food

The automation of the global workplace is spreading and, as Pew recently found, 65% of Americans now believe their job will inevitably be done by robots.

In a low-growth world, every low-skill job is up for grabs by the robot/drone horde as the need to cut costs is core business for every CFO (aside from share buybacks) as minimum wage mandates have forced these cost-cutting CFOs to look for alternatives.

Via ConvergEx's Nicholas Colas,

While the world’s central banks struggle with deflation, millennials (those born between 1980 – 2000) are busy creating a world where persistently lower prices will be an economic cornerstone.  “A feature, not a bug,” as they say in the tech world.

 

How does the food we eat affect us as people? Michael Pollan’s books—The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Cooked, In Defense of Food, and others—consider the history and science behind the way we eat, and how our eating habits have changed over time. His books often lead us on a sort of journey: in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he spends a few weeks farming with Joel Salatin, then goes on to learn how to forage for mushrooms and hunt wild boar. His journeys are usually structured around a question about food and our relationship to it: why do we farm this way?

A Republican member of the New York State Senate wants to introduce a bill to prevent people on food stamps purchasing luxury food items and stop them getting fat. The Independent reports: Republican State Senator Patty Ritchie wants to prevent folks from buying high-end items such as steaks and lobsters. She also wants to limit the purchases of non-nutritional items like decorated cakes and energy drinks.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been working on some “measures.”

“Now that the economic emergency decree has validity, in the next few days I will activate a series of measures I had been working on,” he said Thursday, in a televised statement meant to address a “food emergency” declared by Congress.

The “validity” Maduro references comes from a high court ruling that gives the President expanded powers to tackle a deepening economic crisis that’s left hospitals without medicine and grocery stores bereft of food.