Economist Debates阅读写作分析--workforce talent 2020

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Workforce Talent 2020



his house believes that the competitiveness of workers in today's rich countries is in permanent decline.



About this debate

With the historic integration of India, China, Brazil, and other fast rising nations into the global economy, the rise of workflow software and the emergence of truly portable work, the market for transferable skills is rapidly globalizing. In this environment, what is the future for worker competitiveness. Will the competitive challenge from rising global giants like India and China continue to grow inexorably? How will wealthy countries respond to this growing competition, and what place will its workforce find in the new world order? Is the competitiveness of American and European workers in permanent decline?


http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/129


我觉得我做得和别人比，质量差好多，“四星级”的标签就不贴了。。。
不会传图片。。。。

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红色——红包词
蓝色——好句好词
紫色——有用的例子
橙色——好的观点
不会编辑，先传附件好了[local]2[/local]

background    其实有三篇的，但另两篇要收费，只有开头能看，所以就不贴了
Europe’s monetary policy
The wages of sin
Jul 31st 2008

From The Economist print edition
The ECB has pursued a disciplined monetary policy. Its reward may be recession

PRUDENCE and virtue do not always receive their just desserts. Earlier this year, the prospects for the euro area’s economy seemed, if not bright, then less dim than for some other parts of the rich world. High oil prices and scarcer credit were bigger worries for gas-guzzling(耗油的), debt-ridden （负债累累的）America than for the high-saving, fuel-efficient countries of continental Europe.

Things have turned out a little differently. America’s economy has held up surprisingly well so far this year—helped, to be fair, by a big fiscal and monetary stimulus. Meanwhile the euro area, after a strong start, is sailing close to recession. GDP figures due to be published on August 14th are likely to show that the economy stagnated, or perhaps even shrank, in the second quarter. Jean-Claude Trichet, the head of the European Central Bank (ECB), whose rate-setting council meets on August 7th, has cautioned that any weakness is payback for an aberrantly strong first quarter. But the economic rot seems too deep to be fully explained by the euro area’s earlier strength.
A clutch of indicators point to rougher times ahead. Business confidence has fallen sharply across the euro zone, according to a monthly European Commission survey published on July 30th. A closely watched activity index, which combines surveys of purchasing managers in services and manufacturing, fell in July to its lowest level since 2001. The gauge（计量器） for France, whose economy had seemed resilient, is pointing to a fall in output (see chart). Germany’s economy is now barely growing. Italy and Spain were already shrinking fast in June.

One explanation for the abrupt change of mood is that weaker demand in the currency zone’s main foreign markets have at last started to hurt the economy. The euro area had leant heavily on strong export growth to keep it moving. America is now sucking in fewer imports. Sales to Britain have slowed too.
But the shift in economic fortunes is too sudden to be due solely to exports, according to Thomas Mayer of Deutsche Bank. Spending at home must have turned down too. Are consumers to blame? Total employment incomes are picking up but not by enough to stay ahead of higher inflation. Consumers are finding it harder to plug gaps in their spending power by borrowing, because banks are less willing to lend to them. But the downturn （低迷时期）is still hard to pin on them, if only because they were contributing so little already. Consumption rose by just 0.2% in the first quarter after falling at the end of 2007. Even when credit was freely available, households were cautious about spending more.
Retrenchment by companies is a more likely culprit for the more recent drop in activity. Despite the shadow cast by the credit crunch （信用紧缩）and America’s housing bust, firms had sustained their capital spending. Animal spirits are now flagging. Profit margins are under pressure from high oil prices and, latterly, from a pickup in wage growth. Firms that had been willing and (despite the crunch) able to borrow for investment now seem more circumspect. The growth of lending to firms other than banks has slowed materially for the first time since the credit squeeze （贷款紧缩）began.
The economy’s apparent seizure（抵押） sits uncomfortably with the ECB’s decision to raise interest rates to 4.25% on July 3rd. The bank’s rate-setting council knew it was tightening policy during a sticky period for the economy. But it hoped the increase would send a message that it was serious about controlling inflation. The bank’s worry was that today’s inflation, which inched up to 4.1% in July, might influence how wages and prices are set for the future. If firms and employees think high inflation will persist, it will be harder for the ECB to meet its objective of keeping inflation “below but close to” 2% in the medium term.
The ECB was right to be concerned. The euro area quickly sheds its air of virtue when it comes to pay. Wage settlements in Italy picked up from 3.3% in May to a three-year high of 3.6% in June, despite rising unemployment. The Italian wage-bargaining process allows workers to claim for extra pay if inflation turns out to be higher than expected, says Gareth Claase, an economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland. The planned rate for 2008 is 1.7%, well below Italy’s inflation rate of 4.1%. Wages are also set to pick up in Spain, where inflation is still higher, at 5%. Two-thirds of Spanish wage contracts contain a clause that compensates workers, at least in part, for unexpected inflation. German workers are pushing for higher pay too, after a long period of wage restraint. Striking airline workers, claiming a rise of 9.8%, have grounded scores of Lufthansa flights this week.
Upward pressure on pay is likely to lead to more job losses in Italy and Spain, which are already struggling with poor competitiveness and rising unemployment. Accelerating wages will also reinforce fears that inflation will prove hard to bring down. That will make the ECB reluctant to cut rates even if the economy dips （下跌）into recession. The recent drop in oil prices is one piece of good news. It means inflation may well have peaked（到达顶峰） in July, reckons （估计，认为）Julian Callow at Barclays Capital, though it may start to fall meaningfully only in the final months of this year. If so, rate cuts are unlikely before 2009, if at all. For the ECB, virtue may have to be its own reward.

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Opening statements

The moderator's opening remarks
The moderator's opening remarks
Jul 8th 2008 | Mr Matthew Bishop

Our debate on the future of work begins today. Judging by past debates, and our extremely controversial topic, expect the argument to be lively.
It's the jobs, stupid! For years, a growing popular dislike of globalisation in rich countries has been driven by fear that their workers—initially, the low-skilled sort, but lately also the white-collar sort—will not be able to compete with all those billions of hungry, cheap Chinese, Indians, Mexicans and so forth. As first manufacturing, then back-office processing, and more recently innovation, have increasingly been done in emerging economies, politicians and the media have screamed about the loss of "our" jobs, and proposed solutions ranging from better education to protectionism.
But how valid are these fears? Are workers in rich countries doomed to become ever less competitive, as our proposition suggests? Or can something be done to improve their competitiveness? More fundamentally, is the fear wholly misplaced, whipped up by populist politicians with a weak grasp of economics who play on the rich-world public's worries rather than try to calm them?
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics fears the worst for the rich-country worker, thanks to three forces: first, the ready availability of once scarce financial capital in the emerging economies; second, the relative decline in education in rich countries, due to better education in emerging economies and educational stagnation in most rich countries. "Baby-boomers in the United States and Germany will soon retire, but have neglected to ensure that their children replacing them are on average better educated than themselves." Third, the impact of these changes is being accelerated by the rapid pace of technological change, which makes it much easier to move work to where it can be done most competitively. As a result, gloomily predicts Mr Kirkegaard, "while there will always be plenty of jobs in the services sectors of the West, most will no longer provide access to the middle class."
Lynda Gratton, a professor at London Business School, is optimistic. Focusing on the low costs and increasingly high levels of education of individual workers in emerging economies is too simplistic. What really counts is the ability of countries to foster entrepreneurship and manage the growth of big successful companies. Rich countries still have the edge there, as they do in their ability to foster cultures of co-operation between workers, essential to success in today's fast-growing knowledge-based industries. Besides, the belief that rich-country workers are now lagging behind those of emerging countries is exaggerated, to say the least. India may educate a relatively high number of graduates in some disciplines studied by knowledge workers (engineering, computing sciences), but not in others (design, biochemistry, media). And throughout the emerging economies, as a percentage of the total population these educated workers are still significantly lower than in many rich countries such as Finland or the United States. Hence, rather than being in permanent competitive decline, workers in rich countries seem "rather well placed for the increasingly knowledge based economies".
Let battle commence.

