Foxconn's going to 'exploit' Indian labour? SCORE! Bye, poverty El Reg serves us up the news that Foxconn is looking to India to set up production lines, presumably for the assembly of Apple's products. This is excellent news as it means that now Indian workers will get exploited and become rich, as those Chinese have in recent decades. And yes, it is indeed exploitation and yes they will …
Huh?
I'd say that a lot of off-shoring was rather stupid and short-termist, and that remains true whatever the merits of off-shoring. See RBS gutting its internal IT department for details. Or just out-sourcing in general, see Sainsbury's stock control database a few years ago, that they had to bring back in-house only a couple of years later as it was such a disaster. If banks are a customer database with buildings full of cash attached, then supermarkets are stock-control databases with shops and warehouses hanging off them.
But moving labour-intensive stuff to countries with large pools of much cheaper labour doesn't instantly stop working, just because that labour is now earning 20% of UK median wage, when it was only 5% fifteen years ago. As long as the transport costs are still lower than the difference. You just might consider whether you stick with where you are, or move to a country with cheaper labour. I guess that comes down to costs of plant and management.
Also of course, it's good for China. Who in fifteen years have seen average wages double every 3 years or so.
Great for Indian and Chinese peasants! Hoorah!
But the problem (for the US and the UK, amongst others) is the huge trade deficits they've incurred by giving offshoring a lot of previously domestic manufacturing to foreigners, and then pretending that a combination of locally traded services and a debt-funded government are a substitute for actual wealth creating activity. Admittedly the debt-fuelled purchase of foreign trinkets in the UK is contributor to the trade imbalances, but surely you, Mr Worstal would admit that (a) Britain is living far beyond its means, and (b) the offshoring of UK services and manufacturing is a significant contributor to that?
Ordinarily exchange rates and debt markets would resolve this problem for us, but with China's managed echange rates, the bizarre world of ZIRP and QE, and the fear of instability in a whole assortment of different markets, sterling has enjoyed a totally unwarranted buoyancy - in the words of Dr Tim Morgan, "the prettiest horse in the knacker's yard".
If we were operating balanced trade with our trading partners the "problem" of offshoring disappears, but we're a very long way from that, and that is part of the contribution to 1.5m unemployed and 2m "disabled", along with a load of over-rewarded jobs that don't materially generate wealth.
Standard economics says that trade has no effect on the number of jobs in a country. On the type of jobs, yes, but not on the number. The number of jobs is determined by aggregate demand. You may or may not go along with standard economics but this is indeed the normal model that all the central banks and governments run their plans on (roughly, it's a New Keynesian model).
Entirely true. I've just finished a piece for another place running through this. The losers from globalisation are, roughly speaking, those who were already on lower than median incomes in the rich countries. They may not actually have lost, but they've not benefited at least.
At which point it becomes a value judgement. I think that billions coming up out of absolute poverty is worth widening in rich country inequality. Others might not agree.
"roughly, it's a New Keynesian model"
Ah yes. The same POS model that says you can run a current account deficit forever without a problem, and that government can borrow during the good times, then borrow more during the bad times. And indeed posits that the cure for excessive borrowing is more borrowing. And when you can't borrow, you just QE some money out of nowhere.....
On a fairly related topic, I hope you're enjoying the Greek debt crisis as much as I am.
Enjoy might not be quite le mot juste. But shadenfreude is enjoyable, yes. Because this is what all the critics of the euro (including myself, I really was saying just this in 97 and 98 on alt.econ etc) were saying would happen. An asymmetric shock will lead to deep recession/depression in a country as they could not devalue.
I believe that it was a mistake to introduce the euro before some movement towards harmonising tax rates across the EU, but isn't your criticism equally applicable to other currencies? Viz,
"Because this is what all the critics of the euro dollar... were saying would happen. An asymmetric shock will lead to deep recession/depression in a country state/province as they could not devalue."
Zog_but_not_the_first,
All currency unions lead to asymetric shocks in different areas. That's the downside. The upside being fewer barriers to trade of course. But in a single country with a single language people can move around and follow the jobs more. Which a lot of people in the EU do now too, but that creates problems itself as not all of them share a culture or language - so it's harder to organise services and such.
