These are real achievements. But alongside them are bigger, but less palpable, failures, both on the economy and in politics. The troubled world economy and the end of the great commodity boom see article have hurt Brazil. But it has fared worse than its Latin American neighbours. She has damaged both Petrobras, the state oil company, and the ethanol industry by holding down the price of petrol to mitigate the inflationary impact of her loose fiscal policy.
A bribery scandal in Petrobras underlines that it is the PT, and not its opponents as Ms Rousseff claims, who cannot be trusted with what was once a national jewel. No wonder the government has been unable to find the extra money for health care and transport that the protesters demanded. For the past 12 years Lula, who still has the ear of the poor, has caricatured the PSDB as a party of heartless fat cats.
He promises to put the country back on the path of economic growth. His record, and that of his party, makes his claim credible. He did so largely by cutting bureaucracy. He has an impressive team of advisers led by Arminio Fraga, a former Central Bank governor who is respected by investors. As well as a return to sound macroeconomic policies, his team promise to slash the number of ministries, make Congress more accountable to voters, simplify the tax system and boost private investment in infrastructure.
Mr Neves deserves to win. He has fought a dogged campaign and proved that he can make his economic policies work.
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With luck the endorsement of Ms Silva, a former PT member born in poverty, should bolster his case. Brazil needs growth and better government. Mr Neves is likelier to deliver these than Ms Rousseff is. From the print edition: Por lo que era de esperar que hubiese perdido Rousseff en la primera vuelta de las elecciones presidenciales el 5 de octubre pasado. Cuando enfrentaba los ataques a veces solapados de Rousseff, Silva trastabillaba. En esta competencia, el principal activo de Rousseff es la gratitud del pueblo por el pleno empleo, los mejores salarios y un conjunto de programas sociales efectivos: Pero le ha ido peor que a sus vecinos latinoamericanos.
Ha hecho pocos esfuerzos por abordar los problemas estructurales del Brasil: Su trayectoria, y la de su partido, le otorgan credibilidad. Posee un equipo impresionante de consejeros liderados por Arminio Fraga, antiguo presidente del Banco Central, y respetado por los inversionistas. El Brasil necesita crecimiento y un gobierno mejor.
The workplace of the future General field: As our special report this week explains, firms of all types are harnessing AI to forecast demand, hire workers and deal with customers. Such grandiose forecasts kindle anxiety as well as hope. Many fret that AI could destroy jobs faster than it creates them. Barriers to entry from owning and generating data could lead to a handful of dominant firms in every industry. Using AI, managers can gain extraordinary control over their employees. Amazon has patented a wristband that tracks the hand movements of warehouse workers and uses vibrations to nudge them into being more efficient.
Workday, a software firm, crunches around 60 factors to predict which employees will leave. Humanyze, a startup, sells smart ID badges that can track employees around the office and reveal how well they interact with colleagues. Surveillance at work is nothing new. Factory workers have long clocked in and out; bosses can already see what idle workers do on their computers. But AI makes ubiquitous surveillance worthwhile, because every bit of data is potentially valuable. Few laws govern how data are collected at work, and many employees unguardedly consent to surveillance when they sign their employment contract.
Where does all this lead? Trust and telescreens Start with the benefits. AI ought to improve productivity. Slack, a workplace messaging app, helps managers assess how quickly employees accomplish tasks. Companies will see when workers are not just dozing off but also misbehaving. They are starting to use AI to screen for anomalies in expense claims, flagging receipts from odd hours of the night more efficiently than a carbon-based beancounter can.
Employees will gain, too. Thanks to strides in computer vision, AI can check that workers are wearing safety gear and that no one has been harmed on the factory floor. Some will appreciate more feedback on their work and welcome a sense of how to do better. Machines can help ensure that pay rises and promotions go to those who deserve them.
That starts with hiring. People often have biases but algorithms, if designed correctly, can be more impartial. Software can flag patterns that people might miss. Algorithms will pick up differences in pay between genders and races, as well as sexual harassment and racism that human managers consciously or unconsciously overlook.
