Letters to the Editor

• Disappointed

  I am so disappointed in 'How The World Works'.

  I expected a series exploring globalization in all of its dimensions, including how outsourcing impacts American workers.

  For some, globalization is fun and exciting, and this is just dandy. Yay for You. But American workers face some real issues. Silicon Valley has been slammed. Mr. Leonard, are you in the Bay Area? If so, you are really out of it. Technology employment is below what it was in 2000 and still falling. I read somewhere that the percent of jobs lost around here equalled the Great Depression. And you don't even go into the issues of job lost? Of outsourcing migrating up the skills chain?

  I feel like I'm reading a neo-con columnist on Salon, of all places.

  I'm not saying you should cover only the bad news for American workers, but avoiding dealing with that topic is wrong headed and unhelpful.

  Here are some links that your readers might be interested in, even if you're not. (Hardly radical reading - this is Roach of Morgan Stanley).

  "OECD data put the wage share at 49.5% of business sector GDP in 2004 for the world’s 30 leading developed nations -- down sharply from the 53.2% reading of the mid-1980s. Reductions have been widespread -- including Europe, Japan, and the United States. This is hardly a coincidence. My vote for the explanation continues to go for the “global labor arbitrage” -- a critical outgrowth of globalization and the concomitant integration of cross-border labor markets (see my 5 October 2003 essay, “The Global Labor Arbitrage”)."

  See

  "The End of Labor" http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20060109-mon.html

  And

  "The Big Squeeze"

  http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20050404-mon.html#anchor0

  -- dissent
  [Read dissent's other letters]
  Permalink Wednesday, January 11, 2006 04:02 PM