Actually that last point is the most important bit, in my opinion. In the US and UK we can deal with those asymetric shocks somewhat by bunging government cash around. US federal spending used to be lower, so presumably the US would have been less good at this in the past. Even with all the recent shennanigans over Scotland most English voters broadly accept that Scotland gets more cash per head spent on it than anywhere else. Most people when it came to the referendum seemed to want Scotland to stay, and regard the UK as one country still. That opinion may not be shared in Scotland, in which case they'll obviously leave. But if there was a huge recession there tomorrow, needing £10 billion of emergency government spending, it wouldn't be all that controversial, despite some grumbling.
The Eurozone don't have that cross-border spending. The Commission do a bit, but most of its budget still goes on agricultural subsidies, and it's pretty small anyway. Plus it doesn't move fast, or to the places that might currently be in recession. The only way to make the Euro work is to share these burdens. And that means tax payers in the richer bits giving money to the poorer bits, at least when they're in recession.
See the Greek crisis for details. Germany are one of the most pro-European nations. EU membership has been politically non-controversial for decades. Even their anti-Euro party (AfD) are hugely pro-EU and want to save it from the risk of being taken out by the Euro's unpopularity (and possible collapse). There are still lots of mainstream federalists in German politics, who'd like a single European state. Fewer than there were I'm sure. And yet this most pro-European country reacted with absolute horror to the idea of bailing out Greece, even back in 2009. Had German voters been willing to do it back then, rather than waiting until the last minute when it was bail-out or Euro-bye-bye, the Greek bail-out would only have costs tens of billions. Now the final cost will be hundreds.
Basically German tax payers, even the supposedly federalist ones (about 30% from the last poll I saw) don't believe that Greeks, Spanish, Italians or Irish are "their people". And therefore worthy of their tax money being spent on them. Given that case, and that the feeling is almost certainly mutual, it's politically impossible to have a working currency union, as the wealth transfers required are politically unacceptable.
I'd suggest that the bare minimum to make the Euro work would be a single bank guarantee fund (something the Germans agreed to in June 2012 and reneged on the week after) and a common unemployment insurance fund. Plus some sort of emergency fund like the IMF, where each country puts in a bunch of cash, and then countries in serious recession can borrow from it, but have to pay it back once boom time comes.
The politician that suggest that in any Euro country is probably out of office the week after.
Also the economies are just too different to share the same interest rates. In Ireland and Spain, in the boom, rates were lower than inflation - because they were set low for Germany and France. That guaranteed a property bubble. Real interest rates were less than zero, when the economies were growing at 5%!
Tim,
40 years ago, the Auto, Steel and Coke industries were doing pretty well here in the Buffalo NY area.
The Rochester area had Xerox and Kodak doing quite well. The whole WNY economy was doing well.
Then came the various "Trade Agreements" that gutted these good paying middle class and entry level jobs and sent them out of the county. My job at GM went "south" as did many others and the plants have long since been mothballed or demolished. In their infinite wisdom, they tax empty facilities at the same rate as occupied facilities here. If there is no building on the property then the taxes are greatly reduced, therefore they demolish empty facilities rather than try to find new occupants. This effectively prevents new companies from filling in where the old ones were.
The Western NY area has never really recovered from the first wave of Trade agreements and they want another?
An agreement that we cannot even see or discuss? That the Obama administration can't see fit to release to the public just like ObamaCare?
There is NO doubt in my mind that this agreement allows Pacific partners to take even more jobs away and does nothing to prevent the further degradation of the middle class workers wages and benefits.
They already decreased the possible number of jobs by over 50% in many cases.
This is why your "standard economics" is wrong. These trade agreements drove people from their longtime homes and families, put them on the dole, ruined their lives and credit. They not only lost their jobs but nothing came to replace them.
There is NO agreement that guarantee's both the existing wages and number of jobs will not decrease. Anything less than that is a recipe for revolt and we are too close to that now to ignore it. Keeping the TPPA secret only serves to tell me it is very bad for normal people and there is nothing the Obama administration can say that is even remotely believable, especially about the TPPA.
I want a 100% tariff applied to any product that comes into this country that could have been made here. It is a baldface lie that the US or UK is not competitive in manufacturing when you factor out the ridiculous low wages that developing countries pay. Tariffs defray that difference and we either pay higher prices or higher taxes. I choose higher prices for manufactured goods over higher taxes so we can support a 98% socialist lifestyle.