Algorithms may not be free of the biases of their programmers. They can also have unintended consequences. The length of a commute may predict whether an employee will quit a job, but this focus may inadvertently harm poorer applicants. Older staff might work more slowly than younger ones and could risk losing their positions if all AI looks for is productivity.
And surveillance may feel Orwellian—a sensitive matter now that people have begun to question how much Facebook and other tech giants know about their private lives. Companies are starting to monitor how much time employees spend on breaks. Veriato, a software firm, goes so far as to track and log every keystroke employees make on their computers in order to gauge how committed they are to their company. Tracking the trackers Some people are better placed than others to stop employers going too far.
If your skills are in demand, you are more likely to be able to resist than if you are easy to replace. Paid-by-the-hour workers in low-wage industries such as retailing will be especially vulnerable. Even then, the choice in some jobs will be between being replaced by a robot or being treated like one. As regulators and employers weigh the pros and cons of AI in the workplace, three principles ought to guide its spread. First, data should be anonymised where possible. Microsoft, for example, has a product that shows individuals how they manage their time in the office, but gives managers information only in aggregated form.
Second, the use of AI ought to be transparent. Employees should be told what technologies are being used in their workplaces and which data are being gathered. As a matter of routine, algorithms used by firms to hire, fire and promote should be tested for bias and unintended consequences. Last, countries should let individuals request their own data, whether they are ex-workers wishing to contest a dismissal or jobseekers hoping to demonstrate their ability to prospective employers.
The march of AI into the workplace calls for trade-offs between privacy and performance. A fairer, more productive workforce is a prize worth having, but not if it shackles and dehumanises employees. Striking a balance will require thought, a willingness for both employers and employees to adapt, and a strong dose of humanity. En las empresas invirtieron cerca de USD Los supervisores que usen la IA van a tener un control extraordinario sobre sus empleados. La vigilancia en el trabajo no es reciente.
Son escasas las leyes que rigen la manera como los datos se obtienen en el ambiente laboral: Confianza y telepantallas Comencemos con las ventajas. La IA debe incrementar la productividad. Las computadoras pueden ayudar a asegurar de que los aumentos y las promociones los reciban quienes los merezcan; comenzando por el reclutamiento: A pesar de sus beneficios, la IA tiene un potencial de problemas. En segundo lugar, el uso de la IA debe ser transparente. They understood that the UK, and all its collective trials and achievements—the industrial revolution, the Empire, victory over the Nazis, the welfare state—were as much a part of their patrimony as the Scottish Highlands or English cricket.
They knew, instinctively, that these concentric rings of identity were complementary, not opposed. At least, they used to. After the referendum on Scottish independence on September 18th, one of those layers—the UK—may cease to exist, at least in the form recognisable since the Act of Union three centuries ago.
More and more Scots are deciding that the UK, which their soldiers, statesmen, philosophers and businessmen have done so much to build and ornament, does not cradle their Scottishness but smothers it. That outcome, once unthinkable, would be bad for Scotland and tragic for what remained of the UK. The damage a split would do The rump of Britain would be diminished in every international forum: Since Britain broadly stands for free trade and the maintenance of international order, this would be bad for the world. Its status as a nuclear power would be doubtful: The prospect of a British exit from the EU would scare investors much more than a possible Scottish exit from Britain see article.
The people of Scotland alone will decide the future of Britain, and they are not obliged to worry about what becomes of the state they would leave. At the heart of the nationalist campaign is the claim that Scotland would be a more prosperous and more equal country if it went solo.
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It is rich in oil and inherently decent, say the nationalists, but impoverished by a government in Westminster that has also imposed callous policies. They blame successive British governments for almost every ill that has befallen Scotland, from the decline of manufacturing industry to ill-health to the high price of sending parcels in the Highlands. Labour and the Tories are of a piece, he suggests, in their disregard for Scotland.
