Re: Racist mythology about job losses

Rich countries = high wages, poor countries = low wages, high wages =
higher education, low wages = lower education. The international division
of work is usualy very efficient, if a company like Cisco requires very
skilled people, they must go to rich countries where the welfare state
provides high education as a basic matter, thus Cisco can use all this
previous effort for a relatively good price: exactly the taxes. When Cisco
require steel workers and manufacturers, they go to Indonesia or to Chinese
central region. Cisco is part of the new technology, the new economy,
competing in the Nasquad... They need computer skilled workers, they will
find them in a country where kids use to play with computers since 10 years
old, with full social advantage and they'll probably have pretty good
benefits at the end of each year.

But what Cisco is useful for? Cisco is a hardware builder principally and a
sofware conceptor somewhere, specialized in Internet matters. All their
production is going to be used in our first world, making things moving
faster than ever, communications, information, data compilation, world
production control systems... Tools to be used as the most sophisticated
working control: from the place where the mineral is extracted somewhere in
South Africa thanks to African slaves (excuse-me, workers paid 45 cents an
hour), its transportation into an Indonesian freighter with Ethiopian
slaves (sorry, sailors paid 30 cents an hour), its preparation in a
Brazilian blast furnace with local slaves (excuse-me, employees with a 75
cents an hour wage), then transported to the Mexican border to be assembled
as computers' bodies by south american slaves (sorry, subcontracters paid
90 cents an hour), then, crossing the frontier, the computer adquires its
real price: a market price to be sold to a first world technician in charge
of controling all the precedent steps... or by someone spending time
thinking about worlwide solution hanged in its terminal desktop... as you
and me!

Whatever the benefit is the required success for a company manager, pretty
few shareholder are conscious on how dangerous is their constant race to
the best ratio investisment-dividend because they give the responsability
of the bad job to be done to other hands, the manager's hands. Even if some
companies have decided to stop using sweatshops, most of the hard job still
being done in poor countries. And the things seems to go worse than ever,
just check the reforms imposed by IMF and Worldbank, the first matter they
reduce is the governmental expenditure in education, health and related
matters, investing, at contrario into huge ports, energy factories and so
on, to prepare the field to transnational corporate manufacturers.

In another hand, if FDI is lowering during these last years it's because,
thanks to the devaluation crisis of 1997-99 in Asia, Russia and Brazil, the
costs are lower than ever and had boosted the production, thus, thanks to
the benefits made inside the rich economic system, the consumption is
growing in the rich area. To that point see how Greespan is puting presure
in the interest's rates to slow down private consumption and how deep in
the US trade balance. When 5 years ago you had to spent 50 cents for one
hour of a Brazilian worker, the same hour is now cheaper than ever for it
the devaluation of the Real... This transmission of the 90's economic
crisis from the core of the Triad to the periphery have produced its
benefits: Europe and the USA are growing again and the developed countries'
mass-media are exclusively showing how the unemployment is going down and
the level of life is increasing. But they are speaking of only 10% of the
world population, the other 90% are suffering of this new colonialism, an
economical colonialism.

A+



>Cisco will build their new European headquarters here in Amsterdam. It 
>brings
>5000 new jobs, the biggest investment in 20 years - and Cisco pays well 
>above
>the (already high) rates in the ICT sector.
>
>I will be writing a short article, arguing that the city should refuse 
>Cisco,
>its money, and its jobs. But I don't expect much support. One of the 
>arguments
>I will be using is that the 5000 jobs should go to, say, Eritrea. At 
>Eritrean
>productivity levels, that should put at least 50 000 people in work.
>But I don't expect any support at all, for that suggestion.
>
>And why not? Pure racism: the politicians and the trade unions don't want
>Eritreans to have the jobs.  Complaints about job losses from rich 
>countries,
>are 99% economic nationalism and economic racism - white jobs for white
>nations.
>
>The truth is that the global economy transfers relative wealth inward. The
>richest countries in the year 2000 are generally the richest countries of 
>the
>year 1800 (including Japan). Only deliberate policies of mass resource
>transfer can alter that characteristic of global liberalism.
>
>I don't have to go to Mexico to see the logic of the global economy, I can
>just cycle to the area around Amsterdam Schiphol airport, and look at all 
>the
>new office buildings, the new roads, and new railways. Why are all these
>international firms there *of all places* - expensive land, high wages, 
>high
>social fund payments, extreme local labour shortage, regional labour 
>shortage.
>(The zone, of course, employes large numbers of immigrants. West Africa is 
>the
>new unskilled-labour source for the Netherlands).
>
>Yet if you believe the mythology of job flight, all this does not exist. 
>Since
>global business is "looking for low wages", they never invested in the
>Netherlands anyway. The jobs went to Africa, according to the myth. All 
>lies.
>
>Why promote this kind of mythology, except to incite feeelings of racial
>superiority, and fear of competitor economies?
>
>
>
>--
>Paul Treanor
>http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/cycle-1.html


------------------------------------------
Georges Drouet
28, place Morichar  1060 Bruxelles

gdrouet@brutele.be