I was a student in the UK, when British Aerospace (the guys who mak(d)e Rolls Royce) decided to move some x thousand jobs to Taiwan or some such place. And there was a toon in the Guardian the next morning. Two workers at a fence which reads ” you are here, your job is 5000 miles away” or something very similar. There was a pathos to the cartoon that stuck in my mind and stayed for all these years.
Today I read this really interesting Op-Ed in the New York Times. Basically talking about white collared jobs that have moved to India and China. And talking about how globalisation would harm the American economy.
t’s funny, the world economy has almost turned a full circle.
as a student in the late 1980’s the burning issue was globalisation. How 1st world companies (primarily American) were going to come into our countries, and their products and product lines going to kill our manufacturing. How jobs were going to disappear, and how a skilled workforce would become deskilled labour. And how collective intelligence and wisdom would die away.
It happened. In India and elsewhere. The early 1990’s saw liberalisation of the economy. Saw the coming in of foreign companies. Saw the death of some old time companies and brands, and saw unemployment in key sectors. but we were told – being efficient is part of the magic mantra to success and development. And we bought that argument. Didn’t have a choice. The US government with its super301, the World Bank and the IMF with a gun to one’s head – you had no choice but to agree.
Today the burning topic is globalisation. But the jobs being talked about are American jobs. The trouble is you (one) can’t have it both ways. Can’t have the world opening its doors to your (one’s) products, industries and businesses. And refuse to reciprocate.
What you are seeing today is the culmination of the (in)famous Uruguay round of GATT negotiations, where free trade in services was pushed down the third world’s throat. Presumably the aim was to get major western Insurance, banking companies the right to compete in our markets.
Today countries like India and China providing services to companies elsewhere. Cost efficient services. It will be very difficult if not impossible for any one to really restrict the flow of services.
The solution may be neither unionisation nor protectionism. The solution probably is to provide more cost efficient services. One probable of way of doing that is to get US prices down to the 1950’s level. Another is to stop consuming so much. If the average middle class Indian or Chinese consumed as much as the average middle class American does, there would be no resources in the world.