If Westminster has not reversed all the deleterious effects of globalisation and technology, that is because to do so is impossible. To break up a country over such small, recent annoyances would be nuts. Scotland would not, in fact, be richer alone. But oil revenues are erratic. If an independent state were to smooth these fluctuations by setting up an oil fund, it would have less cash to spend now. In any case, the oil is gradually running out. In order to maintain state spending after it is gone, taxes would have to rise.
And a crunch might come much sooner. Foreign investors and big businesses that mostly serve English customers could well move south. It might relent, but only if Scotland agrees to such strict oversight that independence ends up meaning little. They are far too sanguine. If Scotland goes, the rest of Britain will be furious, both at the Scots and at their own leaders, who will be impelled to drive a hard bargain. Mr Salmond is on stronger ground when he argues that if Scotland does not leave Britain it might be dragged out of the EU against its will.
This is indeed a danger, but in going independent Scotland would swap the possibility of an EU exit for a certain future as a small, vulnerable country. Its best hope of remaining influential is to stay put, and fight the Eurosceptics. A lot to lose In the end the referendum will turn not on calculations of taxes and oil revenue, but on identity and power.
The idea that Scots can shape their own destiny, both at the referendum and afterwards, is exhilarating. Moreover, as Westminster politicians of all stripes have hastily made clear, if Scotland votes No, the devolved administration will soon get so much clout that the practical difference between staying in the union and leaving it will narrow.
That would also lead to the distribution of power away from Westminster and to other bits of Britain, which should have happened long ago. So by staying in, Scots will not just save the union but enhance it, as they have for years. For the UK, with all its triumphs and eccentricities, belongs to Scots as much as it does to the English—even if increasing numbers of them seem ready to disown that glorious, hard-earned heritage, and to simplify their identities by stripping out one of those concentric rings.
That goes against both the spirit of this fluid century—in which most people have multiple identities, whether of place, ethnicity or religion—and the evidence of the preceding three. For all its tensions and rivalries, and sometimes because of them, the history of the union shows that the Scots, Welsh, English and Northern Irish are stronger, more tolerant and more imaginative together than they would be apart.
Dice que los laboristas y los conservadores desprecian igualmente a los escoceses. Y sin embargo ya Escocia controla la mayor parte de sus asuntos; sin embargo el Partido Nacionalista del Sr. Emerging economies Hold the catch-up General field: Economics Source text - English Emerging economies Hold the catch-up Incomes in the developing world are no longer speeding toward those in the rich Sep 13th From the print edition THE financial crisis was grim, but the most important global economic development in the early 21st century was a positive one: Between and output per person in poor countries excluding China grew an average of 3.
Global poverty rates tumbled. Unfortunately, the era of rapid catch-up already seems to be over see article. Growth has fallen sharply in many emerging economies. In their output per person, on average, grew just 1. At that pace convergence would take more than a century. And the growth outlook is darkening further. The political and economic consequences of this slow-down in convergence will be profound.
Billions of people will be poorer for a lot longer than they might have expected just a few years ago. Companies that bet on vibrant emerging markets as the main source of future profits will need a new strategy. A lot therefore rides on understanding why growth has slowed, and how to speed it up once more. But strip away the effects of the business cycle and the one-offs, and there are several reasons why the pace of catch-up is likely to be permanently slower. One is that the boom in the s was to some extent a one-off itself. And China cannot industrialise itself from scratch again.
On top of that there are signs that the march of technology may be making it harder to catch up. A standard route for poor countries to become wealthier is low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing. Growth rates soar as people move from the land and into factories to sew T-shirts or assemble toys.
Wages in manufacturing tend to catch up faster and more completely than in other sectors. But in the 21st-century digital economy, basic manufacturing is becoming less important. The assembly of goods adds less value than the design and engineering work at which rich countries excel. Technology has made manufacturing less labour-intensive, giving firms less incentive to seek out cheap labour in poor countries. If catch-up is harder than a decade ago, it is not impossible. The basic laws of economics—that poorer countries with less capital ought to grow faster than rich ones—still hold. But prospering in a knowledge-based, increasingly digital, global economy will demand a broader reform agenda.
