garth hallberg.com & weird-weather.com

In response to the their new tax bill “talking points” released by the Republican solons in Congress yesterday, permit me to quote Suzanne Dealy, the principal female character in my new novel, The Piketty Problem.

“I know all about the extraordinary concentration of income and wealth, not just the ten percent or the one percent but the one-tenth of one percent, and especially the concentration of capital, which is the financial hammer that the one percent and one-tenth of one percent will use to keep beating the rest of us down, because hammer-down works and trickle-down doesn’t Read More 

Knowing my concerns about the danger of robots making the already corrosive economic inequality in our country even worse, a friend and former colleague of mine passed on a blog post that is a must read: The Real Story of Automation Beginning With One Simple Chart by Scott Santens. The one simple chart shows that when the number of oil rigs began to rebound after the 2016 decline in oil prices, the number of oil and gas industry employees didn't budge. The reason? Robotic "Iron Roughnecks" now perform the repetitive task of connecting drill pipe segments as the well is drilled deeper and deeper. What once took a crew of 20, will soon take a crew of 5.

The trend is difficult to ignore. And there are so many other good points Read More 

Those of you who have had a chance to take a look at my new novel, The Piketty Problem, or The Robots Are Coming, The Robots Are Coming, know that its underlying theme is the impending impact of robotics on fast food in general and McDonald’s in particular. For those of you who might think I was stretching novelistic license, I thought this recent article about Chowbotics (now that’s a stretch!) in the New York Times might be of interest. The company has come up with a salad-making robot  Read More