Having grown up in South Wales I can agree with you that taking major industrial jobs out of an area isn't pretty. Whole towns were built and centred on one industry and replacing that will take generations of ever, being economically forced to leave 'home' isn't restricted to third world countries.
Don't know about Xerox but Kodak went bust because of technology change, not trade. Coke is an input to virgin steel. The country as a whole uses much less virgin steel than it did because we now recycle more old steel. Again, that's technology change, not trade.
"The Rochester area had Xerox and Kodak doing quite well. The whole WNY economy was doing well.
Then came the various "Trade Agreements" that gutted these good paying middle class and entry level jobs and sent them out of the county. My job at GM went "south" as did many others and the plants have long since been mothballed or demolished. In their infinite wisdom, they tax empty facilities at the same rate as occupied facilities here. If there is no building on the property then the taxes are greatly reduced, therefore they demolish empty facilities rather than try to find new occupants. This effectively prevents new companies from filling in where the old ones were."
1. People don't need photocopiers, and if you're going to invent the modern computer (Xerox PARC) don't give it away. Jobs was on record as saying that Xerox could have been IBM.
2. Anyone want Kodak around? Technology killed them. I can take a thousand photographs at nearly zero cost. This is better.
3. Your job at GM went south because GM made lousy cars. Toyota and Honda came along and rightfully ate their lunch.
But the problem (for the US and the UK, amongst others) is the huge trade deficits they've incurred by giving offshoring a lot of previously domestic manufacturing to foreigners
True. But this is hopefully temporary. In the sense that we still do export stuff, and as their economies get richer, they can afford to buy more of our stuff, with the profits they make from selling stuff to us.
This has broken down somewhat, because China in particular has chosen to recyle a lot of its profits into US (and other) government debt. This kept the currency artifically low, so helped improve their trade advantage (one of the major causes of the crash as it lowered our interest rates during the boom and helped inflate the bubble), and also has the effect of suppressing internal demand. The second I suspect is also because the Communist Party don't want to create a huge middle class that might be feeling a bit too comfortable, and perhaps start demanding political reform.
Hopefully the Chinese are wise enough to see that the problems they've had sustaining domestic demand, since their global markets hit this long recession, are because they've sent too much of the cash abroad - and they need that demand. That more affluent population will buy more of our stuff, and also they'll stop buying our government debt, so our governments won't be able to run such cheap deficits in the next boom.
Worryingly there's a lot of ifs here...
Also, another problem with all the exporters in Asia, and with Germany (due to ageing population), is that they all want to save. So they export, but then want to save the profits, rather than spending them. That leaves them with surpluses, which they invest in our economies and unbalance them. But OPEC and Russia have also been doing this, and they're having to stop, as they're not so filthy rich from oil revenues now.
Even so, wages for ordinary working stiffs in the US/UK mostly stagnated from the late 90s to the beginning of the crash, not dropped. And I believe that's stagnated only if you include housing costs for the UK, or mix of housing/medical for the US.
One of the problems in the Eurozone is that average wages went up, while productivity didn't. Except in Germany, where they caused inequality to grow faster than the UK with the Haartz 4 reforms, which kept wages down. They're now reaping the benefits of that mercantilist attack on their supposed 'partners' in the Eurozone - but at the cost of possibly pushing Italy out, and of also having a huge pile of savings with nowhere to go in the internal economy. Much of which their banks lent to Ireland, Greece, Italy and Spain. That worked out well...
then pretending that a combination of locally traded services and a debt-funded government are a substitute for actual wealth creating activity.
Sorry, I've rambled a bit. But although our governments have definitely borrowed to much - don't be so rude about services.
We do still have a large manufacturing sector (11th in the world), in the world's fifth largest economy. I believe we're something like the 8th (5th? I can't find the figure easily) largest exporter of manufactured goods.
Services are harder to trade, as they're not as well covered by free trade agreements, but as I recall we're the second largest exporter of services after the US. But some of them are very highly value-added. People seem to think of service jobs as bar and hotel staff. But that's not the sort of services you export. We tend to export lots of legal and insurance services. Lots of companies now do business under UK law, and pay to use UK arbitration and courts, as they can't trust each others (or even their own) legal systems.