Freeing trade is as important as ever, but barriers must now be lowered in services as well as goods. Education becomes even more vital if emerging economies cannot count on moving barely literate workers from fields to factories.
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The roads, railways and ports that were essential to fast growth in the manufacturing era will remain essential, but adequate infrastructure will have to include reliable broadband and mobile coverage too. Because both services and knowledge industries are concentrated in cities, urban policy will matter more. In some places that is already happening. Others, from Turkey to Indonesia, are still complacent. Regaining momentum will not be easy, but countries that are not prepared to change do not stand a chance.
Apetito por las reformas Algunas de las debilidades actuales son temporales. Sin embargo China no puede volver a industrializarse desde cero otra vez. Porque tanto la industria de los servicios como la del conocimiento se concentran en las ciudades: En algunas partes ello ocurre ya. The rise and rise of Xi Jinping General field: This has sometimes been ignored: Deng himself acted the despot in times of crisis.
He has become the most powerful Chinese ruler certainly since Deng, and possibly since Mao. Whether this is good or bad for China depends on how Mr Xi uses his power. Mao pushed China to the brink of social and economic collapse, and Deng steered it on the right economic path but squandered a chance to reform it politically. If Mr Xi used his power to reform the way power works in China, he could do his country great good.
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So far, the signs are mixed. Taking on the party It may well be that the decision to promote Mr Xi as a single personality at the expense of the group was itself a collective one. Some in China have been hankering for a strongman; a politician who would stamp out corruption, reverse growing inequalities and make the country stand tall abroad a task Mr Xi has been taking up with relish—seearticle.
So have many foreign businessfolk, who want a leader who would smash the monopolies of a bloated state sector and end years of dithering over economic reforms. However the decision came about, Mr Xi has grabbed it and run with it. He has taken charge of secretive committees responsible for reforming government, overhauling the armed forces, finance and cyber-security.
His campaign against corruption is the most sweeping in decades. The generals, wisely, bow to him: He is the first leader to employ a big team to build his public profile. But he also has a flair for it—thanks to his stature in a height-obsessed country he would tower over all his predecessors except Mao , his toughness and his common touch.
One moment he is dumpling-eating with the masses, the next riding in a minibus instead of the presidential limousine. He is now more popular than any leader since Mao see article. All of this helps Mr Xi in his twofold mission. His first aim is to keep the economy growing fast enough to stave off unrest, while weaning it off an over-dependence on investment in property and infrastructure that threatens to mire it in debt.
Mr Xi made a promising start last November, when he declared that market forces would play a decisive role not even Deng had the courage to say that. There have since been encouraging moves, such as giving private companies bigger stakes in sectors that were once the exclusive preserve of state-owned enterprises, and selling shares in firms owned by local governments to private investors.
Mr Xi has also started to overhaul the household-registration system, a legacy of the Mao era that makes it difficult for migrants from the countryside to settle permanently in cities. He has relaxed the one-child-per-couple policy, a Deng-era legacy that has led to widespread abuses. The latest data suggest the economy is cooling more rapidly than the government had hoped see article.
Much will depend on how far he gets with the second, harder, part of his mission: The question is whether Mr Xi is prepared for the law to apply to everyone, without fear or favour. His drive against corruption suggests that the answer is a qualified no. The campaign is characterised by a Maoist neglect of institutions.
It has succeeded in instilling fear among officials, but has done little to deal with the causes of graft: Mr Xi needs to set up an independent body to fight corruption, instead of leaving the job to party investigators and the feuding factions they serve. He should also require officials to declare all sources of income, property and other assets. Instead, he has been rounding up activists calling for such changes almost as vigorously as he has been confronting corruption.
