Notes

Chapter One: A giant orange canary

1 ‘Immigrant Population by State, 1990–Present’, Migration Policy Institute, <www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/us-immigration-trends>.

2 Federica Cocco, ‘Most US manufacturing jobs lost to technology, not trade’, Financial Times, 2 December 2016.

3 Sarah O’Brien, ‘That shiny new car is out of reach for many Americans’, CNBC, 28 June 2017, <www.cnbc.com/2017/06/28/that-shiny-new-car-is-out-of-reach-for-many-americans.html>.

4 Nicholas Eberstadt, Men Without Work, Templeton Press, West Conshohocken, PA, 2016, p. 22.

5 Dulguun Batbold and Ronald A. Wirtz, ‘Disability and Work: challenge of incentives’, fedgazette (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis), 29 January 2015.

6 Christina Beatty, Steve Fothergill, and Tony Gore, ‘The Real Level of Unemployment 2017’, CRESR, Sheffield Hallam University, October 2017.

7 ‘Automation and Independent Work in a Digital Economy’, OECD Policy Brief, May 2016, <www.oecd.org/employment/future-of-work.htm>.

8 ‘Technology at Work v2.0: the future is not what it used to be’, Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions, January 2016.

9 Richard Berriman and John Hawksworth, ‘Will robots steal our jobs? The potential impact of automation on the UK and other major economies’, UK Economic Outlook, March 2017, <www.pwc.co.uk/economicservices/ukeo/pwcukeo-section-4-automation-march-2017-v2.pdf>.

10 Nico Jaspers, ‘What do Europeans think about basic income?’, BIEN, 22 May 2016, <http://www.basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/EU_Basic-Income-Poll_Results.pdf>.

Chapter Two: Don’t touch that button!

1 Yochi Dreazen, ‘Candidate Trump promised to stay out of foreign wars. President Trump is escalating them’, Vox, 25 August 2017, <https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/25/16185936/trump-america-first-afghanistan-war-troops-iraq-generals>.

2 Piers Morgan, ‘Donald Trump on sex, money and politics’, GQ Magazine, 7 August 2015, <http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/gq-entertainment-donald-trump-interview-piers-morgan>.

3 ‘Texts of Accounts by Lucas and Considine on Interviews With MacArthur in 1954’, New York Times, 9 April 1964.

4 Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon: atomic power and world order, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1946, p. 76.

5 ‘“A rogue” and a ‘dotard’: Kim Jong-un’s statement on Trump in full’, The Guardian, 22 September 2017, <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/22/a-rogue-and-a-gangster-kim-jong-uns-statement-on-trump-in-full>.

6 Samantha Raphelson, ‘Lawmakers Fear President Trump’s Authority To Launch Nuclear Weapons’, Here and Now (National Public Radio), 17 November 2017.

7 Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid, ‘Exclusive: CIA files prove America helped Saddam as he gassed Iran’, Foreign Policy, 26 August 2013, <http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/>.

8 Graham Allison, ‘Is Iran still Israel’s top threat?’, The Atlantic, 8 March 2016, <https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/03/iran-nuclear-deal-israel/472767/>.

9 Kim Sengupta, ‘Donald Trump is “greatest threat to international security”, says former MI6 head’, The Independent, 23 June 2017, <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/donald-trump-greatest-threat-international-security-mi6-sir-john-sawers-herzliya-israel-security-a7805251.html>.

Chapter Three: The EU and Brexit

1 Nick Hopkins and Rowena Mason, ‘Exclusive: what Theresa May really thinks about Brexit shown in leaked recording’, The Guardian, 26 October 2016, <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/25/exclusive-leaked-recording-shows-what-theresa-may-really-thinks-about-brexit>.

2 YouGov Survey Results, EU Referendum Vote, 23–24 June 2016.

3 See Chapter Five, pp. 112–3.

4 The correct adjective is murine, not rodentine, but sometimes clarity is better than accuracy.

5 Frans de Waal, ‘Do Humans Alone “Feel Your Pain”?’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 26 October 2001.

6 Charlene Rohr, Alexandra Pollitt, David Howarth, Hui Lu, and Jonathan Grant, What Sort of Brexit Do the British People Want? A Proof-of-Concept Study Using Stated Preference Discrete Choice Experiments, Rand Europe Publications, 13 July 2017.

7 ‘Poorer than their Parents? Flat or Falling Incomes in Advanced Economies’, McKinsey Global Institute, July 2016.

Chapter Four: Democracy

1 Peter Davison, ed., George Orwell: a life in letters, London, Liveright, 2011.

2 Harold K. Schneider, Livestock and Equality in East Africa: the economic bases for social structure, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1979, p. 210.

3 Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest: the evolution of egalitarian behavior, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1999, Kindle Locations 2119–20.