ARM are a services company. Other people make the chips, ARM just do the design. I work in the building services industry, and I'm forever dealing with jobs in the Middle East and North Africa. Not because we export, but because Britain exports architectural and building design services. So most big jobs in Saudi or the UAE will be done to either British or US building regulations, depending on which practice they hired.
Things like music, software, films and TV are services too.
Regarding services and trade agreements: Hidden under TPP, which is getting all the media attention, is TISA. This seeks to do for services what the 'free trade" agreements have done to manufacturing. There may be some shadenfreude to be had watching the overpriced legal suits squirm as lower cost sharks come swimming in.
"...is worth widening in rich country inequality. Others might not agree."
See icon for details.
Why don't we try getting rid of some of those top-level CxO jobs? You know, the ones that pay big bonuses for, frankly, doing fuck all or, even worse, give massive golden parachute pay-offs for screwing up the company, causing your workers to lose their employment and leaving them scratching around for minimum wage jobs to try to feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads?
Oh no, says Tim, those workers should be *happy* that someone else, somewhere else in the world is "getting out of poverty", meanwhile the bosses and the shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank. Trebles all round!!
Why don't we try getting rid of some of those top-level CxO jobs?
I have no problem with this at all. Better yet, we could introduce some competition for the roles, depressing the reward level on offer.
Oh no, says Tim, those workers should be *happy* that someone else, somewhere else in the world is "getting out of poverty"
So its ok for the third world to live in actual poverty as long as your salary is guaranteed to keep up with mine? Regardless of any difference in our education, ability, and effort (the three primary determinants of my income), or the role that we perform?? Some might view that as heartless, or even racist.
As I'm a capitalist pig, I have no problem outsourcing some work to alleviate the suffering, provided it passes a few tests:
-The offshorians must be capable of doing the work (With IT, it simply hasn't worked due to skill levels, lack of experience, and zero consequences of getting it wrong - there always someone else to hire them).
-Retraining costs of those offshored are passed along to the consumer of the offshored service / product via taxes or regulation if needs be.
-CxO level compensation must be reduced in proportion with the wider cost base reduction to prevent offshoring being used to prop up or increase executive comp.
-Work permit issuance must reflect the state of onshore recruitment. Its no good offshoring the work while onshoring others to further depress rates (again, see IT).
> So its ok for the third world to live in actual poverty as long as your salary is guaranteed to keep up with mine?
No, try a different Straw Man and, please, put the Racism Card away, it just makes you look silly.
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Although that isn't surprising, as its buried in a mound of dioxin. You see the "dirty little secret" of all these factories offshoring is the mass murder of insane numbers of people in the area.
And make no mistake, when you see Chinese "cancer towns" where the odds are better than 1 in 3 you'll die young of a toxin induced cancer, or see thousands dying early or various GI cancers because over 20% of the farmland is so full of heavy metals and poisons that any food from them is deadly, that is EXACTLY what it is, its mass murders committed for the profits of a few.
So lets not pretend these corps are doing anything "good" for these people, they are throwing them a few shekels in return for poisoning their entire area for centuries, I don't see anybody with any sense arguing that is any kind of "good deal" for those that have to live there. And of course once the populace gets tired of dying they will just move to the next poor nation they can sucker into taking their toxins,like a plague they just move from area to area.
Two wasters are sitting in a bar when Bill Gates walks in. "Hurrah!" shouts one, "Drinks for everyone!"
"What are you doing?" asks his friend.
"Our average net worth is now several billion dollars!"
This could point to the state of your Chinese factory worker, who — while better off than when he was in his village, else why would he be there? — is by no means flush. Look back, too, to the stories of overwork, dormitory living and suicides at Foxconn. And this, too, could well be exported.
But apparently, even they are getting too expensive, so 'let's go hire cheaper Indian labor!' Yes, theoretically when the global supply of exploitable and cheap labor is gone, all pays will have to rise. But even that is not a panacea, as the cost of living rises, sometimes and in some places more than the increase in pay. Until then, it's a race to the bottom, with the glorious capitalists trying to make us all rich beyond the wildest dreams of a Bangladeshi dirt farmer.
