(no subject)

[randomness]

Daniel Davies, in a reply to a comment on his D-Squared Digest blog:

I think I've always been consistent on this apart from a few moments of rage, we do need to accept that the fact that loads of people belive that they have very real concerns about immigration means that there's something going wrong with our system; specifically, in my opinion, that our system doesn't look after the working class very well at all. The fact that neoliberalism and globalisation aren't delivering the goods for the working class is a genuine problem that politicians genuinely need to address, but they need to address it properly. That doesn't mean playing anti-immigrant politics, any more than having the medical profession do something about poor doctoring means handing out fish oil pills. But similarly, I don't think the Tom Friedman approach of just repeating that "globalisation brings benefits to all" works either.

Comments

[nathanjw]

Daniel Davies (No mention of whom is complete without a mention of the One Minute MBA).

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yes, my bad, and correcting now. :)

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

That's all true, but it's also damned hard to fix because the working classes of the developed countries have (for the past century) done so very much better than the similarly-skilled classes of the undeveloped countries. With the "flattening of the world" (dramatically improved transport), your wealth is determined much more by the supply/demand of people with similar skills in the world as a whole, rather than the wealth of people in your immediate vicinity.

But we could also note that the system takes care of the working class of China very, very well. Their income has risen something like 10% a year for the last 30 years. I'll be you haven't done as well. Should we take that from them because people who live in the lap of luxury (from the Chinese point of view) are losing money?