In the absence of legal reform, he risks becoming a leader of the old stripe, who pursues vendettas in the name of fighting wrongdoers. That will have two consequences: Mr Xi is making some of the right noises. Reforms are being tinkered with to make local courts less beholden to local governments. The party should stop meddling in the appointment of judges and, indeed, of legislators.
The effect of such reforms would be huge. They would signal a willingness by the party to begin loosening its monopoly of power and accepting checks and balances. Deng once said that economic reform would fail without political reform. He should use his enormous power for the greatest good, and change the system. Algunas veces esto ha sido ignorado: Todo lo cual le apoya a Xi en sus dos misiones. Xi igualmente ha comenzado a actualizar el sistema de registro de hogares, que es una reliquia de la era de Mao que pone trabas a quienes desean mudarse del campo a la ciudad.
Xi suena bien algunas veces. Dice que desea que los tribunales le ayuden a "enjaular al poder. Venezuela's economy General field: The government insists it has the means and the will to pay foreign bondholders. Few observers expect it to miss the deadline. Even if it stays current on its financial dues, Venezuela is behind on other bills.
Using an overvalued official rate means that the country is not making as much money as it could: Even worse than inflation is scarcity. The central bank stopped publishing monthly scarcity figures earlier this year, but independent estimates suggest that more than a third of basic goods are missing from the shelves. According to Freddy Ceballos, president of the federation of pharmacies Fefarven , six out of every ten medicines are unavailable.
The list runs from basic painkillers, such as paracetamol, to treatments for cancer and HIV. One unexpected side-effect has been a sharp increase in demand for coconut water, which Venezuelans normally buy to mix with whisky. Nowadays it is sought out more for its supposed anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties.
Unable to obtain what they need through normal channels, people are having to improvise. Those lucky enough to have friends or relatives abroad arrange for emergency relief. The mess is a reflection not just of import-dependence and a shortage of dollars, but also the mismanagement of domestic industry. Some food producers have been nationalised; price controls often leave manufacturers operating at a loss.
Some price rises have recently been authorised, but manufacturers say it is impossible to maintain normal output with such stop-go policies. The prospects for a change of course are gloomy. Bondholders may well keep getting paid. Al cierre del segundo trimestre las cuentas por pagar comerciales de Venezuela sobrepasan los El gobierno insiste en que tiene los medios y la voluntad de pagarle a los tenedores de bonos internacionales.
Pocos observadores esperan que ocurra lo contrario. Aun cuando Venezuela siga solvente con sus obligaciones financieras, ya se encuentra en mora con otras deudas. Un efecto colateral inesperado ha sido el fuerte incremento en la demanda de agua de coco, que los venezolanos normalmente mezclan con el whisky. Los sortarios que tienen amigos o familiares en el extranjero les piden ayuda de emergencia. Ya ha instituido el cierre nocturno de la frontera con Colombia, y planea tomar las huellas digitales de la gente para evitar las compras "excesivas". America and Islamic State. On September 23rd America led air strikes in Syria against both the warriors of Islamic State IS and a little-known al-Qaeda cell, called the Khorasan group, which it claimed was about to attack the West.
A president who has always seen his main mission as nation-building at home is now using military force in six countries—Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Preventing the group from carving out a caliphate means, at the very least, ensuring that neither of these two countries affords it a haven see article. But more than the future of IS is at stake in the streets of Raqqa and Mosul. It is a test that he has been failing until now. IS et al The sense that America is locked in relative decline has been growing in recent years, as it has languished under the shadow of the financial crisis and two long, difficult wars.
Why should a newly rich country like China take lectures about how to run its affairs from a president who struggles even to get his own budget through? America, meanwhile, seems swamped by the forces of disorder, either unable or unwilling to steady a world that is spinning out of control. IS embodies this frightening trend. It is, in the jargon, a non-state actor, and it thrives on chaos. With each new humiliation of the governments in Iraq and Syria, it has accumulated more wealth, territory and recruits. Its rise has also reflected American policy.