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I'm a capitalist. The system has worked very well for me, almost from the moment things clicked and I got how it worked.
However, I do wish I could upvote your post more than once, as I'm finding it very difficult to DISagree with much of it. I'd only add that even accounting for inflation (cost of living), Tim's numbers for China still reveal a stellar increase in real terms pay.
(previous post withdrawn to correct agree/disagree)
"suicides at Foxconn"
IIRC, it has been shown that the ratio of number of suicides to number of employees was about the sameas any other similarly sized large group and therefore a non-story in terms of Foxconn, China or Apple bashing. There may have been a story in worldwide average suicide rates but that's not what people were talking about.
"IIRC, it has been shown that the ratio of number of suicides to number of employees was about the sameas any other similarly sized large group and therefore a non-story"
I agree, and I've posted about this before. I was in China at the time that story was current, and the press there made exactly that point - Foxconn employs hundreds of thousands of people and in a population that large you will get some problems.
I think Tim's point in the article is a good one. It's easy for us with relatively affluent western lifestyles to look at a foreign electronics factory and find the conditions harsh, but it's all relative. If you've moved from the remote countryside where the roof on your shack always leaks and you can't feed your family, then it might be a step up.
@John Brown (no body)
Then I suppose the installation of suicide nets at Foxconn was replicated in all these other companies you mention, like Pegatron?
http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/8/2012-03-30/inside-apple-s-foxconn-factory.html
http://www.cnet.com/pictures/the-making-of-an-iphone-pictures/14/
No. Hmmm.
As for Apple bashing, I'm not one to do that, as I wouldn't be where I am today (wherever that is) without Apple.
"Then I suppose the installation of suicide nets at Foxconn was replicated in all these other companies you mention, like Pegatron?"
I didn't mention other companies, but bad publicity requires that "something must be done", so Foxconn did something. Just as many bridges or other high places have fencing or railings to stop or at least discourage people from jumping off them. I'm thinking specifically of bridges etc where there have been jumpers and new, higher fencing has been retrofitted.
eg These two
"Two wasters are sitting in a bar when Bill Gates walks in. "Hurrah!" shouts one, "Drinks for everyone!"
"What are you doing?" asks his friend.
"Our average net worth is now several billion dollars!""
Dude. Look up the word 'median'. That extra 'd' and 'i' in the middle of 'mean' mean a lot.
Two economists see a pile of horse shit, one says to the other "I bet you a $1M you wouldn't eat that."
He agrees and eats the horse shit, then says to the 1st one, I bet you $1M you wouldn't do the same.
1st later says, we have both eaten horse shit but we are each no better off.
Yes says the 2nd one, but we added $2M to the economy.
@DavCrav
Get a sense of humor, Dude!
On top of that, you are mathematically wrong.
Let's assume, for sake of discussion, that the wasters' net worth is ridiculously, egregiously low —say, $1,000 each (bearing in mind that a higher value would just bring up the average). That's just a rounding error in Bill Gates' $79.5 billion net worth. <http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/>.
So, the mean average is (1000+1000+79.5B)/3=2650000066.666666666666667
The median average is (79.5B-1000)/2=39749999500
The only average that doesn't give a result in the billions is the seldom-used modal average [more people have value x than any other]. With that, the average is $1,000.
That labour in China won't be left high and dry, though, just as our own labour hasn't been left high and dry by the move to China in the first place
On average it may not have, however averages can be used to mask a multitude of sins.
The shift at my dads last employer (typical northern factory) haven't had a payrise in more than 10 years, and overtime is now paid at flat rate. This is done to reduce the premium cost of onshore manufacturing.
On average, this may have done UK Plc no harm at all, but it certainly doesn't feel that way to the guys on the shop floor.
""if you paid me £15 an hour, I'd quit
Lucky you. Most people in the UK don't earn that much."
£15/hour at 37.5 hrs/week gives £29250/year (assuming 52 weeks/year, which is not a problem as you will see). According to the Guardian, in December 2013 median weekly pay is £517 (FT employees only) which is £26884/year. I cannot find any later figures than this, but I remember wage growth actually existing this year, at about 1%, taking us to £27152.84. That all works out as an hourly wage (again, assuming 37.5 hours per week) of £13.92. So about a pound an hour off median. Which is a lot in millions of people, and your statement is true in that "most people" don't earn that much, but it's probably no more than about 55-60% earn up to £15/hour.
