Neither the Lombardy region of Italy (which is the classic regional ecology area) nor Baden Wurttemmberg in Germany, the other classic "innovation" region have sea coasts. M -----Original Message----- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, June 29, 2012 6:30 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; michael gurstein Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Basque Economy Has Lessons for Spain (and elsewhere)
At 20:22 28/06/2012, Mike G wrote: http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/analysis-basque-economy-lessons-spain-10564 8701--finance.html Good article. The Basque region not only has lessons for Spain but for all national governments. The optimal geographical regions for manufacturing economies is usually far smaller than most governments'. Typically the latter are the byproduct of nationalistic warfare or civil war (or the drawing-up of artificial boundaries by post-imperialists). As to the number of Basque-like regions around the world, I would guess that there are probably about 100 of these (with large countries such as America and China having about half-a-dozen each), all of them with access to coastlines and thus cheap oceanic transportation for their products. Some of these have already been proceeding much further in the last 30 years or so into 20-30 super-metropolises, as automation cuts into factory workforces and service-type value-creating occupations abound as a proportion of the national economy. No country without at least one of these super-metropolises can hope to have any sort of bright economic future (in terms of notional GDP). The medium and longer term implications for all this are far from clear, save to say that attempts of nation-state governments in controlling their economies will prove increasingly difficult. Indeed, we already have the first indication of this in that almost all advanced nation-state governments are so much in debt that they'll never be able to repay those debts (and future commitments to welfare) from taxation. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/>
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
