Davos: the rich are worried

Donald Trump is barking up the wrong tree, as are the other populists emerging all across Europe, and their emulators who are beginning to appear in the developing world. Why do they all persist in blaming free trade and globalization instead of automation? Because you can’t do anything about automation.

Unemployed men outside a soup kitchen in Depression-era Chicago, Illinois, the US, 1931. Gwynne Dyer says if more than half the workforce ends up unemployed—and therefore humiliated and broke—then their anger will be so great that it could sweep away the comfortable world of the ultra-rich. Which is why there are sessions at Davos this year considering radical ideas like a 'Universal Basic Income.' Photograph courtesy of U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

January 23, 2017

LONDON, ENGLAND—“I can't wait to see how the incoming administration deals with AI (artificial intelligence),” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in a less-than-gracious reference to the fact that the Trump team hasn’t got a clue about the real driving force in the changing world econo...

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