I am lucky, you're right. I know it.
My point was being a lefty does not imply personal poverty. I am a lefty because I believe that other people who didn't have my reasonably privileged background should still get the chance to have my luck. I am a lefty because I care about others, not because I am dissatisfied with my lot.
I also - shockingly - agree with Tim. This is good for India. It's just important to also remember that there will be real human casualties and suffering too.
I am a lefty because I believe that other people who didn't have my reasonably privileged background should still get the chance to have my luck.
My background is far from privileged (I started as a factory worker), but my luck level is off the charts (can't afford to buy the factory but I could achieve a seat on the board). Its why I vote Conservative, because I genuinely believe that it is the only way to elevate everyone elses luck level.
Wanting everyone to have a fair chance to do well in life doesn't make you a lefty. Its got nothing to do with left wing politics what-so-ever. Quite why lefties delight in pretending it does is a mystery to me.
I am a lefty because I care about others
Again, this is absolutely nothing what-so-ever to do with being a lefty. The two are wholly unrelated; they're not even correlated, never mind causal.
I'm a capitalist and a Conservative and I care for others. I care enough to donate significant sums of cash each month to several charities as well as giving up my time to help.
You might be a lefty because you think it is a good idea to transfer the rewards of success, via an ever growing public sector, to those that didn't succeed, whether or not they made any effort. I personally don't. It just removes any incentive to try, incentivises doing nothing, and is woefuly inefficient.
I think everyone should have a good education (which we're simply not delivering right now), and encouragement via the tax system to go and stake their own claim in the world (which we're also not currently doing). Any transfer of the trappings of success must go hand in glove with a transfer of the efforts required to earn it (which we don't do). None of that is uncaring, none of it is heartless, and none of it is left wing politics.
A lefty you may very well be, but it flatly isn't because of any of the reasons you've given.
"A fair chance" can be creatively interpreted, evidently.
Charity's a sticking plaster, a short term emergency fix, for a person having to use their bare hands to clear up broken glass. I mean to say if a charitable institution exists such that you presumably subscribe to it, then there is in fact a systemic need for whatever service that organisation provides. There should be a provision for gloves and equipment in that broken-glass-clearer's contract, if broken glass clearing is something our economy as a whole has a use for. We oughtn't exploit the people clearing broken glass by using some personal discretion in allowing them to not suffer.
You've essentially funded a small fragmented part of a welfare state with ethics distorted by your personal whims, with likely orders of magnitude lower efficiency, higher chance of corruption, little to no oversight, and a colossal vested interest in calling excessive attention to itself by any means necessary.
And you've done this "several" times over. You're promoting a system that worsens inequality.
I'm glad you have so much disposable income. That's nice. But your run-on post is a confession to rabid egotism, not a qualification of your superficial good-guy credentials. And that's why people suspect you don't care about people.
The state is funded with then times the resources it needs to provide the sevrices it should actually be providing. Instead, it wastes vast sums of cash on diversity co-ordination, lavish pensions, and a list of non-jobs simply incomprehensible to those of us working in the real world.
Charity exists to work around that wholesales waste of resourcs and public sector incompetence, delivering results to those not in a position to wait for some unionised knacker to determine that actually, a serviceman with his leg blown off needs to be rather higher on the priority list than prviding a bigger tax payer funded house to another 4x4 (same nag, different jockeys) or paying out massively overblown second pensions to retirees in their early 50s.
Your post is rose tinted nonsense from begining to end and can only have come from someone hiding in the public sector because the real world is simply to hard for them. The gravy train is broken mate, you'll have to get off soon and make your own way in the world, instead of demanding the rest of us pay for your easy life.
See, the rose-tinted accusation was what I did rather more elegantly in my original comment. You are the one with the fanciful view of altruistic organisations, I continue to contend. But we don't need to get into a semantic fight (partly because generalisable data is sparse) on the relative crapness of public services and charities that could supposedly supplant them.