First, the poorly thought-out intervention of George W. When Syrians rose up against the regime of Bashar Assad, the president stood back in the hope that things would sort themselves out—leaving Mr Assad free to commit atrocities against his own people. About , Syrians have died and 10m have been driven from their homes. Denied early American support, the moderate Syrian opposition has fragmented, leaving the field to the ruthless and well-organised IS. Standing back has not worked well elsewhere in the world, either.
He wanted the United States to be seen less as a unilateral bully, more as the leader of world opinion. Yet when America stepped back, its allies stepped back, too. The countries that most eagerly came forward were its rivals, such as Russia and China. IS has induced a change of heart among the American people. Before vicious extremists seized the city of Mosul and began to cut off Western heads on social media, Americans doubted the merit of further military action in the Middle East.
When they realised that IS threatened them directly, they began to demand protection. Mr Obama therefore has a chance not just to strike a blow for order in the Middle East, but also to give the declinists pause. From axis of evil to network of death He has brute force on his side. The disastrous mismanagement of post-invasion Iraq has tended to eclipse the overwhelming potency of American firepower at the beginning. In six short weeks in the spring of America and its allies defeated the , troops of Saddam Hussein with the loss of only American lives.
Never in history has a single country had such military dominance. It has not suddenly evaporated. The bigger question is whether Mr Obama can carry off delicate diplomacy. The lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan is that firepower alone will not prevail. Indeed, if America comes to be seen by Sunni Arabs as nothing more than a Shia air force, strikes will only bind IS to the local people.
If he is to win the argument in Iraq and Syria, Mr Obama needs coalitions and partnerships. For that he must get the diplomacy right. So far he has done well. He insisted on the replacement of Nuri al-Maliki, the Shia-chauvinist former prime minister of Iraq, with Haider al-Abadi, who is making efforts to bring Sunnis into government. He sent John Kerry, his secretary of state, to recruit regional Sunni powers such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to try to persuade Sunnis in Iraq and Syria that he is not taking sides against their branch of Islam.
There is much more for Mr Obama to do. The coalition-building is not complete. Holding the alliance together will require patience, flexibility and a judicious mix of bullying and seduction. Mr Obama will have to put in many more long hours on the telephone with world leaders than he has done so far. And even if he succeeds in substantially destroying IS, new horrors may emerge from the ensuing vacuum if he does not help benign local forces to fill it. Although the mission to stop IS will be long and hard, it is one that no other nation could even contemplate.
Mr Obama is right to relaunch it. Now he must see it through. Por lo pronto, los EEUU lucen empantanados ante las fuerzas del desorden; sin capacidad o voluntad de enderezarle el rumbo a un mundo que gira sin control. El EI pone de manifiesto esta tendencia preocupante. En la jerga, se trata de un "actor no estatal" que prospera con el caos.
Por lo tanto Obama no solo tiene la oportunidad de atacar para restaurar el orden en el medio oriente, sino de detener el declive. Del eje del mal a la red de la muerte Tiene la fuerza bruta a su favor. En tan solo seis semanas durante la primavera de , los EEUU y sus aliados derrotaron a los Y no se ha evaporado de repente.
Si Obama quiere ganar en Siria y en Iraq, debe buscar coaliciones y alianzas. Para lo cual debe conducir bien su diplomacia. Hasta ahora lo ha hecho lo correcto. Los norteamericanos van a quejarse de su papel de superpotencia. Ahora tiene que llevarla hasta el final. Wealth without workers, workers without wealth Economist Oct 4th, General field: The great inventions of the 19th century, from electric power to the internal-combustion engine, transformed the human condition.
Yet for workers who lived through the upheaval, the experience of industrialisation was harsh: The modern digital revolution—with its hallmarks of computer power, connectivity and data ubiquity—has brought iPhones and the internet, not crowded tenements and cholera. But, as our special report explains, it is disrupting and dividing the world of work on a scale not seen for more than a century.
