
Foreign investors remain bullish on the country. Yet Modi’s jobs record is even
poorer than that of the much-maligned Congress government that he replaced.
India needs to create as many as a million new jobs every month just to keep up
with the growing population.
Under Modi, just over 10,000 jobs a month are being
created instead, according to government figures from 2015. The scale of this
failure is enormous — especially since it will add to the angry army of already
underemployed young Indians.
Modi certainly didn’t worry about political capital
last November, though, when he took the puzzling and destructive step of
rendering 86 per cent of India’s currency illegal overnight. Far from paying a
political price for a decision with a poor economic outcome, Modi and his party
were rewarded with another unprecedented victory in state elections a few
months later.
Modi seems to realise that he hasn’t moved swiftly
enough to create jobs, which could cost him when he runs for re-election in
2019. That may be why his party and government have subtly changed the emphasis
of their promises to the electorate. There is much more talk now of protecting
cows — sacred to many Hindus — and of defending India’s interests in Kashmir.
No lower-middle-income country can ascend to
middle-income status without generating mass employment, which in turn requires
a dynamic manufacturing sector. Given the quickening pace of automation, India
has precious little time left to ramp up industrialisation.
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