Donald Trump’s bid to seize Greenland has exposed the deep hypocrisy at the heart of Nato, the EU and US foreign policy, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP
After AI: time to embrace universal basic income?
As AI advances, the case for universal basic income gains traction, challenging traditional notions of labour organising while offering a viable solution to the decline in the need for work and workers, argues BERT SCHOUWENBURG
[Igor Omilaev / Creative Commons]
WILL PODMORE recommends an excellent and useful introduction to a lesser-known giant of the scientific revolution in Britain
ROBERT GRIFFITHS delivered the main political report to the Communist Party’s executive committee meeting last weekend. Here is the second of two articles based on his address
VIJAY PRASHAD details how US support for Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa allowed him to break the resistance of the autonomous Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
ALFIO BERNABEI says an Italian minister meeting the British far-right agitator in his ministerial office is an ominous sign of the times
Trump’s ‘Peace Council’ is not a peace project, but a war and colonial council that renews Western colonialism, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
THE explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and the concurrent loss of paid employment for millions of people has reenergised the debate about the future of work and given fresh impetus to the advocates of a universal basic income (UBI), a concept that is viewed with some suspicion and scepticism by many on the left.
UBI is a social welfare measure in which all citizens of a given population receive a guaranteed minimum income in the form of a regular unconditional transfer payment. The principal arguments of its critics are that it creates welfare dependency and is simply unaffordable, neither of which stands up to scrutiny.
Since the 1773 Inclosure Act started a process that saw hundreds of thousands of people displaced from the land and forced to work in the towns and cities, where the Industrial Revolution was born, society has placed a high value on a Puritan work ethic which values productivity and hard graft and frowns upon the slackers and the workshy who do not buy into it.
Similar stories
With turnout plummeting and faith in Parliament collapsing, BERT SCHOUWENBURG explains how radical local government reform — including devolved taxation and removal of party politics from town halls — could restore power to communities currently ignored by profit-obsessed MPs
LUKE FLETCHER pours scorn on Labour’s betrayal of the Welsh steel industry, where the option of nationalisation was sneered at and dismissed – unlike at Scunthorpe where the government stepped in
ANSELM ELDERGILL asks whether artificial intelligence may decide legal cases in the future, in place of human judges, and how AI could reshape the legal landscape