The proposer's opening remarks
Jul 8th 2008 | Mr Jacob Funk Kirkegaard




A spectre is haunting the Western world. The spectre of fear. Fear that the middle classes are losing out, and while their economies may still be growing, the rising tide no longer lifts the majority of boats.
Such anxieties are well-founded, as the unique circumstances that brought the West's broad middle classes their standard of living have ended.
Today, everyone is a capitalist and correspondingly the competition faced by Western middle class workers for a well paying job and that $145 barrel of oil is just that much more intense than a few decades ago. It was only after 1978 that political leaders representing the majority of the world's population in China, India, Russia and elsewhere gradually let their subjects enter into free-market economic competition with the West, rather than a struggle of ideological slogans (口号，标语)and nuclear warheads（弹头）. Before this ending of the "plan economy" in the developing world, Western middle classes faced competition from themselves only.
Now the world economy is finally truly global and the implicit protection for Western workers from the self-imposed economic exile （流放，放逐）of billions of potential competitors is irreversibly（不可逆转地） gone. Unshackled from the earlier wealth-destroying policies of their own governments, workers across the developing world can now aspire to Western middle class living standards. They may not demand democracy tomorrow, but none will ever renounce capitalism again. Because it is through the embrace of capitalism that the developing world masses for the first time have the opportunity by means of their own talents — and by working far more than 35hours a week — to enter into the affluence of middle class life.
Previously protected Western middle classes will find this global marketplace an increasingly egalitarian place. It rewards the core virtues of capitalism — industriousness, entrepreneurship, hard work and investing in the future. All individual characteristics that Western populaces do not monopolize, and that billions more now have the opportunities to exploit.
It is further, if you want to maintain your privileged income position, necessary to be better equipped for the new economic competition than your rivals. For western workers to remain the most productive, they must remain on average better educated or at least have more investment capital at their disposal （所掌握的）than aspiring workers in the developing world. The opposite is occurring today.
It is obvious from both recent years' rising investment rates in, and the spread of Western financial and investment allocation expertise to, developing countries that workers here are no longer relatively deprived of capital. The fact — while bizarre from a factor endowment （具备生产要素的）point of view — that labor abundant China's exports of heavy industrial goods, like steel and aluminum, have rocketed （迅速上升）in recent years merely underscores that developing nations are now competing successfully against Western workers in even the most capital intensive sectors.
Western workers' declining advantage in human capital and educational attainment, is, however, of greater importance. It is an underappreciated fact that, as Western working classes rose to today's middle class living standards during the 20th century, they did so as the beneficiaries of the world's first — at the time restricted to the West — mass educational effort at the primary, secondary and ultimately tertiary level. It was on the shoulders of the on average by far best educated populations in the world that the West, and especially the United States, achieved its economic prominence1. Today, the world's human capital is increasingly evenly distributed.
Partly this is a result of educational stagnation in the West. Baby-boomers in United States and Germany will soon retire, but have neglected to ensure that their children replacing them are on average better educated than themselves. More significant though is the rapid expansion of education, particularly in developing Asia, during the last decades of the 20th century. The result is today's fast increasing supply of workers in developing countries, who are educationally largely on par with（和。。。一样） Western middle classes. With their relative capital and educational advantages thus eroded, Western middle classes will struggle to sustain their much higher standards of living in an increasingly integrated global economy.
Yet, it is actually not events in the developing world which will have the most profound long-term impact on the possibilities for major parts of Western middle classes to uphold their current income levels. Instead the factor at play is technology, which is now altering labor demand in Western countries far faster than workers here can adapt or hope to upgrade their skills.
It is well established that job generation in both agriculture and the manufacturing sectors at wage levels that will sustain a middle class standard of living have declined dramatically in the West as the result of mechanization. Hence the overwhelming majority of Western middle class jobs are today in the services sectors. However, many of these exist on borrowed time, too, as technology will increasingly automate tasks and make many Western middle class workers redundant.
Any repetitive services task, which can be exhaustively described in rules — say filling out a tax form, evaluating numerical information for a credit score, or executing any standard transaction like buying an airfare — will ultimately be computerized and require human input only from the customer him/herself2. The cheapest labor of all — and far cheaper than at any offshore destination — will increasingly be servers humming anonymously in a warehouse somewhere 24h a day.
Of course, many middle class services jobs — say in sales or in expert or creative positions — do not fit these criteria and can never be automated. However, so many of today's services jobs do fit, that it becomes evident that technological innovation will not long permit the majority of Western workforces be productively employed at middle class wages in the services sectors. Instead, many of today's middle class service sector workers will have to take up non-routine, manual and therefore low-wage services sector employment — as say cleaners, security guards or restaurant workers. While there will always be plenty of jobs in the services sectors of the West, most will no longer provide access to the middle class.
1. Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz (2008). "The Race Between Education and Technology". Harvard University Press.
2. Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane (2005). "The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market". Princeton University Press.