Vast wealth is being created without many workers; and for all but an elite few, work no longer guarantees a rising income. Computers that can do your job and eat your lunch So far, the upheaval has been felt most by low- and mid-skilled workers in rich countries. The incomes of the highly educated—those with the skills to complement computers—have soared, while pay for others lower down the skill ladder has been squeezed. In half of all OECD countries real median wages have stagnated since Countries where employment is growing at a decent clip, such as Germany or Britain, are among those where wages have been squeezed most.
In the coming years the disruption will be felt by more people in more places, for three reasons. First, the rise of machine intelligence means more workers will see their jobs threatened. The effects will be felt further up the skill ladder, as auditors, radiologists and researchers of all sorts begin competing with machines.
Technology will enable some doctors or professors to be much more productive, leaving others redundant. Second, wealth creation in the digital era has so far generated little employment. Entrepreneurs can turn their ideas into firms with huge valuations and hardly any staff. Third, these shifts are now evident in emerging economies. Now, as the costs of labour rise and those of automated manufacturing fall, Foxconn is swapping workers for robots.
Moving the barely literate masses from fields to factories has become harder. But, thanks to technological change, its educated elite is now earning high salaries selling IT services to foreigners. The digital revolution has made an industrial one uneconomic. Bridging the gap None of this means that the digital revolution is bad for humanity. This newspaper believes firmly that technology is, by and large, an engine of progress.
IT has transformed the lives of billions for the better, often in ways that standard income measures do not capture. Communication, knowledge and entertainment have become all but free. Few workers would want to go back to a world without the internet, the smartphone or Facebook, even for a pay increase. Technology also offers new ways to earn a living. Etsy, an online marketplace for arts and crafts, enables hobbyists to sell their wares around the world. Uber, the company that is disrupting the taxi business, allows tens of thousands of drivers to work as and when they want.
Nonetheless, the growing wedge between a skilled elite and ordinary workers is worrying. Angry voters whose wages are stagnant will seek scapegoats: In poor countries dashed expectations and armies of underemployed people are a recipe for extremism and unrest. Governments across the globe therefore have a huge interest in helping remove the obstacles that keep workers from wealth. The answer is not regulation or a larger state. High minimum wages will simply accelerate the replacement of workers by machines.
Punitive tax rates will deter entrepreneurship and scare off the skilled on whom prosperity in the digital era depends. The best thing governments can do is to raise the productivity and employability of less-skilled workers. That means getting rid of daft rules that discourage hiring, like protections which make it difficult to sack poor performers. It means better housing policy and more investment in transport, to help people work in productive cities such as London and Mumbai.
It means revamping education. Not every worker can or should complete an advanced degree, but too many people in poor countries still cannot read and too many in rich ones fail to complete secondary school. In future, education should not be just for the young: Yet although governments can mitigate the problem, they cannot solve it. As technology progresses and disrupts more jobs, more workers will be employable only at lower wages. The modest earnings of the generation that technology leaves behind will need to be topped up with tax credits or wage subsidies.
That need not mean imposing higher tax rates on the affluent, but it does mean closing the loopholes and cutting the giveaways from which they benefit. In the 19th century, it took the best part of years for governments to make the investment in education that enabled workers to benefit from the industrial revolution.
The digital revolution demands a similarly bold, but swifter, response. Hay innovadores que pueden convertir sus ideas en empresas, con valuaciones enormes, y casi sin personal. Con menos de Ahora, a medida que se elevan los costos laborales y caen los de la manufactura automatizada, Foxconn cambia trabajadores por robots. Los gobiernos del mundo entero tienen por lo tanto grandes incentivos para eliminar las trabas que mantienen a sus trabajadores en la pobreza.
Lo mejor que los gobiernos pueden hacer es elevar la productividad y la empleabilidad de trabajadores poco cualificados: Aun cuando los gobiernos son capaces de atenuar el problema, no pueden solucionarlo. Currencies Buck to the future Economist Oct 11 General field: Economics Source text - English Currencies Buck to the future Is the dollar starting another long-term rally? The greenback has risen 6.
