[extropy-chat] 'Unskilled jobs to go in 10 years'

[Emlyn]

I often think of national economies as like water reservoirs at
different heights, all blocked off from each other. When you join them
together, aka globablism, you inevitably get a period where the higher
reservoir pours into the low one.

Now in the long one, I know the idea is that all the reservoirs go up,
because of all kind of wonderful increased efficiencies. However, in
the short term, it seems pretty clear that there can be all kind of
nasty negative consequences in wealthy countries for labour, and very
positive consequences in poor countries.

Personally, I'm all for it. What I think it must do eventually is to
level out the economies of the world, removing the different
equillibria which are the current source of profit for companies in
globalising (eg: outsourcing your labour to india/china/etc). So the
long term effect really has to be a good one in terms of equality. In
the short term, we'll get good and bad effects, with most of the bad
stuff happening in western labour markets, but hopefully we can ride
that out.

If global labour could move with less restriction, this interim period
should be less painful (eg: you or I could easily move to India if so
inclined, and take up a job there, where, relative to their local
economy, the job pays pretty well).

Emlyn

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 21:04:55 -0600, Damien Broderick
<thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/08/njobs08.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/08/ixnewstop.html
> 
> By Malcolm Moore, Economics Correspondent
> (Filed: 08/11/2004)
> 
> There will be no jobs for unskilled workers in Britain within 10 years, the
> leading employers' organisation claims today.
> 
> The prediction is based on the growth in "outsourcing" manufacturing and
> sales jobs abroad to economies where staff are hired at a fraction of the cost.
> 
> Digby Jones, the director-general of the CBI, will tell his annual
> conference in Birmingham: "There will not be any work in Britain for
> unskilled people . . . within one scholastic generation."
> 
> In a survey of 150 companies, which employ 750,000 people between them, 51
> per cent said the pressure to move their jobs abroad had increased.
> [etc]
> 
> "Protectionist voices who think they can stop this - that's cloud cuckoo
> land," he will tell the conference, which will be attended by Gordon Brown,
> the Chancellor, and Peter Mandelson, the European Trade Commissioner.
> 
> "Ensuring people have the skills remains our problem. You have nothing to
> fear if you skill yourself."
> [etc etc]
> 
> ==================
> 
> The trouble with this `skilling yourself' theory, as far as I can tell, is
> the insidious and inevitable slide of remaining and new jobs toward the
> righthand side of the capability bell curve. Outsourcing doesn't just mean
> equally stupid people will work for less; it means extremely capable people
> will work for less. For a while, anyway.
> 
> Damien Broderick
> 
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-- 
Emlyn

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