1. Automation Will Eat a Huge Number of Jobs

The Economy Section I

Table of Contents

1. Automation will eat a huge number of jobs

2. Stop Wage Theft

3. Stop Corporate Tax Inversions

4. Listen to Janet Yellen

5. Rutgers University Says

6. Use the National Equity Atlas

7. Expand Social Enterprise

8. The Democracy Collaborative

9. Aspen Institute

10. Economic Policy Institute

11. Half in Ten

12. Economic Mobility Project

13. Expand the EITC

14. Early Child Development Will Expand

15. Reform Criminal Justice

16. Reduce the Power of Corporations to Influence Politics

17. Shaping a New Narrative for a New Economy YES magazine

18. Conclusions

Automation Will Eat Jobs

According to bill Gates (yes, that Bill Gates) many jobs will be eliminated because of software and robots. Read a summary of his thoughts at:

See a video of his concerns at:

Here is an article that lists the ten jobs most likely to be automated, and the ten jobs that are least likely.

Many in community action follow the work of the Pew Foundation. Here is what they have to say on this subject:

Here’s a terrific article showing how robots will take over most routine work:

Lest you think that all this is from pie-in-the-sky futurists, here is an article on this topic by the Federal Reserve of New York:

This article from the SF Chronicle December 2, 2014 suggest that 47% of jobs will be eliminated within 20 years. It was written by Nigel Cameron from The Center for Policy on Emerging Technology (C-PET). Here is the article:

The-PET website:

A roundtable of experts weigh in at McKinsey and Company:

Here’s a summary from Jeremy Howard a research scientist at the University of San Francisco: “ I think it is important to think about the policy implications here. Government leaders need to be aware that, right now, computers are as good as or better than humans at most of the tasks people involved in information-processing jobs do. That is 65 percent of the American workforce. So is this wonderful or is this a tragedy? It actually depends entirely on how governments respond. Scenario number one is a disparity in economic power, in which the folks with the data and the algorithms have—and add all of—the economic value, and the rest of the workforce adds little or none.

That scenario could create an awful social disruption. Scenario number two is to accept that in this new world, there’s a large group of people who can’t really add economic value anymore, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get to live a decent human life. So we have to start thinking about the policy implications—like a basic living wage, which Germany will be introducing, or a negative income tax, which has been off the agenda for decades but deserves to be back on it. I think people should start to think about these policy implications because the point at which we need to make decisions will be upon us suddenly.” From:

Economist Robert J. Schiller calls for a new form of “livelihood insurance” or “wage insurance.” Also in:

A redefinition of what constitutes work and a rethinking about how people will make a living is needed. What are you doing to help prepare for this?

Reduce Wage Theft

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/ / Wage Theft: A Costly Epidemic
In a new EPI report, EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey and Brady Meixell find that wage theft—employers’ failure to pay workers money they are legally entitled to—affects far more people than more well-known and feared forms of theft. The total amount recovered for the victims of wage theft who retained private lawyers or complained to federal or state agencies was at least $933 million in 2012, almost three times greater than all the money stolen in robberies that year. However, since most victims never report wage theft and never sue, the real cost of wage theft to workers is much greater—and could be close to $50 billion a year.
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Stop Corporate Tax Inversions
Corporate Inversions Are Threatening to Cost American Taxpayers Billions

In a new report, EPI Director of Tax and Budget Policy Thomas L. Hungerford finds that the recent uptick in corporate inversions—a maneuver whereby U.S. multinational corporations merge with much smaller foreign corporations so as to move the corporation to a lower-tax country—is threatening to cost American taxpayers billions in lost revenue. Hungerford argues that targeted legislation that reduces the incentives and ability of firms to invert is necessary to protect the corporate tax.

Listen to: Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen gave a speech October 17, 2014 titled Perspectives on Inequality and Opportunity from the Survey of Consumer Finances. She said:

“The distribution of income and wealth in the United States has been widening more or less steadily for several decades, to a greater extent than in most advanced countries.1This trend paused during the Great Recession because of larger wealth losses for those at the top of the distribution and because increased safety-net spending helped offset some income losses for those below the top. But widening inequality resumed in the recovery, as the stock market rebounded, wage growth and the healing of the labor market have been slow, and the increase in home prices has not fully restored the housing wealth lost by the large majority of households for which it is their primary asset.

The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me.”

She then offers policy prescriptions related to business ownership, education, inheritances, home ownership and the safety net. See her full speech at:

Rutgers University says:

The Rutgers University’s Heldrich Center for Workforce Development published a study “AMERICANS’ ATTITUDES ABOUT WORK: Unhappy, Worried, and Pessimistic: Americans in the Aftermath of the Great Recession. ByCliff Zukin, Ph.D., Carl Van Horn, Ph.D., Allison Kopicki, in August 2014.