The opposition's opening remarks
Jul 8th 2008 | Professor Lynda Gratton




Is the competitiveness of workers in today's rich countries in permanent decline? Let's start with the easy answer.
Clearly there are parts of the world often outside of the rich countries where some types of work can be performed more competitively. The outsourcing houses that ring Delhi are a testament to this. Indian graduates are currently much more competitively paid than British graduates — although of course not that much more competitive than Polish graduates. Similarly the garment factories in northern China show the speed with which work flows to areas of comparatively cheap labour. Workers in the today's rich countries cannot compete on cost with Chinese workers — although some, such as Portugal are able to compete on the combination of speed and cost. Never the less, for the majority of the time if we simply take cost as a key factor in competition — then workers in the richer countries will almost always be less competitive compared to those in lower cost economies.
However, beyond this easy answer — the answer I will arrive at is no — that the competitiveness of workers in today's rich countries is not in permanent decline. In arriving at this more considered answer I will argue that whilst the question looks deceptively straightforward, on closer examination it is surprisingly complex.
Contained within this simple question are a number of assumptions that are looking increasingly outdated as the world of organisations and the world of work change dramatically. In my argument I will show that the question of a less competitive worker in today's rich countries rests on three assumptions that are outdated in the contemporary world. First it assumes that 'rich countries' can be viewed in isolation; second it assumes that the performance of workers across a country or region is the same; and finally it assumes that it is individual 'workers' who are the drivers of competitiveness.
First, take the assumption that the productivity of workers in 'rich countries' can be observed and measured in isolation from the rest of the world. True when you are measuring the costs of burger flippers in a McDonald in London with a burger flipper in Beijing. Not true for the many value adding goods and services which increasingly rely on partnership and supply chains that cross the world. Take the creation of the latest Nokia phone for example. The software team are in Finland, the design team are in London, the manufacturing sites are in China and the marketing of the phone is handled by a global team. So the question of 'workers in rich countries are less competitive' becomes an overly simplistic notion in a supply chain that has workers contributing from across the world.
Next, the question assumes that all workers in rich countries are somehow the same. This is clearly not the case. In fact, increasingly knowledge based industries (such as banking, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, consulting, and complex manufacturing) employ global cadres（干部）who behave in surprisingly similar ways. An Indian or Brazilian graduate for example is likely to be more similar in their attitudes, work style and aspirations to a Californian graduate than they are to their own parents or fellow country men. These joined up global professional diasporas cross regional and country boundaries and over time have developed shared ways of working and very often remarkably similar rates of productivity — making it difficult and probably inappropriate to use country boundaries as the means of differentiation.
The question of the competitiveness of workers in rich countries highlights a third increasingly outdated assumption — that it is individual 'workers' who are the sources of competition. Our research conducted at London Business School over the last five years shows clearly that value in organisations and business is created not by individual 'workers' labouring away in isolation — but rather by teams, projects groups, task forces and communities working collaboratively together. This is particularly true when the outcome is an incremental or radical innovation. Simply put, the value of companies is held in the relationships between people (be they employees, partners, customers or suppliers) when these relationships are trusting, cooperative and sophisticated. This suggests that the unit of analysis should be the team or community rather than individual worker. Think of Wikipedia — or Linux. Are the contributors who work in France more 'productive or competitive' than those contributors who reside in Delhi? Wouldn't it be more useful to look at the whole community (which of course crosses many country borders) rather than isolate individuals within it on the basis of the passport they carry?
So I will argue that the notion of an isolated 'rich' country' —a homogenous working group within a country and an individual 'worker' are outmoded and unhelpful classifications. So, what would be a more interesting and contemporary way of asking a similar question — and what then would be the response?
The first argument was that the notion of 'isolated' rich countries is outdated and instead value is created in companies that cross the world. So competitiveness would be measured by a country's capacity to create the economic and social context in which multinational companies can emerge and thrive. Taking this as a measure, rich countries such as the USA, Germany and the UK have historically been stronger creators of multinationals than China, India or Brazil — although the gap is rapidly narrowing. Competitiveness would also be measured by the extent to which a country is capable of supporting the generation of innovative entrepreneurial business which have the potential in the longer term to either become multi-nationals or to join the cluster of partnerships that surround multinationals.
The second argument is that homogenous workers within a country are a gross oversimplification of a reality where some will be much more capable of competing in the global markets than others. The measure here would be the extent to which countries or regions create knowledge workers through tertiary education. Here the figures do not follow a simple rich /rest of the world divide. India in particularly educates a higher number of graduates in some disciplines studied by knowledge workers (engineering, computing sciences), though not in others (design, bio-chemistry, media). However, whilst the numbers are high, as a percentage of the total population they are significantly lower than the education levels in many rich countries such as Finland or the USA.
This leaves the final argument, that value is created in well functioning teams rather than through individual endeavour. Here a possible metric is whether a country has a culture that it conducive to teams or which encourages competitive individualism. On this measure the differences between rich countries, is greater than the differences between the rich and the rest of the world. For example, highly cooperative Finland and Sweden score above highly competitive USA and may therefore be national cultures more conducive to the productive team working and cooperation which will be increasingly crucial for value creation through innovation.
So, taking all three measures into consideration (number of multinationals; percentage of the population educated in knowledge working skills, and the extent of national cultures of cooperation) the competitive of the workers in the rich countries is not in permanent decline, but rather is well placed for the increasing knowledge based economies.

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Audience participation

Featured guest: Allan Schweyer

In the economy of the 21st century, human capital is becoming a dominant competitive differentiator for countries, companies and citizens.
And, for advanced economies, the competition is heating up at both ends of the skills spectrum(范围): low-wage, low-skill as well as higher-skilled scientists and engineers. But there are no predetermined victors—or losers—in the global skills race.
In its recent report, Thrive, the Council on Competitiveness identified four key areas of opportunity to create skills to enable American workers to compete against anyone, anywhere in the world.
Middle skills: One of the biggest untapped opportunities for the future will be for technology workers in jobs that require less qualification than a BA degree, pay relatively well and do not offshore easily. The importance of these workers to the economy is growing in lock-step with the sophistication and fragility of the technology infrastructure.
In manufacturing, for example, the loss of production jobs, often due to technology substitution, is offset by an increase in maintenance jobs that are increasingly high-tech enterprises themselves. And that may be one reason why the Dutch are launching a Maintenance Valley, in anticipation that world-class maintenance capabilities will be a magnet for investment.
Service skills: Many people think of service jobs as low-wage, dead-end jobs. But it is time for a reality check. The service economy is the engine of wealth creation and now accounts for the majority of jobs in most economies.
The high-value competition in the future will be for high-end (and tradable) services in which creativity, problem-solving, communications, computing and teamwork will become must-have skills. Yet there has been little attention or investment in service science—how to accelerate rates of innovation and productivity in the service sector—as well as a lack of interdisciplinary curriculum to create the skill sets workers need to succeed in the service economy.
Scientists and engineers: With the growth in science and engineering degrees worldwide, simply graduating more scientists and engineers cannot be the answer for advanced economies. What they will need are scientists and engineers who bring a higher value skill set to the table.
More than having simply a narrow knowledge of the discipline, this new class of Renaissance scientists and engineers will understand business value and will be as comfortable with an Excel spreadsheet as they are with a pocket protector.
Green skills: Sustainability promises to be the game changer in the decade ahead. Carbon considerations are already beginning to alter corporate investment decisions. Consider that Procter & Gamble is putting its first domestic greenfield manufacturing plant in the United States in more than three decades proximate to consumers.
Ironically, most of the attention has been on "green collar"jobs which are usually relabeled middle skills jobs. But, getting ahead of the curve on sustainability will demand even more profound changes in professional education — embedding principles of resource productivity and low-or-no carbon footprint into core curriculum. While some institutions are experimenting with new programs, these have yet to become widely available or common practice for MBA's, architects, engineers, chemists, and other key professional groups.
The bottom line for advanced economies is this: When everyone is successfully copying the old model, it is time to invent a new one.





Featured guest
Mr Allan Schweyer

The proposition that globalisation and the offshoring of work to developing countries are harming workers in developed rich economies is patently false. Employment levels in the UK, North America and Australia, for example, are higher than ever. And while wage rates have been mostly flat in many rich countries, buying power, mainly due to the availability of cheap manufactured goods from China and elsewhere, has grown.
Workers in rich countries, particularly knowledge workers and skilled technical workers, have remained competitive despite more than two decades of globalisation and intercontinental free-trade agreements. Knowledge workers, usually defined as those with four-year college degrees or better, also remain competitive in spite of more than a decade of easily accessible offshore talent in India and elsewhere. Their competitiveness lies largely in the advantages rich countries enjoy in language, infrastructure, technology, innovation, creativity and, in most cases, productivity.
Since the modern services offshoring industry began in about 1997, unemployment rates for knowledge workers in the United States have hovered （徘徊）between 2% and 3%, well below what economists define as full employment. Employers from Dallas to Manchester to Auckland have repeatedly and consistently bemoaned （惋惜）the lack of domestic talent—despite higher post-secondary enrolment rates than ever—even during the economic downturn since 9/11. For skilled technicians and tradespersons, simple demographics in rich countries have driven down their supply, increased demand for their services and greatly accelerated their wages. Even for lower-skilled workers in the services industry, employment opportunities abound. It is difficult, after all, to offshore bartending services.
Ironically, today's spiralling （盘旋上升的）cost of energy is creating a reversal in the fortunes of rich countries' manufacturing sectors. Because the costs of shipping have more than tripled since 2000, some of the lower-skilled manufacturing jobs that were lost to China in the past ten years are returning. The manufacturing that has remained in rich countries has created competitive advantages through automation, resulting in more highly skilled (and therefore competitive) workers and focusing on higher-end manufacturing. W.L. Gore with its high-end manufacturing of sportswear and advanced materials for the aerospace and automotive industries is a good example.
Perhaps the best evidence to close this argument once and for all is the fact that the United States, Canada, the UK and other rich western European countries themselves rank among the top 40 worldwide destinations for offshore work. The United States, the world's richest country by a wide margin, is 11th on the list, according to a 2005 evaluation by A.T. Kearny, a consultant.
Evidence must always trump（胜过） hysteria. Populist politicians and TV commentators earn easy platforms by stirring up anti-trade sentiment and the media are often quick to join the chorus. Time and again, however, the benefits of free trade, to economies and their workforces, are so compelling that even the sceptics must concede, if only in private.

