The awful truth: education won't stop the west getting poorer

[marmar]

from the Guardian UK:



The awful truth: education won't stop the west getting poorer
Skilled jobs will go to the lowest bidder worldwide. A decline in middle class pay and job satisfaction is only just beginning

Peter Wilby
guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 February 2011 21.30 GMT


Western Europeans and Americans are about to suffer a profound shock. For the past 30 years governments have explained that, while they can no longer protect jobs through traditional forms of state intervention such as subsidies and tariffs, they can expand and reform education to maximise opportunity. If enough people buckle down to acquiring higher-level skills and qualifications, Europeans and Americans will continue to enjoy rising living standards. If they work hard enough, each generation can still do better than its parents. All that is required is to bring schools up to scratch and persuade universities to teach "marketable" skills. That is the thinking behind Michael Gove's policies and those of all his recent predecessors as education secretary.

But the financial meltdown of 2008 and the subsequent squeeze on incomes is slowly revealing an awful truth. As figures out last week from the Office for National Statistics show, real UK wages have not risen since 2005, the longest sustained freeze in living standards since the 1920s. While it has not hit the elite in banking, the freeze affects most of the middle class as much as the working class. This is not a blip, nor the result of educational shortcomings. In the US, which introduced mass higher education long before Britain, the average graduate's purchasing power has barely risen in 30 years. Just as education failed to deliver social democratic promises of social equality and mobility, so it will fail to deliver neoliberal promises of universal opportunity for betterment.

"Knowledge work", supposedly the west's salvation, is now being exported like manual work. A global mass market in unskilled labour is being quickly succeeded by a market in middle-class work, particularly for industries, such as electronics, in which so much hope of employment opportunities and high wages was invested. As supply increases, employers inevitably go to the cheapest source. A chip designer in India costs 10 times less than a US one. The neoliberals forgot to read (or re-read) Marx. "As capital accumulates the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse."

We are familiar with the outsourcing of routine white-collar "back office" jobs such as data inputting. But now the middle office is going too. Analysing X-rays, drawing up legal contracts, processing tax returns, researching bank clients, and even designing industrial systems are examples of skilled jobs going offshore. Even teaching is not immune: last year a north London primary school hired mathematicians in India to provide one-to-one tutoring over the internet. Microsoft, Siemens, General Motors and Philips are among big firms that now do at least some of their research in China. The pace will quicken. The export of "knowledge work" requires only the transmission of electronic information, not factories and machinery. Alan Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has estimated that a quarter of all American service sector jobs could go overseas. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/28/education-jobs-middle-class-decline

[xchrom]

1. quelle surprise -- the other high heel just dropped. nt

[Bardley]

2. about time the 'education, education, education' mantra got exposed

that does you no good when opportunity is in 'decline, decline, decline' dues to gov trade policies

[Zoeisright]

4. Wrong.

Education does more than just give you access to a job. It helps in all areas of life. Logical reasoning and critical thinking skills are in serious decline, especially in this country. Which is why we're in the mess we're in. More people who are educated means a better country and a better world, because they will elect the smart people who know enough to do the right thing.

[Bardley]

7. my computer science degree and experience in systems analysis

helped me understand exactly how bad my party stabbed me in the back - i was able to perfectly flowchart the corruption

[adnelson60087]

11. Right on! We teachers are now getting it in the back

from the Obama Dems, too.

[texshelters]

10. While this is all true

having more education doesn't guarantee a good job anymore. If I get another degree, will jobs suddenly appear? No. That is the point. Education does have intrinsic value, but that is a different discussion.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[texshelters]

9. Yes, this mantra is a lie

that avoids the real issue of jobs being exported and labor being exploited and the fundamental problems with an economic system that rewards greed and hoarding at any price.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[leveymg]

3. This pay differential for highly skilled developers isn't 10-1. It's about 3-1.

The average IT wage in Silicon Valley is $99K. An experienced developer in India makes about $27K, and rising rapidly. The reason that US workers with equal skills get paid more is the much higher cost of living here, particularly real estate, health, education and energy costs. That's also why companies have moved so many jobs offshore.

The real estate bubble blowout brought down housing by 30-40 percent in some markets, and that's a start.

The HCR bill was intended to make costs of US medical care more competititive, but that reform got derailed by the private insurance industry. American workers graduate with the highest indebtedness of any in the western world, and public higher education needs much higher levels of funding to bring tuition costs down. American fuel consumption also needs to come down to levels closer to other developed countries, where transportation, cars and houses are more energy efficient.

All this takes time, but if we had rational political system and policies, we could make the transition and actually increase US employment and the standard of living for most middle class people. Rational politics and policies - now, there's the rub.

[Demeter]

5. If Education Gets the Crooks Out of Politics and Finance and Corporations

it will work.

As if that will happen...

[southernyankeebelle]

6. We are in deep trouble in this country. Neither party gives a shit about us really. They only care

when its time to vote. Where are the Wellstons of this country. They put the people first. Americans need to start buying american first starting with the small business but at a reasonable cost. Working people in this country want to support our own venders but sometimes their wares are to much and we just can't afford it. I only buy cars made in the usa.

[onlyadream]

8. Eventually the cost of living will increase in those other countries

and then the jobs will move to the next poor area for exploitation. When America becomes third world, and we'll work cheap, the jobs will come back. Something to look forward to. :sarcasm: