Brian The Dog on 12/5/2010 at 22:21
Part of the thing about being in a country though is that you accept the decision of the majority of the country, even if your area goes against it. England clearly elected a Conservative government, for instance, but would not have been too upset if there'd been a Labour coalition. Large areas of the South East always go Conservative, and large areas of the North-West of England always go Labour. Not that I have anything against devolving certain powers to Wales, but hearing the Nationalists talk makes you think they forget they only each have around 10% of the total population, and so sometimes have to go along with the majority.
Scots Taffer on 12/5/2010 at 23:19
Quote Posted by faetal
The other elephant in the room of course is outsourcing. The UK has sent millions of jobs overseas (call centres, manufacturing, IT, systems testing etc..)
Uh, I distinctly remember this gathering a head of steam under the Labour government... Weren't there restrictions around banking, personal data, etc, being outsourced that Labour removed? Because I'm pretty fucking sure they did.
inselaffe on 13/5/2010 at 01:05
And you honestly think conservatives won't do the same if not worse?
Surely those are the kind of things you'd normally support anyway? Or are some of your best friends homeless?
[insert petulant dethtoll rage post on matters he knows nothing about]
Chade on 13/5/2010 at 01:34
Quote Posted by faetal
Doesn't this depend on the sources?
Sure man. All I did was do a few google scholar searches and skim some abstracts. If you want to put in a bit more effort, go ahead.
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
we now need to put much more focus on quality of jobs - not just the quantity of available mcJobs.
The economy is a complex thing, and I'm not really qualified to have "intuitions" about it. But what the hell. Intuitively, I would have thought that this is an argument in favour of outsourcing. If the UK is importing call centre and data entry services while exporting financial services, isn't that improving the quality of jobs in the UK? Isn't it a little wierd to say that competing with india in the call centre business will
reduce the quantity of mcjobs?
Of course social or economic transitions are going to be a little bumpy, which is an important consideration as well.
Anyway, a quick google again seems to confirm my intuition - or more likely my biased "reliability" meter is confirming my own bias. But it's not midnight here now, so I can actually remember to reference something for once:
Quote Posted by http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/wp9743.pdf
This paper examines the effect of globalization in the advanced economies, focussing particularly on the claim that increased economic integration has widened the gap between the wages of more skilled and less skilled workers. The broad consensues of research is that globalization, both in terms of increased trade as well as increased capital mobility [outsourcing] and foreign direct investment, has had only a modest effect on wages. Instead, changes in technology have led to a persuasive shift in demand for labour that has favoured skilled workers to the detriment of less skilled workers.
faetal on 13/5/2010 at 08:57
That paper was published in 1997, most major outsourcing in the UK has taken place in the last 15 years, so I'm not convinced a 13 year old paper can cut it on commentating. Not to mention that the research was funded by the IMF, who have a vested interest in globalisation practices de facto.
What we need is some straight figures which show how many jobs have been removed from the UK, because this will underline my point about tackling the benefit culture, which can only be done if there are jobs for people to do. I'm not interested in business and economics interests' take on whether it increases efficiency, as most business interests will be in favour due to the savings in cost. What I want to know is to what extent have low skill jobs in the UK (we'll leave IT out if it makes it easier, as I don't think disenfranchised IT professionals are the ones predominantly on benefit) have been moved overseas, because the simple fact is, that that exact number must correlate to an increase in unemployment and benefit claims, unless more jobs have been created elsewhere.
[EDIT] Also, I wasn't claiming that it had an effect on wages, as it doesn't, the jobs just get moved to where wages are already low. The wages stay the same, but the jobs move.
Chade on 13/5/2010 at 09:18
Hrmm, I wondered if you'd accept a paper from the IMF. Personally I think you're going off the deep end a little bit there ... in fact, despite your distrust, the abstract actually backs up some of your arguments, as they suggest that globalization reduces demand for low skilled labour in advanced economies. But fair enough: it's true that part of their charter is to promote international trade and that the paper is old. I'm still waiting for your references.
I think the issue is vastly more complicated then you are giving it credit for. Outsourcing is not a one way street. People are constantly bemoaning that places like the UK "don't make things anymore" ... that's because you export a lot of services! And I'm sure there's many other complications on top of that.
If all you do is count the number of people who have directly lost a job to overseas, then of course you're going to "find" that outsourcing is a Bad Thing. You're also going to find you've got a rather large sampling problem.
faetal on 13/5/2010 at 11:44
I admit that I have not provided much rigour for my stance, which is fine being that this is a net debate - so whether or not I feel I get the point across has only limited impact. I'd spend more time if I could, but I'm currently in the midst of preparing research for an international conference which needs doing in the next two weeks, so whatever spare time I get is unlikely to be going towards searching for academic references, as that's what I'm doing looads of at the moment anyway ;p
If you have the time, I would be interested to know if there is any source which tells how many jobs have left the UK in the last say 10-15 years, if possible, with increase in per capita head count to dampen for any population fluctuations. That information could give a vague idea of what amount of unemployment roughly we can presume has been created. It's all very well to outsource low skill work to save money for businesses, and it can hardly be denied that it is happening a lot, but there are just as many unskilled people in the Uk as there were before and they now have fewer jobs and therefore a lot live on benefit. My point is that as gratifying as it appears to have Cameron waving his "I'll get people off of benefits" argument about, it is not going to help the state of this nation if people have their benefits stopped, but are still combing the dregs of job pages for jobs that are increasingly thin on the ground.
DDL on 13/5/2010 at 16:44
Quote Posted by faetal
If you have the time, I would be interested to know if there is any source which tells how many jobs have left the UK in the last say 10-15 years, if possible, with increase in per capita head count to dampen for any population fluctuations.
I'll freely admit I'm not well versed in the subject, but I would guess that if you factor in things like "increased/decreased hiring in response to economic climate" and "general flux in job availability due to technological advances" and so on it becomes almost impossible to even approximately estimate the 'number of outsourced jobs' as any sort of useful benchmark relative to non-outsourced jobs.
ilweran on 13/5/2010 at 20:44
Quote Posted by Brian The Dog
Part of the thing about being in a country though is that you accept the decision of the majority of the country, even if your area goes against it. England clearly elected a Conservative government, for instance, but would not have been too upset if there'd been a Labour coalition. Large areas of the South East always go Conservative, and large areas of the North-West of England always go Labour. Not that I have anything against devolving certain powers to Wales, but hearing the Nationalists talk makes you think they forget they only each have around 10% of the total population, and so sometimes have to go along with the majority.
Wales has suffered a lot from decisions made largely outside of Wales- from attempts to destroy it's language and culture, to people being forced from their homes so valleys could be used as reservoirs to provide water for English cities, to the destruction of entire industries by Thatcher and the long-lasting economic impact of that.
I don't believe Wales should leave the UK, the idea is completely ridiculous, but that doesn't mean I can't also be annoyed about the election result and pleased that imo Wales voted the right way.
Al_B on 13/5/2010 at 21:03
Quote Posted by ilweran
I don't believe Wales should leave the UK
Shame. I'd vote for that.
(I actually do like Wales - it keeps the West of England from falling into the sea)