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Rebuttal statements

The moderator's rebuttal remarks
Jul 11th 2008 | Mr Matthew Bishop
Our debate has clearly touched a nerve, or rather lots of nerves, judging by the enormous variety of subjects addressed in the comments.
Supporters of the proposition generally agree that education, and its relative decline in rich countries, is key. Ohio, for instance, argues gloomily: "Only knowledge workers who contribute something creative or use their interpersonal skills are likely to remain employed at high rates of remuneration in the future. The middle class will continue to shrink as low-paying menial （卑下的）service jobs replace the higher-paying repetitive or labour-intensive work that created the highly-paid working-class jobs of the 2nd half of the 20th century."
One theme that crops up（问题等）突然发生，突然出现more than once is that the proposition may be too general in seemingly treating all workers in a country as the same. Perhaps different workers will fare differently. Perhaps trends within each country's labour market will prove more significant than those between countries. As Ulrich123 observes, the wealth gaps are increasing in all countries and that there is a permanent decline for most workers.
Other interesting lines of attack on the con side focus on the advantages that rich countries enjoy over developing ones because of their culture and legal environment. SmileyMan, for instance, argues that trust and open markets are the ultimate catalysts （催化剂，促进事物发展的因素）of competitiveness and productivity and the United States has the best chance of any major economic power to promote and remain a leader in these most critical areas of commerce and competitiveness.
Coco_Chanel555 echoes Lynda Gratton's optimism about team-working and integrated supply chains. "The world is merely heading towards a more globally co-operative future. It would be near-sighted to be so fearful of the recent development of the labour market, when it holds the key to global improvement."
But assumptions about the inevitable rise of emerging economies may be premature. "China and many of the emerging economies are betting on yesterday's business model. Without knowing it they are creating the seeds of their own productivity downfall. In time their fuel and pollution problem will destroy their apparent productivity or competitiveness edge."
There is also a desire for our debaters to explore the political implications of all this in greater depth. MrAndersen, for example, would like some reaction to his view that it is "insane when politicians argue harder for trade protections than improved education, yet it happens all the time".
In his latest contribution on the pro side, Jacob Funk Kirkegaard concedes: "One cannot disagree with the opposition's fundamental analytical insight that nations don't compete and that competitiveness and value creation are notions most directly associated with the capabilities of individual business organisations." It is also beyond debate, as the opposition notes, that "rich-country workers make up a highly heterogeneous group, in which all do not face similar labour market circumstances". Nonetheless, he continues, "The implications drawn from this by the opposition are largely inconsequential for the overwhelming majority of workers—i.e. the middle classes—in developed countries."
Ms Gratton, on the other hand, thinks these shifts in the labour market are an opportunity for the whole world to try to get along better. "Instead of rich versus emerging markets, let us imagine that the challenges mankind faces can only be solved by the whole world acting together, behaving with good will and co-operation rather than mean-spirited fear, opening up to each other rather than closing down—becoming 'joined up'."
What do you think? Please take this opportunity to open up to each other by posting your views.






The proposer's rebuttal remarks
Jul 11th 2008 | Mr Jacob Funk Kirkegaard
One cannot disagree with the opposition's fundamental analytical insight that "nations don't compete" and that competitiveness and value creation are notions most directly associated with the capabilities of individual business organisations.
It also beyond debate, as the opposition notes, that "rich-country workers" make a highly heterogeneous group, in which all do not face similar labour market circumstances. However, the implications drawn from this by the opposition are largely inconsequential for the overwhelming majority of workers—that is, the middle classes—in developed countries.
The opposition first suggests that the number of multinational companies (MNC) a nation produces supports the notion that the competitiveness of developing countries workers is not in permanent decline. While first of all agreeing with the opposition's observation that the gap in the creation of MNCs between developed and developing countries is rapidly narrowing, this house believes that MNC business strategies today largely reflect the declining competitiveness of developed-country workers. It is in developing nations—not the developed world—that MNCs are most rapidly expanding their workforces.
Capital today is far more mobile than labour, and as a straightforward result of this MNCs aggressively seek out the most productive workforce for their disaggregated value chains anywhere the world. Crucially, anywhere now includes previously unavailable developing-country sources of talent, like China, India or Russia. It is a natural and healthy reflection of this fact that, for instance, IBM's global business model in 2007 had over 50,000 employees in India, but perhaps 20,000 less in the United States, Europe and Japan than just a few years earlier1. A workforce solely or even principally based in developed countries is increasingly insufficient for any company wishing to be globally competitive.
A related point here concerns the services sectors more broadly. It is sometimes argued that because developed countries'—especially American—MNCs are highly competitive in and thus increasingly dominate the growing services sectors globally, new competition in primary industries and manufacturing is of less significance for developed-country workers. These latter sectors employ a small and declining share of the total workforce in developed economies, and it is more important for job creation here to be competitive in the larger and growing services sectors, as these become increasingly tradable.
However, low value-added, repetitive services are, as described in the opening argument, ultimately prone to automation, but high value-added services require a high level of local content. Today, for instance, the local sales made by the foreign affiliates of the globally leading US IT services industry, probably the most intuitive services-sector candidate for digital trade, are more than ten times (and rising) larger than American exports of IT services. It is therefore necessary to realise that even in the unlikely event that the global dominance of Western services-sector MNCs were to continue in the long term, this would not lead to any noticeable gains for developed-country workers.
As global growth will increasingly be driven by developing nations, the continued high competitiveness of Western services-sector MNCs will consequently result in expansions of their workforces in developing countries, rather than any export-oriented services-sector boom in the West. Developed-country workforces will never be competitive in delivering services to the billions of new consumers in developing countries.
The opposition secondly suggests that the creation of knowledge workers through tertiary education offers some respite暂缓in the decline of the competitiveness of developed-country workforces. Yet it is clear that even if it—correctly—is only a small fraction of developing-country graduates that are today truly in direct competition with knowledge workers in the developing world, a small share of a large and increasing number still adds up to rapidly increasing competition for similarly skilled developed-country workers.
The opposition is further outright wrong in its belief that the competitiveness outlook is much improved by looking at the share of populations with tertiary education, rather than the absolute numbers. The accelerating erosion of developed-countries' historical educational advantage has already gone far further than is frequently believed. A look at the most recent OECD data makes this evident2. While, for instance, the share of 25-34 year-olds with a tertiary education in China and India is now more than double the share of 45-64 year-olds here with a tertiary education, the United States saw no improvement in the average educational attainment across recent generations. Meanwhile, today the share of young 25-34 year-olds with a tertiary education in, for instance, Malaysia, Thailand and Mexico is higher than in Italy, in Poland higher than in Germany and in Russia higher than in any OECD country. This educational catch-up also in tertiary education by the developing world will invariably strengthen the global prospects of its workforces.
This opposition argument concerning education further suggests the broader point that specific subgroups of countries' populations are increasingly similar and do compete more or less directly against each other and, for an increasing number of low-skilled workers in all sectors, also against technological innovation. It is thus almost certainly the case, as the opposition states, that Indian or Brazilian graduates have more in common with graduates from California than with the majority of Indians and Brazilians.
The same cross-country sub-population similarity, however, is increasingly also true for less skilled workers, where relatively costly less educated workers in developed countries are competing against less educated workers in developing countries, and both groups are competing against technological innovation. The outcome for less skilled workers in developed countries is well known: their jobs are disappearing rapidly. And recall that in 2006 alone almost 6,000 industrial robots were installed in low-wage China3.
The opposition lastly suggests that superior capacities for co-operative teamwork among some developed countries' workforces comprise a competitive advantage. Perhaps so for some, but the opposition itself admits that national cultures—hard as they are to pin down下结论—are as different among developed countries as between developed and developing countries. It is thus hard to fathom how such highly diverse national cultures would have much unidirectional impact on the topic of this debate.
1. "Hungry Tiger, Dancing Elephant", The Economist, April 4th 2007.
2. OECD Education at a Glance 2007. OECD, Paris. Data for China are from China Statistical Yearbook 2005, published by the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Data for India are from Results of the 61st national Sample Survey – Report#517; Status of Education and Vocational Training in India 2004-05, published by the Indian Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
3. Data from World Robotics 2007, published by the International Federation of Robotics.