The title is a good summary of the findings. See the full report at:

Use the National Equity Atlas. “Welcome to the National Equity Atlas, a comprehensive data resource to track, measure, and make the case for inclusive growth.. By 2043, the majority of Americans will be people of color. Rising diversity is a tremendous asset—if all can access the resources and opportunities they need to thrive. Explore the Atlas to get data on changing demographics, racial inclusion, and the economic benefits of equity—in your region, state, and nationwide.”

Their website at PolicyLink is:

From their website, the purposes are: Grow an equitable economy: Policies to leverage diversity as an asset

Foster racial inclusion in governance
Build multiracial alliances, coalitions, and movementsto advance policy change
Dismantle barriers and build pathways to economic opportunity for boys and men of color
Include immigrants by ensuring access to health care, driver’s licenses, and municipal ID cards regardless of immigration status; increasing language access; facilitating naturalization; limiting the participation of local law enforcement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and extending voting rights
Strengthen democracy by increasing participation of marginalized groups, expanding voting rights (and preventing rollback), and building leadership development pipelines

Learn more about these strategies:

Racial Equity in Government policy brief
Immigrant Integration Toolkit

Additional data resources:

Race for Results
DiversityDataKids.org
Black Male Achievement Life Outcomes Dashboard
William Frey’s demographic analyses
Immigrant economic contributions

Expand Social Enterprise

The national association is the Social Enterprise Alliance. See: The SEA says: “Social enterprises are businesses whose primary purpose is the common good. They use the methods and disciplines of business and the power of the marketplace to advance their social, environmental and human justice agendas.”

The Reberts Enterprise Development Fund. REDF estimates about 200,000 people are employed in social enterprises that seek to expand employment through nonprofits that also make a profit. REDF estimate there are about 200,000 people employed in social enterprises and seeks to expand that to 500,000. They have several models on their website. See.

The Democracy Collaborative

“The Democracy Collaborative is a national leader in equitable, inclusive and sustainable development through our Community Wealth Building Initiative. This initiative sustains a wide range of Advisory, Research and Field Building activities designed to transform the practice of community/economic development in the United States. Another important program is the Next System Project, ongoing intellectual work designed to connect Community Wealth Building to the larger context of systemic economic transformation.”

Founded by long-time friend of community action Gar Alperovitz the collaborative has several programs such as the where Alperovitz and other describer several models for community ownership such as co-ops, community land trusts and others.

The Aspen Institute: Big Ideas for Jobs

The Aspen Institutes Economic Opportunity program held a series of webinar on job creation All of the papers presented in this series are at Here are summaries of a few of the papers from this website that we think are of most potential interest to CAA’s. They are under three headings:

TAX AND EMPLOYMENT POLICY

Elizabeth Lower-Basch of the Center for Law & Social Policy demonstrates how subsidized jobs programs, such as those under the TANF Emergency Fund, are more effective for disadvantaged workers than the Work Opportunity Tax Credit.

Philip Harvey at Rutgers University School of Law- Camden explores the feasibility of state or local government creating public jobs, modeled on the WPA.

Scott Bernstein at the Center for Neighborhood Technology and Joel Rogers at the Center on Wisconsin Strategies outlines different financing innovations at the state level that can support physical infrastructure investment and result in net new public jobs.

Chris Warland and Melissa Young with the National Transitional Jobs Network at Heartland Alliance and Elizabeth Lower-Basch with the Center for Law and Social Policy look into innovative funding strategies for cities, states, and other public-sector entities to implement or expand subsidized employment programming.

SECTOR OR INDUSTRY

James Irwin, Satya Rhodes-Conway, Sarah White and Joel Rogers at the Center on Wisconsin Strategy show how the lowest-hanging fruit for energy efficiency retrofits is in municipal, university, school, and hospital buildings.

Nancey Green Leigh at Georgia Tech analyzes how waste diversion can create new jobs through both regulatory and demand-side strategies—turning waste into jobs, not landfill.

Bill Lester at University of North Carolina at Chapel hill demonstrates the economic logic of a real estate transfer tax to support residential retrofits.

Elaine Weiss at the Economic Policy Institute and Stephen Herzenberg and Mark Price at the Keystone Research Center turn to the service sector, showing how improving the quality of child care jobs could reduce turnover in that sector while enhancing investments in our future workforce.

Sarah Treuhaft and Victor Rubin of PolicyLink explore the role that infusing economic inclusion into large-scale economic development and job creation at the national, state and regional policy levels can have on creating more job opportunities for at-risk communities.

Joanne Spetz of the University of California-San Francisco, Bianca K. Frogner of The George Washington University, and Laurel Lucia and Ken Jacobs of the University of California-Berkeley explore entry-level and low-skill job opportunities that will expand due to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation.

