College students graduating this month across the United States can expect to feel nostalgic, field questions about their futures and owe a lot for the education they just received. Student financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz recently calculated that student borrowers in the class of 2016 are set to have the highest level of debt yet, at $37,172, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. This is up from about $35,000 last year.

“It’s unfortunate that college costs are going up and the student aid, the grants, are not going up at the same rate on a per student basis,” Kantrowitz, publisher and vice president of strategy at scholarship site Cappex, told the Journal last year. “College is becoming less and less affordable, though it’s still just as necessary.”

For the 2015-16 school year, the College Board estimated the average tuition and fees to be about $9,410 at four-year, in-state public institutions. Room and board were about $10,140 annually. To afford this, millennials have taken out loans that often leave them delaying buying houses or getting married.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/2016-graduates-deep-debt2/

Losing jobs to technology is nothing new. Since the industrial revolution, roles that were once exclusively performed by humans have been slowly but steadily replaced by some form of automated machinery. Even in cases where the human worker is not completely replaced by a machine, humans have learnt to rely on a battery of machinery to be more efficient and accurate.

A report from the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology said that 47 percent of all jobs in the US are likely to be replaced by automated systems. Among the jobs soon to be replaced by machines are real estate brokers, animal breeders, tax advisers, data entry workers, receptionists, and various personal assistants.

But you won’t need to pack up your desk and hand over to a computer just yet, and in fact jobs that require a certain level of social intelligence and creativity such as in education, healthcare, the arts and media are likely to remain in demand from humans, because such tasks remain difficult to be computerised.

Like it or not, we now live in an era dominated by artificial intelligence (AI). AI can be seen as a collection of technologies that can be used to imitate or even to outperform tasks performed by humans using machines.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/robot-revolution-rise-intelligent-automated-workforce3/

By Anthony J. Gaughan

The GOP nomination is within Donald Trump’s grasp.

Trump’s decisive victory in the Indiana primary on Tuesday night drove his two final challengers to withdraw from the race. Whatever hopes the GOP establishment still harbored of a brokered convention ended when Ted Cruz dropped out of the race on Tuesday night and John Kasich dropped out on Wednesday. Trump will be the Republican nominee for president in 2016.

Trump’s march to the nomination has shocked the GOP establishment and defied conventional wisdom. Could he pull off an even bigger upset by winning the White House in November?

If history, polling data and demographics are any guide, the answer is no. The evidence suggests that Trump will likely suffer a crushing defeat in the general election.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/president-trump-history-and-demographics-make-it-unlikely/

In May of 1988 Gov. Michael Dukakis had a 10-point lead over his Republican rival, the same margin that Hillary Clinton has today.

He lost. And she could, too.

Don't comfort yourself too much by looking at the horse race polls. Those are about Donald Trump's weakness, not Clinton's strength. A fresh Washington Post poll shows that only 37 percent of American voters trust her, and the number is dropping -- even before her well-fed opponents have begun to pound the airwaves with slimy attacks adds on her.

And let's face it: It is not beyond the imagination to think that a fresh scandal could emerge.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/trump-nightmare-real-clinton-lose/

By Bob Lord

Imagine, after a deep sleep, you suffered the fate of Rip Van Winkle and woke in the spring of 2040. What might you find?

Among other things, maybe a presidential candidate railing against America’s concentration of wealth. Except this time, it’s not the 1 percent that owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent — it’s the top hundredth of a percent.

Could it get that bad? Yes, quite easily. In fact, that nightmare is already on the way.

To see this better, take a step back in time. If you woke up 24 years ago, you could hear candidate Bill Clinton lamenting the fact that the top 1 percent owned as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

Today, as anyone who’s heard Bernie Sanders give his stump speech knows, it’s the top tenth of 1 percent who owns that much. That’s 10 times more concentrated — and it’s happened over just six presidential cycles. If the trend continues, the scenario I presented at the outset will be a reality.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/inequality-will-get-worse-unless-we-make-changes/

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination has pitted a dreamer against a realist, right? Bernie Sanders is the unrealistic one, and Hillary Clinton, the pragmatist, is the candidate who can get things done.

That’s what many pundits say. But, even with Tuesday’s setbacks to the Sanders campaign, it’s worth examining which is actually unrealistic – Bernie’s pledge to make the country more equitable and sustainable? Or Hillary’s progressive talking points, given her deep ties to corporate power players?

One way to see if Sanders really is a dreamer is to look at his record as mayor of the city of Burlington, Vt.

As a candidate for mayor in 1980, Sanders focused on economic fairness just as he does today, and then, too, he was dismissed as a fringe candidate. He squeaked into office, winning by just 10 votes. But he was re-elected three times, each time by a larger margin. His accomplishments won over even many of his early opponents, according to professors and authors Peter Dreier and Pierre Clavel, writing in The Nation. And six years into his term, U.S. News and World Report named him one of the top mayors in the country.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/the-pragmatic-impacts-of-bernie-sanders-big-dreams/

By Michele Gilman

Reproductive health isn’t just about abortions, despite all the attention they get. It’s also about access to family planning services, contraception, sex education and much else.

Such access lets women control the timing and size of their families so they have children when they are financially secure and emotionally ready and can finish their education and advance in the workplace. After all, having children is expensive, costing US$9,000 to $25,000 a year.

And that’s why providing women with a full range of reproductive health options is good for the economy at the same time as being essential to the financial security of women and their families. Doing the opposite threatens not only the physical health of women but their economic well-being too.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/limiting-access-to-birth-control-hurts-economy/

By Anthony J. Gaughan

Donald Trump is the Republican establishment’s worst nightmare, but the GOP leadership can’t find a way to stop him.

Tuesday night provided the latest example. The New York billionaire swept all five of the GOP primaries, winning Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island.

Trump’s victory margins were particularly telling. Until lately, he had only managed to win primaries with a plurality of the vote. For example, he won New Hampshire with 35 percent of the vote, South Carolina with 32 percent, Michigan with 36 percent, and Illinois with 38 percent. Even in Florida, Trump’s home away from home, he was held under 50 percent.

Trump’s inability to win a majority of the vote in the early primaries gave the Republican establishment hope. The idea was that if they could find an anti-Trump candidate to coalesce around, they could block his path to the nomination.

MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/stop-trump-movement-isnt-working/