The opposition's rebuttal remarks
Jul 11th 2008 | Professor Lynda Gratton
When Jacob Funk Kirkegaard writes "a spectre is haunting the western world—the spectre of fear", he is evoking emotions that send a shiver down every spine, and in particular the spines of the Western middle classes.
But I want to remind you that fear is a terrible thing: it makes us nervous, it encourages us to draw up the bridges, to batten down the hatches and worst of all to behave irrationally. If we see our world future as the decaying rich versus the energised emerging markets, then those in the rich nations are doomed to a lifetime of paranoia, protectionism and trade wars.
Many of the arguments Mr Kirkegaard makes of the potential demise of the middle classes in the West are indeed true and well rehearsed. It is clear to even the most unsophisticated observer that manufacturing jobs are moving to the regions of lowest cost and that technological advances will replace many jobs currently performed by the middle classes of the rich countries. These are irrefutable facts.
What is less clear is what impact these facts will have. Will they result in the decay of the West? Or are they the harbingers of a new world order in which all the nations of the world can and must engage in the challenges we face?
Let us look at it in another way. Instead of rich versus emerging markets, let us imagine that the challenges mankind faces can only be solved by the whole world acting together, behaving with good will and co-operation rather than mean-spirited fear, opening up to each other rather than closing down, becoming joined up.
The communities, companies and business in the rich and the developing countries have much to offer each other.
The rich countries have had the time and resources to engage in decades of research to create patents专利, make startling technological advances and bring knowledge insights to the academic communities. The patent records of regions such as California and countries like Germany are testament to these decades of research and industry. You only have to look at the enormously positive impact the use of mobile phones is having on trading and farming communities across rural India and Africa to see how technology developed in Finland and California has transformed the lives of these working people.
The developing economies have also brought much to the rich countries. Over the last decade their ingenuity at supplying goods and services to what C.K. Prahalad has called the bottom of the pyramid has had huge implications for rich countries. For example, insights from the microbanking initiatives in rural India will transform the way credit is distributed to poor families across the world. Or witness how the development of Tata's Nano, the 1-lakh car, has sounded a wake-up call to Western car manufacturers. Or consider China's prowess in manufacturing white goods大型家用电器at a quality and price point unknown in rich countries.
We live in a joined-up world with global systems of climate and demography. The challenges we have created through industrialisation will take a joined-up world to solve.
In this argument I want to draw your attention, in particular, to the role of the multinationals as potential instruments of joining up. The scope and range of companies such as GE, HSBC, Unilever, Tata, Toyota and SAB Miller are such that they already bridge the economies of the rich and the poor. The capacity of a country to create companies like these capable of operating outside national borders is a crucial step in the development of a sophisticated industrial infrastructure, as we are seeing in India, China and Brazil, as their multinationals take on the world. It is in everyone's interest that the industrial context of developing countries creates world-class companies. These companies can have significant effects on the education and skill sets of their population and be the powerhouses of innovation.
So where does this leave the middle classes of the rich world? If you think about the world as essentially joined up, then one of the joined-up aspects is the rise of the global knowledge workers. Cohorts of lawyers, IT specialists, academics, genetic researchers are already joined up. Using group-ware technology, they are able to share their ideas, communicate their concerns and agree their rates. One thing these global knowledge workers have in common is that they are either highly educated or highly trained, and by the way, none of them works a 35-hour week. Mr Kirkegaard is wrong about the working hours of the West, but right about education: if you want to be part of the global economy you have to be of value. Education and training will be crucial to maintaining living standards in the rich countries and raising them in the developed countries.
However, state education国家教育 is not the only option. Increasingly industrial companies are playing a role in education and this role is likely to increase. Those companies which span countries also have the opportunity to bring people from across the world together, to share ideas and exchange resources.
I believe that a joined-up world is the only viable option we face in the future. Clearly governmental and non-governmental agencies will play a role in this process. However, large companies can and must also play a key role and their CEOs and executives must increasingly be held responsible for bringing prosperity and a future to the regions and countries in which they operate. We are not witnessing the demise of the West, but what we are witnessing is the demise of those individuals and groups who have limited access to education and training. And by the way, don't knock service workers. Remember that recent research has shown that hair dressers and beauticians report greater work life satisfaction than any other profession.

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Audience participation

Featured guest
Professor Richard B. Freeman

Once upon a time, economists told a simple story about how globalisation affected workers in advanced countries. It benefited them, as consumers finding new access to low-priced goods from low-income countries, but also as workers—at least if they were highly-educated. Americans listening to the NAFTA debates were promised that the United States would get the good jobs while Mexico took the low-skill jobs. Some low-skilled Americans might have problems competing with lower-paid Mexicans, but if their country were just to invest in more schooling all would be fine.
This story has been dealt three huge blows.
First, the magnitude of the labour-supply shock from globalisation has increased immensely with the entry of China and India into the global labour market. The number of workers in the global market has doubled—a change in labour supply far beyond anything envisaged（想象） in the early 1990s.
Second, the number of people receiving higher education has increased greatly in the developing countries. By the middle of this decade, almost five million Chinese students had graduated with bachelor's degrees. The result is that advanced countries no longer enjoy anything like a monopoly on education or modern technology.
Third, the digitalisation of white-collar work and the advent of the internet have increased the scope for offshoring work to cheaper locations.
All of these factors have shifted the balance of power in the workplaces of advanced countries, and each of them has shifted it from labour to capital. Today, multinationals search for talent everywhere, including among the vast new numbers of university graduates to be found in low-wage countries.
Until the wages of similarly skilled workers are equalised worldwide, competition from low-wage countries will put pressure workers in advanced countries. But workers in advanced countries can still compete with those in developing countries. Wages are higher in advanced countries for many reasons other than their individual employees"skill sets. Advanced countries have better organised markets and the kind of infrastructure that can keep productivity and earnings high. Resident workers have local knowledge about their country that differentiates them from workers overseas.
There are still much greater discrepancies between wages for workers with similar attributes in different countries than there are in the prices of, say, McDonald's Big Macs around the world. Thus far the transition toward a global labour market has largely taken the form of rapid increases in wages in developing countries, not decreases in wages in advanced countries.
Global competition has in many cases made it harder for workers in advanced countries to see the wage increases they would have enjoyed without it, but it should not reduce real earnings or create mass joblessness. Moreover, as the developing economies continue to expand rapidly, their own increasing demand for products will create demand for labour, driving up the demand and eventually the wages of workers around the globe. The faster wages rise in China, India and other rapidly developing countries, the easier will it be for workers in advanced economies to compete with their counterparts in those countries. The transition to a global labour market does have costs, but with policymaking between unions, management and governments, the workers in advanced countries will continue to see their circumstances improve in the long run, if more slowly than they once did.