4 Bruce Knauft, ‘Violence and Sociality in Human Evolution’, Current Anthropology, 1991, Vol. 32, pp. 391–428.

5 Boehm, ‘Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy’, Current Anthropology, 1993, Vol. 34, pp. 227–54.

6 Mellon Foundation Symposium on Egalitarian Behavior, Dept. of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, 1995.

7 Boehm, Hierarchy, Kindle Locations 915–29.

8 The entire quote, from ‘Say that a man ...’ is from Boehm, Hierarchy (Kindle Locations 648–68), but the informant’s remarks (indented) are taken from Richard B. Lee, The !Kung San: men, women and work in a foraging society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979.

9 Donald Alexander Mackenzie, Indian Myth and Legend, Glasgow, Gresham, 2014, p. 107.

10 Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu, New York, New Directions, 1969, p. 76.

Chapter Five: Trump

1 Brian Schaffner and Stephen Ansolabehere, Cooperative Congressional Election Study 2016, published August 2017. (Ansolabehere, Stephen; Schaffner, Brian F., 2017, ‘CCES Common Content, 2016’, doi:10.7910/DVN/GDF6Z0, Harvard Dataverse, V3, UNF:6:Hacct7qJt1WXOGPb63A5Gg==; CCES Guide 2016.pd).

2 Stephen Clarke and Dan Tomlinson, In the Swing of Things: what does Donald Trump’s victory tell us about America?, Resolution Foundation, 18 November 2016.

3 Ed Pilkington, ‘Trump v the media: did his tactics mortally wound the fourth estate?’, The Guardian, 23 November 2016.

4 Moonves was speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco. Paul Bond, ‘Leslie Moonves on Donald Trump: “It May Not Be Good for America, but It’s Damn Good for CBS”’, Hollywood Reporter, 29 February 2016.

5 Emily Stewart, ‘Donald Trump Rode $5 Billion in Free Media to the White House’, The Street, 17 November 2016, <https://www.thestreet.com/story/13896916/1/donald-trump-rode-5-billion-in-free-media-to-the-white-house.html>.

6 David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy, ‘The American middle class is no longer the world’s richest’, The New York Times, 22 April 2014.

7 Thomas Palley, Financial Crisis to Stagnation: the destruction of shared prosperity and the role of economics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 147.

8 State Motor Vehicle Registrations, by Years, 1900–1995, Federal Highway Administration, April 1997, <https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/summary95/mv200.pdf>.

9 Larry Elliott, ‘Governments have to invest in the fourth industrial revolution’, The Guardian, 17 July 2017.

10 Josh Bivens, Elise Gould, Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Schierholz, ‘Raising America’s Pay: why it’s our central economic policy challenge’, Economic Policy Institute, Briefing Paper #378, 4 June 2014.

11 Bivens et. al., ibid.

12 The Guardian, 8 November 2011.

13 John Seip and Dee Wood Harper, The Trickle-Down Delusion: how Republican upward redistribution of economic and political power undermines our economy, democracy, institutions and health — and a liberal response, University Press of America, 2016, p. 161. Has the United States finally reached peak title?

14 US Bureau of Economic Analysis, ‘US Real GDP Growth Rate by Year’, Multpl, <www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-growth-rate/table/by-year>.

15 Seip and Harper, ibid., p. 166.

16 Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox: why global markets, states, and democracy can’t co-exist, OUP, p. 75.

17 Ben Smith, ‘Obama on small-town Pa.: clinging to religion, guns, xenophobia’, Politico, 11 April 2008, <http://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2008/04/obama-on-small-town-pa-clinging-to-religion-guns-xenophobia-007737>.

18 Katie Reilly, ‘Read Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” remarks about Donald Trump supporters’, Time, 10 September 2016.

19 Zachary Newkirk, ‘Donald Trump’s donations to Democrats, Club for Growth’s busy day and more in capital eye opener: February 17’, OpenSecrets Blog, 17 February 2011, <http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/02/donald-trumps-donations-to-democrats/>.

20 Janell Ross, ‘Obama revives his “cling to guns or religion” analysis — for Donald Trump supporters’, Washington Post, 21 December 2015.

21 Wade Wilson, ‘Trump’s election is going to be the biggest fuck you ever recorded in human history’, 10 November 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlKiYV47NBw>.

22 George W. Bush, ‘National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive’ NSPD 51/HSPD-20, <https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-51.htm>.

23 Jonathan Freedland, ‘Welcome to the Age of Trump’, The Guardian, 19 May 2016.

Chapter Six: Globalisation or automation

1 ‘Trade in Goods and Services 2016’, OECD Data, 2017, <https://data.oecd.org/trade/trade-in-goods-and-services.htm>.

2 Drew Desilver, ‘Most Americans unaware that as US manufacturing jobs have disappeared, output has grown’, Pew Research Centre, 25 July 2017.

