Tom Friedman writes about his experience in India in a New York Times Magazine article, but a good place to start is with Crooks and Liars who describe Tom Friedman’s new book.
On the radio today, Friedman also said that instead of worrying about Social Security, the President would be better off getting our youth invigorated to learn and attack the energy crisis we face because India and China are years ahead of us.
Invigorated? Our workers will invigorate themselves as long as they are healthy, well-educated, and their families are supported so that they can work without interference to build an American economy that can compete in the new Globalized world. The nation that can field the finest military in the world can also field the finest and most competitive economy.
Why is George Bush trying to revamp Social Security while the Chinese and the Indians are getting into position to totally dominate world commerce within a decade or so? Globalization is happening, it is speeding up, and the conservative Republicans and the Bush administration are concerned about lowering our American cost of labor so that we can compete. That will just take us out of the race.
While America is moving to lower labor cost and lower taxes to try to compete globally with Bangladesh, the Chinese and Indians are moving to management with cooperating government that builds more efficient business models.
Twenty years from now it will be perfectly clear that the total Laissez Faire economy cannot compete internationally against a society that has government protecting, improving and educating the people who supply the labor, and working with the business people who create the most effective business models to use those healthy, well-trained workers that come from a properly prepared population.
The education that matters will be in engineering and marketing, not in management, finance and law. We over-reward managers, investors and lawyers. Managers become successful by dong short term actions such as cutting costs in indirect personnel expenses (like training), cut personnel instead of building businesses, and keep costs low by hiring new and foreign engineers and computer systems people, then cutting them at age 40 because they cost too much. The foreign engineers then take their experience and training, return home and whip the sox off their previous American employers.
Only businesses in trouble become more profitable when large numbers of people get laid off. We need to create businesses that are getting better, not trying to save the ones in trouble. It's time to stop handing out undirected and unproductive tax cuts, quit chopping all labor costs to the bone and start spending money (both public and private) to make labor more productive so that it is easier to build world-class businesses in America.
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