Featured guest


Mr Kent H. Hughes

Summary: The impact of globalisation on workers depends on their skills, the adaptability of national systems and the extent to which globalisation and technology create increased competition for workers.（非常精辟的总结）
The Challenge: The challenge to workers in rich countries is great and growing. Since the opening of China (1978), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and India's shift toward global markets (1991), some three billion people have joined the global economy.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the increased number of well-educated scientists, engineers and researchers in China, India and the former Soviet sphere, coupled with the spread of broadband capacity, has introduced a challenge to fields that formerly have been shielded from international competition. The growing commitment to education in emerging-market economies and continued communications improvements will make online competition more intense. As Alan Blinder has noted, high skills in themselves are no longer a guarantee of high wages.
Workers with traditional skills have suffered a triple whammy
（剧烈打击）over the last three decades. Technology, international trade and low-wage immigration have all put downward pressure on wages and job opportunities and they will continue to do so.
At the same time, globalisation has created new opportunities for skills in global demand, skills that range from system integration to the management of complex enterprises.
Many other skills are not readily subject to international competition. While long-distance surgery by robots is now feasible, most medical specialties are still delivered close to home. A host of other personal services—from haircuts to dining to education—cannot be sent overseas. The wage prospects for these services will depend on training and the degree to which technology can be added to human skills.
The Response: For rich countries, a successful response to globalisation will depend on their ability to innovate, their commitment to education that adapts to competition and new opportunities, and a shift in focus to adopt innovations developed in emerging-market countries.
Top analytic skills are still an important element in science and engineering education. To respond to global competition however, students will need to be prepared to work across fields. In the United States, deans（学监） of engineering are already working to make that multi-disciplinary approach a reality.
交叉学科间的研究是曾加全球化下竞争力的需要

All workers will need a solid foundation in math, science, communication skills and, increasingly, an ability to work across cultures, whether in a single large organisation or among international partners.
Rich countries will need to offer workers opportunities to upgrade skills or acquire new skills as the demands of the economy shift. In the United States, that role is often played by community colleges, an institution that is now studied by other developed and developing countries alike.
Rich countries also will need to continue to strengthen their innovation systems and embed them in an economic context that encourages investment and job creation domestically. While strengthening national systems, rich countries must recognise that innovation has become a global enterprise. Rich countries will need to help prepare the workforce skills—including language training—to participate in and benefit from the opportunities posed by worldwide innovation.

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Closing statements

The moderator's closing remarks
Jul 16th 2008 | Mr Matthew Bishop
"I must admit that I am surprised with the way the votes are going, I expected the pro to win," writes Ulrich123.
Certainly, although there is still time for that to change, there is currently a hefty lead for those voting against the proposition: "The competitiveness of workers in today's rich countries is in permanent decline."
As the debate has gone on, the comments have got meatier, suggesting that this is an issue that will run and run.
教育的种类问题
科技VS人文科学——实际上，人文科学提供大量的就业机会。而且即使是科技领域的人也不一定会从事科技行业，或者干不长久。
As well as education being an important differentiator, the sort of education may prove crucial. A technical education of the sort that everyone associates with Indians and Chinese is superior to liberal arts, right? Maybe not, writes bjkeefe: "I went to a liberal-arts college and there was a plethora of information about how many employment opportunities an education in arts can lead one to expect. I also have many friends whose studies in traditional sciences have left them with a feeling that their degree is somewhat worthless since their field only applies to stuff which doesn't interest them. I would also like to know the statistics of how many engineers actually work in their field after graduation. I know several who don't, or at least didn't for long."
灵活的教育vs传统教育
在高度传统的日本教育下，却涌现了非常优秀的创新科技。
Yet, writes chiduke, "we comfort ourselves with the idea that our flexible educational system is superior to the 'rote learning' taught in Asian countries. However, one only needs to look at Japan, which has produced extraordinarily creative technologies despite having a highly traditional school system."
态度也是发展国家的竞争力之一。
But maybe attitude will matter as much as education, argues joski65: "I disagree with the opposition's argument that it is only the manual work that will move out. The software industry is an indication that knowledge is also moving out. I believe the question is more about attitude and hunger not about background and skills. I have observed that workers in rich countries are time-bound. They do not work a minute beyond office hours and refuse to work on weekends. Their attitude is also about 'This is my work and therefore I will do only so much'." In developing economies on the other hand, employees "are hungry, they work longer, harder and are willing to go beyond their profile. That's because most have known poverty themselves."
Global_villager is not convinced, however. "We are all part of a flat world where the ripple effect （连锁反应）of any changes moves fast. The culture we share in different countries [is] similar more than ever. I think we are entering [a] deep crisis in terms of resource and lifestyle. It is not true that competitiveness of workers in today's rich countries [is] going down. I think it is the lifestyle be it in a rich or a poor country that takes away the edge." The key to competitiveness? According to Global_villager, in rich and poor countries alike, it is "discipline".
Our featured participants have also added weight to the debate. For example, Doug_Pascover feels that "Professor Freeman makes a good case for borders open to the movement of goods, services and capital. This entire conversation seems somewhat incomplete in leaving out immigration which is an essential component in understanding the future of labour competition."
Now our two main debaters have posted their closing statements. Lynda Gratton continues her (so far) winning attack on the proposition by returning to her theme that we are now living in a "joined-up world" in which "what happens in one place has an impact on another. The rich workers of the world are not an island unto themselves. Instead many are part of complex networks of innovation and trade that criss-cross（纵横交错） the planet. Their destiny is increasingly linked to the destiny of poorer workers. There is no evidence that as such their productivity will decline." That said, she admits to believing that "if we are to be sensitive to the implications of the coming climate challenges then it would be wise for rich workers to focus more on the quality of their life and less on consuming."
Jacob Kirkegaard, speaking for the motion, and perhaps looking forward to the coming Olympic games, begins by pointing out that the athletic star of the 1936 Olympics, Jesse Owens, "the greatest sprinter （短跑运动员）of his time, simply wouldn't be competitive at today's Olympic games with over four times as many countries participating and far more advanced running shoes." He continues by saying that his is not an anti-globalisation argument; "Hillary Clinton and other recent doubters are simply wrong. The benefits to global economic growth of comparative advantage and free trade remain as compelling in the 21st century as ever."
Yet, ultimately, his support for the motion is based on the relative decline in the education and skills of workers in rich countries. "Western workers won't earn middle-skilled or middle-class wages in maintenance, unless they can quickly read and grasp ever more complex instruction manuals or accurately describe encountered obstacles in succinct writing. Similarly Western service workers trying to add value to their teams by creative problem-solving will quickly run out of luck, unless they comprehend maths and the guidance of probabilities. Anyone who wants to earn a middle-class income has got to be able to access and understand ever-increasing amounts of information. And for that you first have to have your fundamentals in place." A powerful argument, to be sure, but will it be enough to swing the debate his way? Tell us what you think.



