I’ll pull out a few quotes from Obama’s State of the Union that are relevant to the theme of this blog.

First, automation and globalization:

Today, technology doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated. Companies in a global economy can locate anywhere, and they face tougher competition. As a result, workers have less leverage for a raise. Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top.

What automation and globalization have in common is that if you are a relatively low-skilled worker in a relatively high-income country like the U.S., there is a risk your job could be replaced either by a computer (automation) or a low-skilled worker in a low-income country (globalization). Where they differ is that automation is starting to squeeze those low-skilled workers in the low-income countries too, and gradually it will also start to squeeze the higher-skilled workers in the higher-income countries. Obama’s solutions to all this – education and training, unemployment and wage insurance, healthcare and childcare benefits to make employment more flexible, lowering barriers to entrepreneurship, are the obvious ones, but we’ve been tinkering with these things for a long time with only slow progress, and the trends are only going to accelerate.

Second, biotechnology and genetics:

Last year, Vice President Biden said that with a new moonshot,America can cure cancer. Last month, he worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources that they’ve had in over a decade. (Applause.) So tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done…let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all.

This seems to be a nod to biomedical research and biotech more generally, which I am convinced is the next big technology revolution akin to the information revolution we have been going through over the past few decades.

Next, climate change and fossil fuels:

Now we’ve got to accelerate the transition away from old, dirtier energy sources. Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future — especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. We do them no favor when we don’t show them where the trends are going. That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet. And that way, we put money back into those communities, and put tens of thousands of Americans to work building a 21st century transportation system.

Actually, I am not sure what he is talking about here. I would support a revenue-neutral carbon tax, with the proceeds invested in education, training, research and/or infrastructure. But I’m only speculating. If there was some initiative announced along these lines I missed it.

Finally, corruption in U.S. politics:

We have to reduce the influence of money in our politics, so that a handful of families or hidden interests can’t bankroll our elections. (Applause.) And if our existing approach to campaign finance reform can’t pass muster in the courts, we need to work together to find a real solution — because it’s a problem… Those with money and power will gain greater control over the decisions that could send a young soldier to war, or allow another economic disaster, or roll back the equal rights and voting rights that generations of Americans have fought, even died, to secure.

This is pretty vague. I would support a constitutional amendment to clarify that a person is a human being and a human being is a person. Human beings should have the right to free political speech, but corporations and other special interest legal entities should not. The law can be written to preserve the important rights corporations do have that create a fair and predictable playing field for businesses to compete – equal protection under the law, access to the courts, protection from arbitrary seizure of property, and so forth. But the richest and most powerful shouldn’t be able to buy politicians and write the rules of the game unfairly in their favor.

On the possibility of those right-wing self-interested corporate entities joining forces with right-wing grass roots impulses, resulting in something truly ugly:

But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.  And then, as frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into our respective tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background.

I wouldn’t have believed that was likely a year ago, but here we are approaching the official beginning of an election season that is turning out to be very surprising, with Obama riding off into the sunset.