I have to disagree with this, if the reference is to the East/SE Asian economies:
>The growth decades > of modern electronics - 1970- 2000 - saw no such demand for semiskilled > labor, and not enough demand for skilled labor to make a big economic > difference. Modern electronics coincides with labor intensive manufacturing in other sectors; textiles, garments, footwear, etc. in this part of Asia. The employment numbers, urban growth, rural-urban migration from Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, etc. informs us that there was a demand for semi-skilled workers. Otherwise how else we explain their rise in comes and structural transformation. Of course we can debate what we mean by semi-skilled labor since lot of assembly work simply pulled in rural residents, including females. I would further periodicise the electronics growth decades in terms of assembly of imported components to manufacturing of final products. A different picture is likely to emerge. But by any measure there was a demand for such workers and their economic conditions have changed. But I agree there was not trade union development, except perhaps in Korea, which had inherited strong unions due to an earlier nationalist movement and increasing agriculture productivity by mechanization is not the answer, at least for large countries like China and India. As an side, yesterday we inaugurated our Confucius Institute (mainly to promote Chinese language and business studies) and the Chinese Ambassador also referred to the importance of increasing agricultural productivity in his speech. Cheers, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Anthony P. D'Costa Professor of Indian Studies Asia Research Centre Copenhagen Business School Porcelaenshaven 24, 3 DK-2000 Frederiksberg Denmark Email:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: +45 3815 2572 Fax: +45 3815 2500 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 12:31 AM, Charlie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Most of this WSJ commentary is "China could..." Pardon the sarcasm, but I'm > sure the CPC wants Mr. Katz's opinion. > > The specific measures for rural education sound like a mere sop. > > The original report noted the hard labor of peasants trudging behind water > buffalo. The commentary admits that even so, rural emigrants to cities pose > a severe employment problem. Don't expect the regime to boost rural > displacement even more by funding farm mechanization in a big way. > > The most interesting remark: "Over the past decade, China eliminated nearly > 20 million factory jobs despite the explosion in industrial output." (I've > seen similar remarks but still don't know an authoritative figure. Anyone > got that?) Productive expansion today simply does not require massive > numbers of industrial workers. The growth decades of auto in the U.S. - > 1920-1960 - required huge numbers of semiskilled workers. They were able to > build trade unions successful in winning economic gains. The growth decades > of modern electronics - 1970- 2000 - saw no such demand for semiskilled > labor, and not enough demand for skilled labor to make a big economic > difference. I tried to lay out how capitalist accumulation has reached a > limit in From Capitalism to Equality: An inquiry into the laws of economic > change. On a historical scale of time, the end of this mode of production is > near. > > Charles Andrews > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
