Without naming Amazon specifically, President Joe Biden on Sunday expressed support for a closely watched union vote at one of the retail giant’s Alabama warehouses, calling it “vitally important.” From a report: “Today and over the next few days and weeks, workers in Alabama and all across America are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace,” Biden said…
Tag: economic crisis
Tech’s Top Seven Companies Added $3.4 Trillion in Value in 2020
Tech’s biggest companies just wrapped up a huge year. From a report: The seven most valuable U.S. technology companies — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Tesla and Nvidia — picked up a combined $3.4 trillion in market cap in 2020, powering through a global pandemic and broader economic crisis. Between continued optimism over iPhone sales, Microsoft’s growing Teams collaboration product, Amazon’s…
Pandemic May Permanently Replace Some Human Jobs With Machines
The coronavirus pandemic has the potential to permanently replace some humans with machines, according to a new study on Monday from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. From a report: Layoffs have been higher among workers in industries that can be automated, which increases the risk those jobs will become permanently obsolete, according to the study by economists Lei Ding and…
France To Spend $8.4 Billion on Digital as Part of Stimulus Plan
The French government unveiled a massive $120 billion stimulus package earlier this week to recover from the economic downturn — it represents 4% of the country’s GDP. As part of this support plan, the government plans to spend a significant chunk of money on all things digital — startup investment, infrastructure investment and digital transformation. From a report: I interviewed France’s…
Is Support Now Growing for a Universal Basic Income?
Economist Tyler Cowen and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov (now the chairman of the nonprofit Renew Democracy Initiative) co-authored an opinion piece this week in Bloomberg arguing that “a pandemic is providing a tragic preview of some of the conditions UBI was conceived to address.” Though they worry about the cost of such a program, “And, though there are some…
Bill Gates, Lancet, UN, and Many Others Lambast America’s Withholding of Funds from the WHO
This week U.S. president Donald Trump suspended America’s $900 million annual contribution to the World Health Organization. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, called Trump’s move a “crime against humanity….” The Hill reports: “Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity,” he added… The American Medical Association…
Coronavirus: Worst Economic Crisis Since 1930s Depression, IMF Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The coronavirus pandemic will turn global economic growth “sharply negative” this year, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned. Kristalina Georgieva said the world faced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. She forecast that 2021 would only see a partial recovery. Ms Georgieva, the…