Nancey Green Leigh, Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners, explores the role nonprofits can play in creating job opportunities from waste diversion strategies, particularly in the recycling and remanufacturing (R3) industry.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Michael DiRamio, Tammy Coxen, Carrie Floyd, Lewis Humphreys, Lisa Katz and Jeannine La Prad from the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce argues for job creation partnerships within communities emphasizing building deconstruction, energy retrofitting and food production.

Anna Joo Kim at Pomona College examines the sizable informal job sector in Los Angeles and explores programs that could be implemented to formalize these jobs, which would improve working conditions and increase the health of the economy.

Carla Javits, president of REDF — The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund — explores a promising job creation approach known as employment social enterprises, which would create jobs with the explicit purpose of employing low-income people facing multiple barriers to employment.

Elaine L. Edgcomb and Tamra Thetford of FIELD at The Aspen Institute examine the growing role of microenterprise as a job development strategy and how state and local governments, among others, can supportmore microenterprise development.

Economic Policy institute

EPI Briefing Paper # 382 from the Economic Policy Institute on August 27, 2014 by Elise Gould is titled: Why America’s Workers Need Faster Wage Growth—and What We Can Do about It.

Ms. Gould describes the many reasons why wages have stagnated, and lists her recommendations for what to enhance wage growth. She says:

“The list of policies that impact wages is long—much longer than generally realized. For example, macroeconomic stabilizationpolicy (fiscal and monetary and exchange rate policies), regulatory policy (especially financial regulation), policiesconcerning corporate governance, and tax policy all have significant impacts on wages.

However, labor market policies and business practices have also had large, though often underappreciated, potentialimpacts on wages. While this set of policies and practices includes many discrete parts, the common thread of the pastgeneration is that practices, institutions, and standards that have boosted bargaining power for low- and moderate-wageworkers have been targeted for weakening—and have been replaced by policies that put more leverage in the hands ofthose with the most economic power.

Policies that rebuild institutions to provide bargaining power to these workers should hence be a top priority for thoselooking for better wage outcomes. These policies include raising the minimum wage, strengthening unions, reducingwage theft, updating overtime protections, correcting worker misclassification, and much more.” (Page 26.)

She then goes into detail about each of these proposals. Get the full paper here:

Half in Ten

The annual report from Half In Ten is titled Building Local Momentum for National Change: Annual Poverty and Inequality Indicators Report, November 2014. It made these recommendations:

”The federal government, states, and citiescan create more good jobs and reduce povertyand inequality by adopting the followingpolicies. Specifically, they should:

• Create transitional public jobs by establishinga federal Pathways Back to Work Fund

• Modernize and invest in our publicinfrastructure

• Enact living-wage provisions and expandaccess to paid leave

• Create state-sponsored options for retirementsavings and increase Social Security minimumbenefits for low-wage workers and caregivers

• Strengthen collective bargaining rights

• Improve pay and working conditions forpoorly compensated workers in health care,child care, and other care-related occupations

• Prohibit employers from using credit checksin hiring, retention, and promotion decisions

• Adopt “Ban the Box” policies and other fairchance hiring reforms that reduce the employment

barriers created by overly punitivecriminal justice policies that have led to massincarceration

• Maintain and strengthen the Earned IncomeTax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and AmericanOpportunity Tax Credit

• Expand access to affordable and effectivehigher education and skills training.”

The full report is available at:

PEW Economic Mobility project

The PEW Charitable Trusts created a Economic Mobility Project in partnership with

The American Enterprise Institute, The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation. The Urban Institute.The New America Foundation. On March 4, 2010, at a NASCSP conference, PEW staff described nonpartisan recommendations in four areas.

Human Capital

Promote children’s human capital development early in life

Ensure all children and teens have access to effective educational programs

Promote enrollment in and completion of postsecondary education

Help low-wage workers acquire skills needed for high-quality, well-paid jobs

Social Capital

Reorient public assistance programs towards mobility enhancement

Family formation and teen pregnancy reduction

Responsible fatherhood

Neighborhoods

Financial Capital

Encourage and promote lifelong savings early in life

Provide more equal treatment of savings for higher education

Increase access to homeownership as a safe and secure savings vehicle

Promote and increase retirement savings

Support entrepreneurship throughout the business life cycle

Improve data and evaluation to measure economic mobility. Enable greater research and evaluation of economic mobility

A full list of their publications on economic mobility is at:

Expand the EITC to Adults

A new study from the Center for the study of social Policy recommends adding

“A new CSSP brief, "Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to Childless Adults," outlines the ways expanding the EITC to younger adults and noncustodial parents can help offer low-income, young adults with an additional support to ensure economic stability.

Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to Childless Adults