Because the issues you list are all the same for charities. There have been two generations of charities springing up to "work around that wholesales waste of resourcs" of other charities. Consider the cycling of responsibilities between the Gates Foundation, USAID, and the RED debacle in the last decade alone. The value of services that a state can provide is so emergent and abstract (for now, while soft science remains translucent at best) that a market doesn't know how to rate these organisations, and image therefore dominates. You might have succumbed to this.
Your criticisms are unqualified, mostly because they imply static relative crapness. I think we could come to agreement on the idea that there are smaller organisations that can adapt faster and temporarily offer more efficiency toward reductive, hot topic ends than a state. Like reducing the number of children in poverty, which is an arbitrarily defined condition in practice.
But assessing that relative adaptation effect in a world where the nature of communication and economics changes is one of the more important reasons why we have a preponderance of obscure professionals with entire classes of responsibility neither you nor most of the world could understand. Right now, it really looks like you've made a personal value judgement rather than a rational economic decision. There doesn't seem to be much consideration for emergence.
There are also specialist charity pension providers, also needlessly lucrative for the execs. The only time I spent in the public sector was carrying a rifle -- though that was admittedly because the real world was too difficult in some senses. Though I do occasionally work for charities, most recently a year and a half ago. Way cushier. Choo choo. Mate.
"But once you're at something like full employment then the capitalists have to compete with each other for the labour they want to exploit: meaning that they raise wages and the workers become progressively less exploited.
I think it was Tony Benn who opined, "if we could have full employment killing Germans (during the war), why can't we have full employment teaching/healing/mending roads etc., etc."
Why not indeed?
"
I think it was Tony Benn who opined, "if we could have full employment killing Germans (during the war), why can't we have full employment teaching/healing/mending roads etc., etc."
"
I'm sure we could *if* we were willing to have the same standard of living as we had during wartime. Get most of the working age men out of the country & sleeping rough while killing 25% of them (that in itself creates lots of job openings). Limit the type and amount of food so that only that which is essential to stay alive can be bought. Bring down the average lifespan by quite a bit. Force masses of kids to travel hundreds of miles away from their homes to live with strangers. Regularly demolish railways, roads, factories and streets full of houses so that lots of workers are needed to repair the damage. Etc.
"I'm sure we could *if* we were willing to have the same standard of living as we had during wartime. Get most of the working age men out of the country & sleeping rough while killing 25% of them (that in itself creates lots of job openings). Limit the type and amount of food so that only that which is essential to stay alive can be bought. Bring down the average lifespan by quite a bit. Force masses of kids to travel hundreds of miles away from their homes to live with strangers. Regularly demolish railways, roads, factories and streets full of houses so that lots of workers are needed to repair the damage. Etc."
Don't forget borrowing huge quantities of money to pay for it.
I think it was Tony Benn who opined, "if we could have full employment killing Germans (during the war), why can't we have full employment teaching/healing/mending roads etc., etc."
Why not indeed?
Which shows just what a monumental cretin Tony Benn was. We had to have everyone working hard because we were fighting a war and trying to keep people alive. And it was a miserable existence of rationing and curfews and limited opportunities.
So, here's a challenge. As Benn is no longer with us, perhaps you can answer it: show me a country that aimed for full employment that doesn't have people and businesses trying to get the hell out of it.
I think it was Tony Benn who opined, "if we could have full employment killing Germans (during the war), why can't we have full employment teaching/healing/mending roads etc., etc."
Why not indeed?
Which shows just what a monumental cretin Tony Benn was.
I think you're failing to recognize a rehetorical question.
The point Benn was making was that if it is possible in wartime to engage the population and persuade them to dedicate everything to the (destructive) task of killing Germans, then it should be possible to persuade them in peacetime to dedicate themselves to the (constructive) tasks of teaching, healing, road-mending, etc., which are as necessary to our continued well-being.
I think this shows two things: On the one hand it is always easier to destroy than to build, and on the other hand it is always easier to motivate people when there is a clear and present danger to their well-being. Getting people to respond to a threat they cannot perceive has never been easy, and that is one of the tragedies of modern society.
Tony Benn was actually a very intelligent man, but one who was monumentally bad at getting others to see the point he was trying to make.
I recently got to wondering if slavery is really worse than letting people drown in the Mediterranean or rot in shipping containers.
