The NYTimes needn't worry bout Chinese unemployed. Robert Reich has assured us that by re-training ourselves as symbolic analysts there will be high pay for all. And mainstream economists have proven that eliminating jobs through technology creates more jobs than are eliminated. China faces a severe labor shortage, just like the USA.
Gene Coyle On Aug 15, 2011, at 8:38 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: > NY Times Editorial August 14, 2011 > Cheap Robots vs. Cheap Labor > > Workers in China’s export heartland of Guangdong make $200 a month > assembling the consumer goods Americans hold so dear. In Jiangsu, > they make $175. It seems that isn’t cheap enough. > > Terry Gou, the founder and chairman of Foxconn, which employs one > million workers in China making Apple iPads, H.P. computers and > other electronic devices, announced at a company party in Shenzen > last month that he would deploy a million robots at his plants by > 2013 to do much of the labor currently performed by human hands. > > It’s not only Foxconn complaining about expensive labor. Many > companies have moved away from export hubs in coastal areas to > regions like Chongqing, where workers are paid $135 a month. > Others are going farther. Yue Yuen, the world’s biggest shoe > maker, is setting up shop in Cambodia and Bangladesh. > > Foxconn said it wants employees to move “higher up the value > chain.” Certainly, moving up the technology ladder drives economic > development. The tractor and other farming inventions pushed > millions of Americans off the farms. Computers displaced clerical > workers. These breakthroughs created better-paid jobs for educated > workers. But it’s unsettling to see cutting-edge labor-saving > technologies deployed in a country where jobs must be found for > some 300 million Chinese who live off the land. > > Wages are rising, with salaries of many factory workers in China > going up 20 percent to 30 percent annually. But that’s mainly > because the new manufacturing jobs are far from where the > underemployed farmers live. And the Chinese government doesn’t > make it easy for workers to move from where they live to where > they are wanted. > > Even with this kind of wage pressure, pay is still very low. A > Department of Labor study estimated that manufacturing workers in > China earned $1.36 an hour in 2008 — about 4 percent of what an > American worker made and less than wages in Mexico, Brazil, the > Philippines and even India. > > It’s hard to believe that hundreds of millions of Chinese can move > quickly up the economy’s “value chain” to become tomorrow’s nurses > and engineers. In the meantime, as robots take over more work, the > millions trapped in the countryside will have even fewer > opportunities. > _______________________________________________ > 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
