This is a reply from Santa Claus, the longest living good and kindly soul whom I wrote for his friendly advice on the rich word’s current dilemma – ‘Import workers or export jobs’.
(written in 2005)
Dear P,
I am pleased to receive your letter but must admit I am a little surprised because I rarely receive mail from grown ups like you. I am sad to know that the people in rich world are losing their jobs to poorer places. I don’t know how I could help. I must tell you that I am more comfortable bringing gifts and happiness to children than giving advice to elders. All I could do is only to tell you a thing or two from my experience if it helps.
If you had lived several centuries like me, you would look at the world, events and the people in an entirely different way. With your current life span- your focus of history is barely 50 years behind (unless you are doing academic research) or 50 years ahead if you are looking into the future. It is difficult to relate to an age that one does not belong. Having lived several hundred years- the entire events of these years are right before my eyes in the same way that the last fifty years’ are to you.
So what would I see in those years that passed by? It would be kaleidoscope of events that you call history, but for me a chain of memories that I personally experienced. These memories are of how the world, borders of nations and empires changed or the nations changed themselves, and new ideas, knowledge and goods came up. All of these have been a part of my life. I have seen the world changing too often.
Nations are therefore not important to me, but the people are. Despite the disadvantage of a relatively short life span man has managed to continue his life and improve it. Man has vastly improved his existence against all odds and particularly violence. All my life I have seen people moving to wherever they feel their life would be safer or better. Nationality, culture, and similar considerations take a second place. People have been migrating to other continents even when the transportation was the most hazardous- some as conquering army, some as defeated army, indentured workers or as plain adventurer seeking better life.
I could tell you from my experience that people not only move for employment but also to live away from strife and to live in peace- which essentially means security of life and property. Man is happiest to relate to fellow men in a peaceful country- not necessarily his own.
I believe God has programmed the humans that way to continue preservation of their race by continually trying to improve the conditions for survival. But survival to what end? There must be a bigger goal. As I see the ultimate goal for humans is perhaps to relate to or unite in some way with one another and therefore they need to survive through procreation until that happens. Nationalities, civilizations and culture may be just a stepping stone to the eventual goal of a united humanity. League of Nations, United Nations, WTO – perhaps these are God’s pointer to that end. I do not know for sure as yet. I think I will know when I have lived into the next millennium.
What I know for sure, countries and nationalities have no place in God’s program. He has no preference or soft corners for any particular nation or any geographical area. The entire world shares the calamities or his wrath if you like- earthquakes, draught, floods, typhoons and terrorist attack. In fact He does not appear to have any soft corner at all or to be judge mental of human actions. He seems to have programmed humans to face all odds, to fight and often suffer but eventually win so that human race can survive and continue.
Of course God we are referring could actually be a mad scientist making an experiment or our fore fathers in another world in the universe who have programmed us to behave in the fashion we do. I do not know. But to keep matters simple let us call whoever is him or are them, God.
As you look a little deeper into the developments taking place in the sphere of activities that you call economy you would clearly see God’s (or the mad scientist’s in another world) program unfold. God’s program aims to spread prosperity evenly. I try to follow his way but I have no wealth. I therefore try to spread happiness. God, I must repeat, is not interested in preserving the privileges of a prosperous few. He has worked out a channel to benefit the poor and the weak and therefore eventually all.
As a country or a region grows more prosperous more goods and services are asked for. Therefore there is a need for more workers and merchandise to meet the demand particularly of the basic goods and services. What however, is the interesting situation here is that as prosperity in a region rises the population gradually shrinks because replacement of those died does not take place fully and the family size gets smaller. God probably slows down the procreation activity because life becomes safer in such places and there is much less threat to preservation of human race.
The smaller workforce as a result, becomes extremely prosperous compared to others but they become too few to fill all the jobs available. As a result wages and prices rise. Naturally goods and workers from other regions rush to fill the void. Prosperous societies shed their low skill menial jobs to foreigners. Immigrants take those jobs- considered outright drudgery, of domestic help, waiters, gardeners, street sweepers, construction workers.