Seems to me, a lot of the 'anti' arguments here are saying that doing something which is admittedly positive is bad, just because it should be better. Whereas the more right-wing/marketeer/whatever aren't necessarily the fatcat-lovers we love to hate, they are just more pragmatic about getting something done. Even if it doesn't leave the world in a perfect state, it leaves it less-not-perfect than it was.
Dan Hannan said something to the effect of "We hate poor people so much, we want to make them rich".
Where I'm not clear is why this type of globalisation necessarily includes paying indecent salaries to Western CEOs.
(Note to self: Got to stop reading Tim before I turn into a fully-fledged raving capitalist)
what with your failing to question his evidence, reasoning, or the sensationalism of the sources you find yourself alarmed by, I'm not sure you ever weren't a raving capitalist
There's orders of magnitude difference in suffering between a neo-belgian congo and "only" hundreds of thousands a year perishing horribly worldwide trying to cross borders or make a better standard of living for themselves.
I recently got to wondering if slavery is really worse than letting people drown in the Mediterranean or rot in shipping containers.
Obviously it is. Slaves have no freedom of choice to be slaves. Nobody forces people to illegally enter Europe. I get that many will be fleeing war, famine, actual poverty etc, but there are other places they could flee to that would be safer to reach, they just wouldn't have the level of opportunity we have here.
Ultimately Europe has a binary choice to prevent people dying trying to reach out shores illegally.
Choice #1. We have open borders allowing literally anyone in the whole world who wants to move to Europe to do so. If you exclude anyone at all, some of them will try to come illegally.
Choice #2. You accept nobody. Anyone not allowed to enter legally would have to be deported immediate that they are found. That might have to be coupled with lengthy prison tariffs prior to deportation to minimise repeat offending.
Number one sounds impossible, because it is. It would destroy Europe. Number two sounds heartless, because it is. It would trap millions in misery. Anything between those choices is a fudge and will result in more deaths in transit. It's a horrible problem.
I guess I should have been more specific. I was thinking about 'voluntary' slavery here, as opposed to imposed slavery there.
It was vaguely related to the idea of doing something - however kludgey and imperfect - rather than doing nothing because we can't do anything perfectly.
So we say our welfare system doesn't have enough money to absorb all these poor people. What instead of turning them down, we take them in, but on different conditions? Like the old workhouses? It's got to be better than drowning (just as an aside: I have difficulty believing people risk death just for 'better opportunities').
Yes it's horrible, yes it's demeaning, no I don't like it one bit, and it's totally non PC, but it seems better to me than people drowning themselves. And I would suggest that any hand-wringer who objects should tell us how many of these refugees he/she is personally prepared to bed and board (at their own expense), and for how long.
FTA: We can even turn to our old friend Karl Marx to explain this: when there's surplus labour around then wages don't budge.
LOL True dat. We have a serious labour surplus in the UK, to the point where it's become cheaper to pay people the Dole than invest in giving them actual jobs. There's always someone else willing to do your job for no more than you.
Now, the building of factories in other countries ought to mean an eventual rise in living standards there. Of course it will require extraordinary effort on the workers' part, to get everything we in the West currently take for granted; but when the Industrial Revolution was firs taking hold, in the valley I call Home, conditions over here probably weren't much to write home about, if we're going to be honest.
And as the cost of transporting goods around the world is also increasing, this means it is eventually going to become uneconomical to rely on foreign imports, and worthwhile building local factories again .....
i don't see it in terms of a labour surplus, I see in terms of working conditions and productivity being more strenuous than they need to be.
We could limit hours per week like certain euro countries and lower unemployment. And that's just if we decide unemployment is a useful measure. It would also improve our health, very likely our productivity, quality of life, overall equality... wow Marx really is turning up a lot today.
Well, Marx was guilty of oversimplification. But anyway, the fact is, we have a large population of workers who basically are replaceable on demand, and a supply of unemployed from which to replace them.
As for the second pararaph: Are you thinking by any chance, instead of having four people working five days a week and one person unemployed, have five people working four days a week? That could work very well; though it would require a massive change in attitude.
You're close. I was thinking of moving to France. Six or seven hour days. And I really think it could work very well. Maybe force the politicians and bankers to unionise and limit their hours worked too. Then they'll be less stressed and make fewer silly decisions, and we've suddenly got a huge chance to make politics and finance a lot more diverse.
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