It recently hit a six-year high against the yen and a two-year high against the euro. The trend reflects confidence in the prospects for the American economy, combined with worries about the health of the rest of the world. On October 7th the IMF lowered its forecast for global growth in to 3.
Some of the biggest reductions were in Europe: In contrast, the latest American data showed a , jump in jobs in September and a fall in the unemployment rate to 5. This relatively strong economic performance has reinforced expectations that the Federal Reserve will start to push up interest rates next year while the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan will keep them low. The carry trade has been difficult in recent years because nearly all countries in the rich world have held rates close to zero.
But there is now a significant carry in the bond markets, where ten-year Treasury bonds yield one-and-a-half percentage points more than German bonds of the same maturity—a very wide gap by historical standards. A stronger economy also makes American companies more appealing to international investors.
That increases the demand for dollars. The big question, however, is how long this trend will last. As the chart shows, the latest rebound is small by the standards of the huge rallies in the early s and the late s. A strengthening dollar has its advantages for Americans.
Foreign investors will be keener to hold Treasury bonds, making it easier for the government to fund its deficit. American tourists will find their money goes further on foreign trips. Imports will fall in price, keeping inflation down despite the healthy economy. But there are downsides too. A stronger dollar will have the opposite effect on the European and Japanese economies, making their exports cheaper and pushing up import prices.
Policymakers in both areas may welcome that, since they are struggling to generate growth and avoid deflation. Investors were also pouring money into emerging markets, enticed by their better growth prospects, leading some countries including Brazil to impose capital controls. A stronger dollar may now prompt capital to flow out of such countries just as fast. That will be a particular problem in places where governments or firms have borrowed significantly in dollars, since their revenues are denominated in local currency but their liabilities in dollars.
A prolonged dollar rally may also have political ramifications. A paper by Douglas Campbell of the University of California, Davis, found that the previous two big dollar surges led to a decline in manufacturing jobs. That provoked complaints from American politicians that first Japan and then China were unfairly suppressing their currencies to take American jobs. It is easy to imagine the same arguments resurfacing this time, with the obvious target being Germany. It already has a current-account surplus of 7.
Governments resisted calls for protectionism in the past, but their economies were stronger then. It may be harder to ward off in future, given that voters have already been angered by years of austerity and declines in inflation-adjusted wages. Algunas de las mayores reducciones se situaron en Europa: Sin embargo existen desventajas. Call centres at the end of the line General field: IT Information Technology Source text - English Call centres The end of the line Call centres have created millions of good jobs in the emerging world.
These can be department stores, cinemas or bookshops—anything that will fill a large space and lure customers past smaller boutiques. The idea is that a cinema-goer might pause to buy a leather jacket; and, in a lovely symbiosis, the monied youngsters who shop for clothes and sunglasses might decide to catch a film. Take a lift to the top floor of the new SM Aura shopping centre in Manila, and you will find not a cinema or a Neiman Marcus but an enormous call centre. In the Philippines, the arrangement makes perfect sense. Like shops, call centres need young, middle-class people—but as workers, not customers.
This one, run by Teleperformance, a multinational based in France, expects to get about walk-in job applicants a day. They also produce them, in huge quantities. Were there no call centres in the Philippines, there would be many fewer middle-class people, and hence fewer shopping centres. This loosely defined industry now employs some 1. The country is especially strong in call centres: Advertisement Yet the Philippines is also, probably, the end of the line.
New technologies are poised to abolish many call-centre jobs and transform others. At best, jobs will be created more slowly in the Philippines and India; at worst they will vanish. And it is likely that nowhere else will be able to talk its way out of poverty as they have done.
There might never be another Manila. Companies put call centres in the Philippines for three reasons, says Alfredo Ayala of the Ayala Corporation, a conglomerate, who set up one of the first ones. And firms wanted to diversify beyond India.
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