The proposer's closing remarks
Jul 16th 2008 | Mr Jacob Funk Kirkegaard
Jesse Owens famously won the 1936 Olympic 100m goal medal in the time of 10.3 seconds. By 2004 everyone in the Athens final ran faster than that.
Owens, the greatest sprinter of his time simply wouldn't be competitive at today's Olympic Games with over four times as many countries participating and far more advanced running shoes. That's what globalization and technological innovation is about — you have to run faster today to stay competitive.
开头很新颖
As noted in several online comments, competitiveness can only be thought of in a relative sense. This is not about a Gibbonian decline and fall of the West in an absolute sense. Without a doubt, workers in the developed world will continue to - on average - enjoy quite a high standard of living. But as increasing global competition spreads economic growth and welfare more evenly between nations, this will coincide with（与。。。同时发生） the relative decline in the competitiveness of the developed world workforces. One worker's catch-up cannot but mean another's relative decline.
It is likely beneficial to begin by appreciating what this "declining competitiveness proposition" is not about. It is emphatically （强调地，断然地）not, as suggested by Mr. Schweyer's guest comment, an anti-globalization/anti-offshoring argument. Make no mistake — Hillary Clinton and other recent doubters are simply wrong. The benefits to global economic growth of comparative advantage and free trade remain as compelling in the 21st century as ever1. Instead, this proposition concerns the exact opposite outcome; the very welcome continued acceleration of globalization and expansion of trade. It involves what Paul Samuelson was writing about in his now regretfully almost universally misunderstood 2004 article2; namely that comparative advantage is silent on the distribution of gains from free trade and — crucially — that if you don't change when your competition improves, you will lose some of the gains from free trade that have hitherto（迄今为止地）
accrued to you to your competition. This proposition is about what happens to the incumbent Western middle classes when everyone starts to do the right economic things and, as Ms. Van Opstal's guest comment states, successfully copies the capitalist model.
Charles Darwin noted that it is those most adaptable to change, who tend to do best in a competitive environment. It would be wonderful, if all developed country workers chose to or even had the opportunity to adapt to the increased competition from developing countries and technology in the manner described by commentator "BenjaminFranklin"; namely to "better myself more than I otherwise would have"3. Yet
the easily observable fact is that many don't! Rather than try to join the "joined up world", as professor Gratton calls it, an increasing share of middle class workers in the developed world seems to be voting for populist leaders like Oscar Lafontaine or turn to Dobbs'ian media demagogues to hear the easy "quick fix" solution to their economic travails（劳苦，阵痛）.
Yet, from this proposition flows the recognition that such reactions from parts of the adversely affected developed world middle classes are neither surprising nor irrational. The combined competitive forces of global economic integration and technology will in the 21st century increasingly demand that many Western middle class workers adapt much faster to imposed economic changes than did previous generations of Western workers and faster than many will be capable of. While probably unlikely to affect the majority of regular readers of The Economist, commentator "Gianluca Marcellino" captures the situation faced by many until now solidly middle class Western workers well, when he writes "so my community and I — and our children — will end up struggling more as we face more and better competition than we have evolved to address"4. Western middle classes will have to adapt quicker than many will be capable of. Have to run faster, just to remain standing still.
What will incessantly hurt the competitiveness of workers in developed countries is that they — on average — are stagnating in school and losing their ability to adapt by losing the human capital race. Losing ground relatively to workers in the developing world, and increasingly failing to acquire enough human capital to stay above the ever rising threshold（门槛） for technological task automation. The result, however, will not be mass unemployment. Except in very inflexible labor markets, there will be plenty of jobs created in the West. But they won't be in the middle income quintiles and instead we will continue to see the result in the form increasing (pre-tax) income inequality.
Rising inequality between those, as professor Gratton notes, who possess valuable human capital and are thus capable of participating in the global economy and the increasing number in the West who no longer are. These two groups, demarcated（划分） by their human capital, will indeed be ever more alike across borders. All holders of valuable cognitive capacities, irrespective of where they are from — and this group is increasingly non-Western — are increasingly part of a globally integrated high-skilled labor market. Their world is indeed flattening, and they can increasingly work where they want to, as governments everywhere (except in the United States) eagerly reduce immigration barriers to attract them. But they are the minority. The ultimate outcome is the declining inequality between developed and developing nations, but the increasing inequality within both developed and (in fact especially) developing countries.
No one can likely predict what the right human capital — the skills to turn today's uncertainty into tomorrow's risk — will be. Commentator "jpmurray" correctly explains that no one could have predicted the booms and busts in the demand for for instance nuclear or oil industry expertise over the last 30 years5. But what can safely be predicted is that Western workers won't be better at adapting to change without reversing（彻底转变） the relative stagnation in their fundamental skills.
It won't be enough to conjure up

（凭空想象）, as Ms. Van Opstal and other do, new categories of technology workers and new must-have skills. Western workers won't earn middle skilled or middle class wages in maintenance, unless they can quickly read and grasp evermore complex instruction manuals or accurately describe encountered obstacles in succinct writing. Similarly Western service workers trying to add value to their teams by creative problem-solving will quickly run out of luck, unless they comprehend math and the guidance of probabilities. Anyone who wants to earn a middle class income has got to be able to access and understand ever increasing amounts of information. And for that you first have to have your fundamentals in place.
1. Interview with Hillary Clinton by Edward Luce, Financial Times, published December 3rd 2007. Full transcript available at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fec8e7ba-a0e4-11dc-9f34-0000779fd2ac.html.
2. Paul A. Samuelson (2004). Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 18, Issue 3, p. 135-146.
3. Comment posted July 10, 2008 11.10am.
4. Comment posted July 10, 2008 12:09am.
5. Comment posted July 11, 2008 09:26am.




The opposition's closing remarks
Jul 16th 2008 | Professor Lynda Gratton
In my closing piece I would like to reaffirm（重申） that the productivity of workers in the rich countries is not in permanent decline.
I will preface（以。。。开始） my argument with the notion of a 'joined up world'. What I mean by this is that the systems that govern the equilibrium of the world — be they weather systems or trade systems - are complex and susceptible to both predictable consequences and 'unintended consequences'. As a result of this we cannot predict the future simply by drawing a straight line from the present. So what might the future be for workers in the rich countries?
Mankind has a marvellous capacity to adapt and change, to innovate and to create value. It is not in anyone's best interest — particularly those in the developing countries — for the production of workers in the rich counties to be in permanent decline. Let me describe three mechanisms by which workers in the rich countries of this 'joined up world' continue to be productive and by doing so make a positive contribution to the development of the poorer nations.
First, they will continue to be productive by focusing attention on innovation. The research institutes and innovative clusters in the west have been a powerhouse of patents and there is no reason to believe that this will decline. Clusters of innovation like the technology clusters in California and Boston in the USA and Cambridge in the UK; the design and manufacturing cluster around Rome; or the engineering cluster around Munich have each created environments of entrepreneurial networks that will continue to be a magnet to people from across the world, providing training and capital for them to build their own expertise and export it to their own countries.
Next, the richer workers of the world will and must continue to take a lead on solving the global challenges the world faces, particularly with regard to climate change. The future of mankind relies in part on the ingenuity（独创性，巧妙） of today's most privileged workers to create technologies and insights that will alleviate the worst aspects of climate change. It is also crucial that the most privileged workers in the world take a lead in changing their lifestyle. Perhaps the current economic downturn will begin to create the lifestyle habits more suited to sustainability.
Finally, the rich workers of the world can become part of the global teams which I believe will be an increasingly important feature of the world economy over the coming decades. We currently look to countries to educate their future workers — but increasingly I see businesses making the investment. The supply chains at Nokia, for example, which daily control over one billion components, require highly skilled workers. The same is true of the marketing of Coca Cola or the development of products at Proctor and Gamble. These multi national companies are currently recruiting talent from all over the world and putting them through extensive and highly specialised training. By doing so they are providing them with the skills to return to their countries to create business of their own.
It is easy to see the world in black and white: rich workers versus poor workers, rich countries versus poor countries. Of course the subtleties are deeper and more profound than this. In my closing statement I would like to make two final points.
First, in a 'joined up world' what happens in one place has an impact on another. The rich workers of the world are not an island to themselves. Instead many are part of complex networks of innovation and trade that criss-cross the planet. Their destiny is increasingly linked in to the destiny of poorer workers. There is no evidence that as such their productivity will decline. However, my belief is that if we are to be sensitive to the implications of the coming climate challenges then it would be wise for rich workers to focus more on the quality of their life and less on consuming.
Finally, the challenges that the world faces requires an optimistic, open minded workforce who are willing to invest in the education of their children, keen to work with people who are different from themselves and tolerant of diversity. This is the workforce who will take the world through the coming decades and we can only hope they are able to reach out to those across the world rather than simply fight to protect what history has bequeathed （遗赠）to them.

