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West Exit of Zhengzhou East Railway Station. Zhengzhou, in China's Henan province, is famous for its "iPhone City" (photo by  Windmemories   via Wikimedia Commons) Automation has become a major topic of debate in the United States. A recent study by Oxford Economics claimed that robots could take over 20 million manufacturing jobs around the world by 2030. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has made the fight against automation's disruption of the labour market one of the central themes of his campaign. "Technology is quickly displacing a large number of workers, and the pace will only increase as automation and other forms of artificial intelligence become more advanced," Yang wrote on his campaign website. "⅓ of American workers will lose their jobs to automation by 2030 according to McKinsey. This has the potential to destabilize our economy and society if unaddressed." Amid Donald Trump's "trade war" with

New York City Stock Exchange (by LeoTar, via Wikimedia Commons) In mainstream economics free markets are considered the linchpin of a free and prosperous economic and political system. As t he  CATO Institute , a think tank "dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace", explains in his website: "To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement.  Free markets  are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary to create wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimized." However, the concept of "free market" is nothing but a construct created by ideologues more interested in abstract theories than in practical analysis. Indeed, what are "free markets"? As ec

  Family watching television, c. 1958 (by Evert F. Baumgardner via  Wikimedia Commons ) The era between 1945 and 1975 is often described as the 'Golden Age' of capitalism. During this period the economy of the United States, Western Europe and Japan grew at an unprecedented pace. The post-war economic miracle was made possible by the parallel growth of productivity, capital stock per worker and real wages, which ensured a balanced development of production and consumption. Despite the rapid increase in the volume of international trade, in the post-war period developed countries mostly relied on their domestic market to boost growth (see  The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience , eds Stephen A. Marglin, Juliet B. Schor). But were the nearly three decades that followed the Second World War really a 'golden age'? Were people better off than we are now? Let us look at some facts. In 1960-61 the average  household income  in the United St

A few days ago everyone talked about China 's stock market collapse. " Xi Jinping has run into the one thing in China he can't control ", wrote news website Quartz , implying that the all-powerful Communist Party finally had to acknowledge that it couldn't rein in the "free market". No sooner had the Chinese government stepped in to save the stock market than Western media dismissed Beijing's policies, predicting they would not work. " China markets plunge as government measures fail ", wrote Yahoo News . These are only two examples of what the South China Morning Post called "Western media's callous delight at China's stock market crash ". According to The Telegraph , China's stock market crash would cause a "more worrying financial crisis " than the one happening in Greece. But, as has often been the case over the past four decades, the West's neoliberal-minded analysts have failed to understand

Singapore skyline (by Merlion444 [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons ) Singapore is a success story. As founding father Lee Kuan Yew said in his  autobiography , Singapore moved from being a third world country in the 1960s, to being one of the richest countries on earth by the end of the 1990s. Singapore is a city-state which in the middle of the 1990s was half the size of Hong Kong, with a population of 3.04 million ( Kwong / Chau et al. 2001 , p. 1). A former British colony, Singapore's political situation after WWII was tumultuous. The city was granted independence from the British Empire in 1958. Singapore's leaders, however, did not want to found a separate state, but to become part of neighbouring Malaysia. In the 1959 elections, the People's Action Party (PAP), which still rules Singapore today, "promised clean, efficient politics and pledged to address issues in education, labor, housing, health, social security, economic growth through industrializati

Territorial disputes are a major source of friction between the People's Republic of China and its neighbours in the South China Sea.  Chinese President Xi Jinping's recent statement that China should become a maritime power was echoed by state media such as the Global Times and China Daily. This suggests that the PRC might pursue a more decisive, aggressive foreign policy in the near future.  However, this is not a new development. In the past, too, the PRC didn't shrink from using force when it was necessary, for example when it occupied Mischief Reef or engaged in maritime clashes with the Vietnamese navy.  In view of these facts, Westerners ask themselves what they should do. Is China really a threat? Or is it a peaceful power, as many Chinese claim? Should Western governments contain China, or should they disengage completely from East Asia, leaving the solution of territorial disputes to the parties involved alone?  Why American Involvement In East Asia I