Good response, Ed.
I would only add that your colleague should "stay tuned" Many of the employed
in Canada will be temps or short term only....contract work of some sort or
another.
In the longer term as manufacturing moves away Canadians will lose design
capability: This means that Canadians will no longer be able to design new
products and without design capability will also be poor buyers of products
elsewhere since they will not be expert and technologically competent buyers.
arthru
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Ed Weick
Sent: Tue 7/3/2007 4:21 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: Ken Davies
Subject: Re: [Futurework] More hope for today!
Good points, Ken. I'll respond in this colour. Notice though that my answer
get shorter as I go down your posting. Long afternoon. Tired, I guess.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Ed Weick <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 12:06 PM
Subject: [Futurework] More hope for today!
From a freind in response to my gloomy posting of yesterday on our
miserable future prospects:
One bizarre fact to consider: Canada and the US are at full
employment. Apparently, anyone that wants a job can get a job. The fact that
manufacturing jobs are disappearing does not seem to be impacting opportunities
for employment.
But I do wonder what kinds of jobs people are getting. When I was in
my teens, I got a job in a sawmill that fed a large pulp and paper mill.
Without even being aware of it, I became a union member and was paid a wage
which had been negotiated with the employer. I had quite a lot of protection
against being laid off or being targeted in some other way. I would expect, or
hope, that people who work in large industrial enterprises are treated
similarly today, though I do wonder how safe there jobs are. We've had a
number of consolidations and plant closures around here that have put a lot of
people out of work. Small towns have been devastated because some of the firms
that closed were the towns' main sources of income. And I wonder whether being
employed means that much anymore. When you walk into Wal-Mart, you're not
dealing with employees, you're dealing with "associates", whatever they are.
I remember when machines were first introduced in the manufacturing
process - displacing unskilled workers, and causing the same sort of
hand-wringing as outsourcing to third world countries does today. Charlie
Chaplin's Modern Times and George Orwell's 1984 heralded the coming of the end.
What happened instead was a huge increase in wealth (and new jobs).
In Canada, statistics indicate that GDP per capita approximately
doubled in real terms between 1970 and 2005, but are we really that much better
off? In 1970, some wives worked but many stayed home. Now the much more
typical pattern is that both husband and wife are in the labour force and the
kids go to daycare. This is partly a matter of preference - women have become
educated and career oriented - but it may also be partly a thing of necessity.
Two incomes are needed to run a household in the style and manner to which we
have become accustomed.
Even more bizarre, our citizens are so busy working at full employment
that they don't even have the time to manufacture their own replacements.
Projections into the near future say there aren't going to be enough people to
meet existing requirements for service type jobs - never mind the manufacturing
jobs that are steadily being lost. The result: India, China, and Mexico are
going to become the defacto manufacturer of new Canadian citizens - because we
all just too busy working to do it ourselves.
China, with its one child policy, may not be of much help. I would
suspect that, in India, there aren't going to be too many kids in professional
and technical families either. They may have a kid or two, but a lot of their
money will likely go into improving their life style.
By continuing to buy manufactured products from third world countries,
we are pulling up the standard of living of third world countries much more
efficiently than other alternatives - such as just handing out money.
It's not because we're altruistic that we are buying from China and
India. It's because they make many of the things we need, or think we need,
more cheaply than we do. And they may be better at handing out money than we
are. A considerable proportion of the US fiscal deficit is covered by China
buying US Treasury Bills, for example. The US also has a very large trade
deficit with China and other Asian countries. In today's world, it's very
difficult to say who is propping up who.
If we didn't buy products from third world countries, and instead hid
behind tariffs, etc., then developing countries wouldn't have money to buy
resources, wouldn't attract investment, and wouldn't be buying high-end
products and technology from developed countries.
Again, in today's world, its very difficult to assess who is propping
up who, and who is the giver and who the taker.
If manufacturing wasn't being done in China, Mexico, India, etc., then
we would be faced with wage inflation, price inflation, and economic
stagnation. As it is, wage inflation and product prices are very stable - and
everyone still has a job - very close to the utopian state that Karl Marx
envisioned when he invented the concept of socialism.
I don't think Marx would buy your argument.
United States does seem to have lost it's way, directing massive
amounts of money towards military activities, when the same amount of money
spent solving it's energy problem would have quickly resulted in a 10 fold
return on it's investment. Oh well, Rome too had it's problems... and we know
what happened to them. History does have a habit of repeating itself. One
day the Americans will figure this out.
I'll respond to this one off-list.
If there is one thing you can count on, it's that capitalism is
ruthlessly efficient - and it always finds a way.
Yup!
Somehow I think it's all going to work out.
Hope so!
Ken
If you want to see what Ken does, go to http://www.imgmaker.com/ .
-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 09:14
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Your gloom for today
Of all of the many things that happened in the rich world
during the 20th Century, a couple stand out. One is the shift away from a goods
producing economy and toward a services producing economy. The other is the
development of technology permitting instantaneous communication and shipment
of services from one part of the globe to another. Given the connective
technology, it really doesn't matter where services are produced. They can be
produced anywhere and instantly delivered to another part of the world. But
what is needed to produce them is an appropriately educated and motivated
labour force. As another major 20th Century trend, such a labour force has come
into being. Approximately 1.5 billion technically and service orientated
workers are now available in China, India and other parts of the developing
world. And these workers are willing to provide their services and skills at a
much lower wage than workers in the rich world.
It is not only services that have become internationalized.
Goods production can take place anywhere that has an appropriately skilled and
organized labour force. In the case of a large variety of cheap consumers
goods, the developing world now produces and the rich world buys. But it is not
only cheap consumers goods that are at issue. As the developing world becomes
more skilled and educated, it will produce many of the more specialized and
sophisticated products used by the rich world. Exports listed for China include
machinery and equipment, plastics, optical and medical equipment. China is
moving up rapidly in automobile and electronic goods production.
What might this mean for workers in Canada and the US? In
Canada, it would seem to mean a gradual shift out of many lines of
manufacturing and services and a greater dependence on the more traditional
resource sectors, especially oil and natural gas. This possibility is not as
open to the US, and what may happen there is the kind of continuing industrial
disintegration typified by the rust belt of the Midwest and the eastern
seaboard. Plants producing goods that can be made more cheaply abroad and
offices providing communications based services will close and workers will be
laid off, losing not only their wages but in many cases also their access to
health care and pensions.
I could go on and move the prognostication into the longer term
when underemployed, debt-ridden America is no longer able to buy from China and
India and when Canada begins to find its natural resources less abundant, but I
won't do that. I've spread enough gloom for today.
Ed
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