[OPE] The rising NAIRU

Paul,

What you say has a certain validity, but:

1) Because there is now only limited international labour mobility,
affecting only circa 3% of the world population or 6% of the world's working
population at any time (circa 200 million migrant workers or one in 16
working people) while 50,000 multinational enterprises and their 450,000
affiliates likewise employ about 200 million people worldwide, this does not
mean that mass unemployment, or employment growth, in one country does not
have direct and indirect economic effects on the countries that it has
dealings with. It does, and very strongly so, including stimulating trade
and migration. The reserve army of labour and the relative surplus
population are international realities, and the cost-structure of life in
rich countries could not exist as such without low wages and low-cost
material and service imports from poorer countries. Check this out at your
local supermarket. In turn, the low costs could not exist, without mass
unemployment keeping down wages.

2) International remittances of migrant workers (circa $100 billion a year
in total) are the most important source of external funding in developing
countries after export earnings and foreign loans, contributing up to
one-quarter of local GDP. Developing countries get twice as much funds from
migrant workers, than they do from the aid of bourgeois philanthropists, and
migrant workers'
money goes mainly directly to households, rather than to corrupt officials
and dealers.

3) International migration through the hierarchy of nations continues to
increase, and will reach the extent of one in seven or one in five workers
by the mid 21st century.

4) For skilled labour-power in various categories there is a world market.

Jurriaan

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Received on Sat Jul 11 05:50:05 2009