PEOPLE GET READY! THE FIGHT AGAINST A JOBLESS ECONOMY & A CITIZENLESS DEMOCRACY, McChesney & Nichols

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Last edited Sun May 8, 2016, 09:07 AM - Edit history (3)

Co-Authors Robert McChesney and John Nichols presentation talk on their significant new book, "PEOPLE GET READY: The Fight Against A Jobless Economy and A Citizenless Democracy" at the Town Hall Seattle, Washington on March 9, 2016.
The talk is 2-Part with McChesney speaking first and then John Nichols. (VIDEO, 1 hr. 25 mins.).
Make a NOTE to view this compelling discussion of the situation we now face based on the authors extensive two-year research on recent ongoing automation and technological advances in AI/Artificial Intelligence, robotics, 3-D Printing and driverless vehicles which will create 50 percent unemployment in the US in the next ten to thirty years and serious political and social challenges.



BOOK REVIEWS: "PEOPLE GET READY: The Fight Against A Jobless Economy and A Citizenless Democracy" 2016, by Robert McChesney and John Nichols.
*DEMOCRACY COLLABORATIVE:
Humanity is on the verge of its darkest hour—or its greatest moment
The consequence of THE TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION is about to hit hard: employment opportunities will collapse across the board as new technologies replace labor. Moribund capitalism and talk of market solutions won't answer this crisis. In this brave new world, the power of the people to demand a smarter and more humane economic and environmental policy will be diminished as fear trumps reason and surrender replaces hope.
Unless the tremendous benefits of technological progress are employed to serve the whole of humanity, rather than to enrich a handful of MONOPOLISTS, the SOCIAL CONTRACT will not be undermined—it will be broken. Americans cannot let corporate CEOs and billionaire campaign donors define their future. "PEOPLE GET READY: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy" reveals that the choices made in the next few years will decide not just how technology is utilized and how economies are organized, but whether democracy will cease to function in any meaningful sense.
This book, by two of America's leading champions of Net Neutrality and efforts to close the digital divide, links an URGENT CALL FOR ACTION with an outline of what must be done TO MOVE FROM CRISIS TO HOPE. John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney argue that the United States needs A NEW ECONOMY in which the benefits of revolutionary technologies are shared by everyone, applied to effectively address environmental and social problems, and used to rejuvenate and extend democratic institutions and practices.
Traveling the world, meeting with top innovators in the tech industry, and moving from the cloistered confines of Google’s Mountain View complex in California to the city streets where fast-food workers march for a living wage, the authors chronicle the effects of the tech revolution on the ground and in real time. With fearless analysis and their typically clairvoyant predictive powers, they propose
A BOLD STRATEGY FOR FIGHTING BACK AND DEMOCRATIZING OUR DIGITAL DESTINY—BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.
http://democracycollaborative.org/content/robert-mcchesney-and-john-nichols-present-people-get-ready-fight-against-jobless-economy-and
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*KIRKUS BOOK REVIEW:
An energetic if grim discussion of INEQUALITY and the COMING ERA OF UNDER-UNEMPLOYMENT, viewed through the lens of the forgotten American progressive narrative. MCCHESNEY (Communications/Univ. of Illinois; Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy, 2013, etc.) and Nation Washington, D.C., correspondent NICHOLS bring clear urgency to this sprawling polemic, which encompasses politics, the cybereconomy, the decline of critical journalism, and historical movements beginning with America’s founding.

They describe the POST-2008 RECESSION ERA as a “MAELSTROM” of inequity, pointing toward worse times in the labor market: “the debate about where technological change is headed is already settled in the circles of those who intend to profit from that change.” This pessimism is linked to what the authors convincingly portray as the DECAY OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNANCE. Both parties, they argue, have pursued TAX AND TRADE POLICIES that have stealthily undermined blue-collar jobs and MIDDLE-CLASS STABILITY. “This is the means,” they write, “by which UNELECTED BANKERS AND BILLIONAIRES most effectively and steadily define the popular discourse.”
Such dire chapters contrast with A VIVIDLY RENDERED HISTORY of the development of a NOW-TATTERED “DEMOCRATIC INFRASTRUCTURE,” beginning with the state constitutional conventions of the late 18th century, more populist than what ultimately became the U.S. CONSTITUTION. The authors follow this thread through THE PROGRESSIVE ERA and Franklin Roosevelt’s NEW DEAL, portrayed as the precursor to an ambitious “SECOND BILL OF RIGHTS” forgotten at the dawn of the Cold War.
Similarly, a fascinating chapter documents A FORGOTTEN PROGRESSIVE COALITION poised to achieve great gains during the 1970s, only to be thwarted by the RECESSION and a cunning PRO-BUSINESS LOBBY: “There was a tenfold increase in corporate federal lobbying by the 1980s.” McChesney and Nichols conclude with a lengthy proposition for how the ranks of the underemployed could similarly regroup to protect workers’ interests. “Economic planning needs to be democratized and popularized and made accountable,” they write. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-w-mcchesney/people-get-ready/
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*CANADIAN PROVINCE ONTARIO PLANS TO TRIAL UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: 'As Ontario’s Economy Grows, The Government Remains Committed To Leaving No One Behind*, Independent, UK, March 7, 2016.

Ontario has announced it could soon be sending a monthly cheque to its residents as it plans to launch an experiment testing the basic income concept. While officials in the Canadian province are yet to release any specific details of the project – including how much will be given to residents who participate – the finance ministry has published a report confirming the government’s intention to roll out the experiment.
The general concept of basic income involves a government handing out a flat-rate income to every single citizen within a country, either by replacing existing benefits or to top them up. Proponents of the idea say it would save on welfare administration costs, reduce the poverty traps of traditional welfare states, be fair to people who have jobs, and give people more autonomy in general.
Read more
-Universal income not as important as targeting needy, Stiglitz says
-Basic income may be needed to combat technology, AI expert says
-Labour to consider universal basic income policy, McDonnell says
In BRITAIN, the think tank Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has proposed a system of universal income that would give a basic amount to fit, working-age people that it believes would still give a strong incentive to these people to work. *READ MORE: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ontario-to-pilot-a-universal-basic-income-experiment-a6916571.html