No country can entirely stop goods, jobs and workers from entering an attractive market. If goods are stopped from entering into a country, smuggling takes over the process of exchange. Lowly industrial jobs get transferred to foreign manufacturing units. In recent times you have seen jobs like assembly line work, data entry and computer code writing have been going abroad. The process extends prosperity to the people in poor regions to be able to repeat the process after a while with other poorer people.
In God’s program, prosperity is something that must spreads to other people. Any attempt to change his program hurts the prosperous society the most. God’s program is a ‘win win’ for all. More prosperous a society- jobs they do are more complex and specialized like consultancy, technology research, education and training. This is essentially what has been always happening but somewhat slowly by our measure of time (about two to three generations). God’s has been there for too many millennia (may be much longer) and therefore time for him is measured in much larger units. You could safely assume that a span of fifty years is only a blink of his eye. So for Him it happens pretty quickly. Also by the God’s time the outside workers assimilate into a society quickly while adding a bit of their culture, and their next generation becomes a part of the milieu.
So then what is the fuss about? Well it is the short sightedness. In the enthusiasm to protect the privileges and prosperity in the short term, societies build walls of protectionism in goods, immigration barriers. All these mean a higher cost to the very people sought to be protected. The prices rise if inefficient producers are protected and real earnings of people usually fall because wages do not rise as much as the prices of things one needs to buy. This cost that gets diverted to the own people through imposition of protective trade and immigration barriers may be actually a penal provision built into God’s scheme for those stray from His program.
Till 100 years ago trade and immigration barriers were negligible. Of course the smaller nations were captured by the stronger powers by sheer brute force to colonize countries, create captive markets and destroy local industries there. Wars were fought by the rich countries to dominate markets. God has been enlarging international trade and commerce so that fear of loss of business would reduce armed conflicts. This has already happened and you can see that wars are few and far between now. But the insecurity of the rich and the privileged few has risen as poorer nations have worked hard to catch up and started competing with them in their home markets with their merchandise and workers. It is also perhaps part of God’s program that last hundred years saw a drastic improvement in speed of travel and communication technology. No one now is too far from anywhere. This is what you call globalization and is the smartest part of His program.
I can understand it is miserable loosing your job. But I can’t believe you would not get another. I know for sure God’s program is not a “plus here, minus there” for benefiting one at the cost of the other. It is ‘plus’ everywhere. If your locality (country for you), is losing one kind of jobs, another kind is filling in. The numbers and types of jobs going and coming sometimes may not exactly match in the short run but squares up eventually.
I suppose your problem is, your time frame is different from God’s. I have been thinking what would help. My only problem is I am not aware of national borders and therefore not used to thinking in terms of this country or that.
If the whole world was one country, it could have been easier. There would be no case for protection. There would have been no subsidized agriculture because all farming would go to those places within the country where it was cheaper to produce them and so would manufacturing industries, ITE services. People would move freely from one part of the world to another. There would be no talk of loosing jobs to another place (Bangalored!) because you could go where the jobs were going like one could go from Puerto Rico to New York if jobs moved there.
There would be no emotion charged speeches or apocalyptic stories in press and legislature, of invasion by a huge army of immigrant workers and ‘sweat shop’ companies as all would be citizens of one country. Academics would of course research it and write dry and boring titles like, ‘Structural Adjustment driven by Regional Wage Differentials’. Being part of the same country with Europe and North America, Rwanda, Ethiopia and others like them would receive generous development packages and would be quickly out of poverty.
Well, it could exactly fit Gods program. I have got an idea. Why not remove the national borders! You think that’s not possible. OK, I am sure you could start by lowering the tall barriers that stop people and merchandise to cross over easily. I know it will work. After all it’s God’s hand. It is difficult for most of us to see it unless you have lived 500 years. But a few could do even with a much shorter life. I knew two of them. One was Adam Smith who saw His ‘invisible hand’. Another was David Ricardo who saw regions (countries for you) not as having or lacking absolute economic advantages- but as each one having a comparative advantage. Well just as He wants. Unfortunately they are no more and you cannot consult them in person. I suggest you look up their writing.
By the way did your son like the gift I brought last Christmas?
Best Wishes.
Yours Truly
Santa
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