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Audience participation

Featured guest
Mr David Ang

It is the era of globalisation where everything and everyone connects with one another. Interdependency is the key word.
The best talents, ideas and investments flow to where they can create the most value. It is no longer "what will globalisation do to me?"but rather "how and what can I manoeuvre and achieve in this globalised economy?"In a globalised economy, competitiveness is key and important for survival.
The interconnectivity of the global economy and exchange of goods and services demands engagement. A reliable, strong and solid infrastructure will help to combat potential disruptions that can spill （溢出）across geographic borders. Countries must be able to anticipate, manage the risks and have a fast recovery from potential disruptions due to the rising complexities in technology, terrorism threats, natural catastrophes, weather turmoil, virulent viruses and change of political leadership in order to protect international trade flow and investment.
Globalisation has a great impact on the different strata of society. To a great extent, the lower stratum suffers the sharpest pain. The swift transition has led the low-income, unskilled workers to become victims of structural unemployment, due to their lack of relevant technological competence and educational qualifications.
Singapore is not in the least spared from these global challenges and the evolving economic landscape. In a land where there are no natural resources, human capital becomes the most precious resource. The increased competition makes it imperative （紧急的）for Singapore to continually strive to stay at the top of the competition with an agile, flexible and resilient（有弹性的） workforce.
Singapore's workforce will need to establish a competitive edge with the mastery of knowledge; it is necessary for one to compete effectively in the global economy. As the Singapore economy restructures, workers' skills will risk becoming irrelevant as old jobs are phased out （逐步淘汰）and with the growth of new industries. The relevance and accuracy of knowledge is no longer static as the global business climate changes rapidly. And as education has always been viewed as an instrument of meritocracy and career advancement in Singapore, it has been emphasised especially for the lower strata of the society, as a means to scale the social ladder. Equipped with the relevant skills for newer, innovation-driven industries, the risk of declining competitiveness of workers can be mitigated.
To stay competitive in the global arena, Singapore must recognise and embrace the multitude of opportunities created by the diversification of industries and the convergence (会聚)of manufacturing and services. Singapore needs to attract foreign talents to complement local talents as industries such as banking and finance, medicine and education start to grow. It will also help to ease the staff crunch（工作人员短缺） in the services sector.
Singapore's long-term economic survival is dependent on its excellent infrastructure, which plays a key role in ensuring productivity and economic growth. To remain competitive in a global economy that is becoming more aggressive every day, we need to take advantage of the opportunities globalisation offers us. It is important that everyone in the country—the low-income, middle-income and high-income—are provided with the support infrastructure to maintain Singapore as an effective social unit. Hence the competitiveness of workers can be sustained.


Featured guest
Dr Rudolf Thurner

Being a practitioner of human resources (HR) I take the view that there exists a competitiveness of workforce of today's rich countries that is by no means declining.
Competition among companies has established the basis of European countries"welfare during the past couple of years. In order to become and stay capable of competing within the market, many of these companies have put into practice rigorous （严格的）programmes entailing （使必须）a reduction in costs, which of course has had a great impact on the number and effort of personnel.
However, as president of the European Association for Personnel Management (EAPM), I certainly know about the challenges for HR managers not only to recruit, but also to bind top-of-the-range employees. The European labour market and prevailing circumstances for HR allocation have changed considerably. There is, on the one hand, the migration of skilled employees due to the liberalisation of the labour market. Furthermore, we experience an increased demand for skilled workers. Both factors have led to a severe regional labour shortage. The competitive capacity of the workforce manifests itself not only in professional, personal and social skills, but also in occupational mobility （职业流动性）and competency of the individual—thus physical and mental mobility. Europeanising and globalising the economic negotiations of companies requires an employee's willingness to change the location where he or she works, if necessary. Likewise, the change of technology calls for the employee's positive attitude towards lifelong learning, as demographic problems oblige the necessity of knowledge transfer. The conditions for a successful employment of the team with a different structure shall be accomplished by diversity management.
Last year the EAPM, together with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), presented a study titled "The Future of HR: Key Challenges Through 2015". Based on findings from surveys with 1,350 executives in 27 EU countries, this study concluded that the most challenging task for HR management in every European country is "talent management"—searching for, developing and retaining talented professionals.
Talent shortages loom（隐现）, both in Europe and in new markets abroad and companies must take steps now if they hope to address these shortages. To fully exploit global labour pools of highly skilled professionals, companies should source their talents from throughout the world. Companies should also ensure that they target their offerings to meet the needs and goals unique to different ethnic groups and nationalities, as well as to women and older workers

winning1030UID: 2538401

Winner announcement

Mr Matthew Bishop

So, that's it. Our two weeks of extremely lively debate are at an end. The final days saw a rush of comments in support of our proposition, that:

"The competitiveness of workers in today's rich countries is in permanent decline"

"I think that Ford and GM are windows into what can happen to the USA's competitiveness and economic health," wrote Daytime, for example. "The fact is that America has by far the most innovative and creative people on earth, but all the talent in the world is worthless if [it is] too arrogant or too lazy or too disorganised to adapt and compete as the new global environment demands. Perhaps we should review the rise and fall of Rome for a few dos and don'ts of empire failure."

Likewise: "I vote pro from the purely psychological aspect," wrote EdgyInChina. "The West, particularly the US, seems to operate with a 'hunkered down' or 'bunker' mentality since Sept 11, 2001. All one needs to do to see the 'decline' is to look at the faces of the workers in the US, then get on a plane and fly to the East (China, South Korea or Australia), and look at the faces of the workers there. Anyone can see the dynamism and hope for the future on their faces…You don't have to look at the statistics."

Yet, in the end, the proposition was defeated by a large margin.

As jk_Canada put it, turning the proposer's final statement on himself, "using the analogy of everyone running faster in the 2004 Olympics implies that everyone ran faster so, in my view, that tends to support Lynda's argument that rich countries will still be able to be competitive even as other countries pick up."

I suspect that the word "permanent" ultimately ensured that the proposition was defeated. Perhaps the result would have been closer if we had used "probably" or "prolonged" instead. Most participants in the debate seem to agree that rich-country workers and governments are certainly going to have to raise their game in response to the fast-growing number of hard-working, competitive, increasingly well-educated workers elsewhere.

Many thanks to our proposer, Jacob Kirkegaard, and opposer, Lynda Gratton, for leading the debate; to the expert featured participants, Debra van Opstal, Allan Schweyer, Richard Freeman, Kent Hughes, David Ang and Rudolf Thurner; and above all, to the many people who posted or read comments in the "debate hall".

One thing is certain: this debate is going to run and run, perhaps including other occasions on Economist.com.

ziron38UID: 2700031

Isuspect that the word "permanent" ultimately ensured that theproposition was defeated. Perhaps the result would have been closer ifwe had used "probably" or "prolonged" instead. Most participants in thedebate seem to agree that rich-country workers and governments arecertainly going to have to raise their game in response to thefast-growing number of hard-working, competitive, increasinglywell-educated workers elsewhere.

I agree using the word probably than permanent.

Nice article though.

Dossier de surendettement