3 Ibid.

4 Michael J. Hicks, The Myth and the Reality of Manufacturing in America, Ball State University Center for Business and Economic Research, June 2015, p. 4.

5 Patrick McGee, ‘Carmakers face threat from new drivers of profit’, Financial Times, 8 August 2017.

6 Klaus Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, London, Penguin Random House, p. 10, Kindle Location 229.

7 Justin McCurry, ‘Japanese company replaces office workers with artificial intelligence’, The Guardian, 6 January 2017.

8 Printed as part of The Guardian Roundtable, 13 October 2016.

9 Jeff Nilsson, ‘Why Did Henry Ford Double His Minimum Wage?’, Saturday Evening Post, 3 January 2014.

10 Tim Adams, ‘My father had one job in his life, I’ve had six in mine, my kids will have six at the same time’, The Observer, 29 November 2015.

Chapter Seven: Growing pains

1 Jared Diamond’s brilliant book Guns, Germs and Steel offers a plausible explanation. He suggests that China’s geography (a smooth coastline with few deep indentations, no impassable mountain barriers in the interior, and big rivers for long-distance transport) facilitated its unification under one ruler, whose whims could shut down whole areas of commercial and technological development. Thus, for example, China’s fleet of giant ocean-going junks (‘treasure ships’), which explored the Indian Ocean and the East African coast under the command of Admiral Zheng He, were decommissioned in the 1430s when the Confucian faction at the imperial court gained ascendancy over the eunuch faction, and all sea-going vessels were ordered to be destroyed by the Jiajing emperor in 1525.

By contrast, Europe consists of many big peninsulas, and is carved up by many mountain ranges. For that reason it was never successfully unified under a single ruler: there were always dozens of separate states, which meant that an innovator whose idea was rejected by one government could shop it around to others until somebody bought it. Thus the Genoese Cristoforo Colombo, when he couldn’t convince the Portuguese king, the governments of the republics of Genoa and Venice, or King Henry VII of England that the world was small enough that one could sail straight west to Asia, simply went and sold that (mistaken) notion to the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella instead. His ships were a quarter the size of Zheng He’s treasure ships, but they discovered the Americas and triggered the European conquest of most of the world.

2 The actual dates for the latter statistic are 1700–2005. James Owen, ‘Farming Claims Almost Half Earth’s Land, New Maps Show’, National Geographic News, 9 December 2005

3 The Independent, 2 January 2017.

4 Statistics Canada, ‘Government spending on social services’, The Daily, 22 June 2007, <https://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/070622/dq070622b-eng.htm>.

5 Kevin J. Delaney, ‘The robot that takes your job should pay taxes, says Bill Gates’, Quartz, 17 February 2017, <https://qz.com/911968/bill-gates-the-robot-that-takes-your-job-should-pay-taxes/>.

6 The tech start-up incubator Y Combinator, which runs the Silicon Valley project, has announced that it will conduct the experiment in two as yet unnamed states. Three thousand people representing a variety of demographics and income levels will receive a fixed income — in the best cases, $1,000 a month — for up to five years with no strings attached. Ryan Brown, ‘Silicon Valley giant Y Combinator to give people varied amounts of cash in latest basic income trial’, CNBC, 21 September 2017, <https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/21/silicon-valley-giant-y-combinator-to-branch-out-basic-income-trial.html>.

7 Tyler Prochazka, ‘Prestigious British think tank endorses basic income’, Basic Income News, 19 December 2015, <http://basicincome.org/news/2015/12/united-kingdom-prestigious-british-think-tank-endorses-basic-income/>.

8 Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Mohammad H. Mostafavi-Dehzooei, ‘Cash Transfers and Labor Supply: evidence from a large-scale program in Iran’, Working Paper 1090, Economic Research Forum, May 2017, <http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1090.pdf>.

9 Gregory Mason, ‘Revisiting Manitoba’s basic-income experiment’, Winnipeg Free Press, 23 January 2017; ‘Mincome’, Wikipedia, 20 October 2017, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome>.

10 Austin Douillard, ‘US/Kenya: new study published on results of basic income pilot in Kenya’, Basic Income News, 27 March 2017, <http://basicincome.org/news/2017/03/us-kenya-new-study-published-results-basic-income-pilot-kenya/>.

11 Will Dahlgreen, ‘37% of British workers think their jobs are meaningless’, YouGov UK, 12 August 2015, <https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/08/12/british-jobs-meaningless/>.

12 Elizabeth Mehren, Interview with John Kenneth Galbraith, Los Angeles Times, 12 December 1999.

13 Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone, London, Penguin, 2010, p. ix.

14 Ibid., p. 168.

15 Ibid., pp. 176–77.

16 Ibid., pp. 190–91.

17 Ibid., pp. 18–24.