Posted on 05/13/2007 6:19:03 AM PDT by mom4kittys
Alan Blinder's glittering career Ben Bernanke: another Princeton prof The turbocharged Indian economy
'You're on my list, you journalists," says Alan Blinder, eyeballing me. Oh dear. Barely 10 minutes with the economic sage and he's already warning me that I might be out of a job. The list in question is sitting ominously on the table between us like a silent exclamation mark. On it are ranged hundreds of occupations which he thinks could be obsolete in developed countries over the next generation - and, before you get too smug about a journalist getting his just deserts, be warned, you're highly likely to feature on the list, too.
Prof Blinder's message, in short, is that the fears we are currently feeling about offshoring are only the tip of the iceberg.
advertisementFrom the best accountants and lawyers to the smartest derivatives traders to teachers and lecturers, many of today's most prestigious jobs could, thanks to globalisation and improved communications technology, just as easily be done more cheaply in places such as India and China.
The result, he predicts, is that between 30 million and 40 million US jobs could go within the next generation. Bear in mind that this is around a quarter of the US workforce, and that on that basis the comparable number over here could be as much as eight million (all major Anglo-Saxon economies will be affected). It is more than a little perturbing.
"They are scary numbers," says Prof Blinder. "It's substantially higher than most other estimates."
We are sitting in his rather pokey study at Princeton, where he teaches economics and conducts research. He has had to avoid a barrage of criticism in the US press following the publication of the 40 million figure. Many leading economists reacted almost as if they had been betrayed - Prof Blinder is, after all, an American economic institution, a former deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve once touted as a potential successor to Alan Greenspan. He has now been roundly lambasted and decried as a protectionist and an opponent of free trade.
Laughing wistfully, he says: "I should have a T-shirt which says 'I love free trade'. Of course I feared this [research] might be used by the protectionists. I would not like to be thought of as an opponent of free trade. It's easy to say what you don't do about it: protectionism. It's not going to work. How do you protect yourself against foreign electrons? You can keep out tomatoes from Mexico but you can't do that."
But what is even more worrying than the stark figure of 40 million is the message this sends to parents and families. Despite what we have always assumed, having a higher-skilled, higher-paid job is not enough to protect you from being offshored. It is a notion that throws on its head many of the present assumptions about the place of the UK in the next few decades.
Gordon Brown drones on interminably about equipping future generations with the right skill sets but Prof Blinder says: "It's not enough - that's the whole point. I believe that on education the correct answer for the past 25 years was, 'give them more education'. That was good advice. For the next 25 years I'm not so sure.
"We have to think more subtly about the types of education and it's not so obvious that there's a great future in America for computer programmers, accountants and for some types of lawyers - just to take three highly-educated people.
"Lawyers involved in family disputes, and criminal lawyers - they've got to stay around. But lawyers that write contracts, and lots of accountants, maybe that kind of education is not such a fabulous idea. Educating people to go into what I call the personal services is a good idea - some of which don't require all that much education - so electricians, carpenters, plumbers, roofers - skilled trades.
"This is a very new thought for the highly-educated, white-collar class to think that they may have to compete with low-wage foreign workers. Manufacturers have been doing that for generations. But accountants, lawyers, intellectuals?
"The story's not about high and low skill, it's about high and low touch," he concludes, a trace of his native Brooklyn in his accent. "You gotta do it face to face."
Prof Blinder's mission is to reshape the way developed economies are preparing themselves for the future, and he is in a hurry. "We've got about a generation until this happens," he says. "That's why there's a kind of urgency because, if you put a five-year-old into school now, they will come out with a college degree 17 years from now. Those starting their careers today could find themselves obsolete well before the end of their career - some of them, it depends what type. To say, 'raise your sons and daughters to be lawyers', is not subtle enough advice. The question is, 'what kind of lawyer?'."
Already many of those who oppose free trade and globalisation have latched on to Prof Blinder's research, screeching that it suggests the present course of the world economy will leave many millions worse off.
The professor begs to differ, claiming that most of the lost jobs will be replaced as people retrain.
"The idea of jobs going offshore is, in the long run, a good thing. Both the countries doing the offshoring, say the US or England, and the countries to whom the offshoring goes, say India, will benefit. I don't doubt that, and that's why my T-shirt should say, 'I support free trade'. But, if there are all these jobs going, that creates a lot of turmoil.
Some occupations are safe, of course. Investment bankers, who have to take out their clients and sweet-talk them are more likely to survive than derivatives traders, who could as easily be elsewhere. Clearly, for example, most of the health profession will still have to remain in situ.
Economists are looking very vulnerable, Prof Blinder says. And as for journalists - "You're on the margins, like college professors."
Willie Green and A.Pole memorial ping.
Who cares? Gobal warming will get us all by then.
now, will people take the precautions necessary and prepare for this coming wave of offshoring? Or will they continue obliviously and not prepare themselves for the potential “loss” of “their” jobs?
bump for later........
just read in the Inquirer that first year lawyer hires in Philly are going in at $145k. They’ll need competition from somewhere. The reason given for the rates is the incredibly strong economy. First MSM admission of that.
(YOUR COMPANY NAME HERE), Bangalore Branch
It should be illegal for corporate citizens of the world to contribute PAC money to U.S. elections. Only American citizens should be allowed to contibute.
I some niches, it’s already happening. For a few months there was a guy working the electronics aisles at the local HD who had been a lawyer writing patent applications for companies like 3COM and Motorola. He used to do 2-3 a week at around 2K each, they are now written in India for $200, overnight turn-around.
The doom-and-gloomers simply have no explanation how it can be that the unemployment rate is all all-time lows here in America (btw, we are the envy of the rest of the world) even as all our jobs are purportedly being "outsourced" around the world.
I think the fatal flaw with the doom-and-gloomers is that they see employment as a zero-sum game. Move a factory over to China and they simply subtract the jobs lost and make the false assumption that the unemployment rate over here will rise accordingly.
Well Americans (at least not most of them) don't sit around and twiddle their thumbs when they get pink-slipped. Instead, they simply go out and get another job. So right away, it is a wash. But it gets better. Turns out that many of the people losing these dead-end factory jobs realize that they can do so much more with their lives. Their self-confidence improves and for some, their suppressed entrepreneurial abilities come to the surface and they end up being much better off then they were before.
Yes, there are some who think that 40 years in a factory is all they can do and so they get stuck in some bad Bruce Springsteen song. But for many others, losing their blue-collar job is a release and our economy is being fueled with this new entrepreneurial spirit - which is a good thing.
Back in 1920, you would think that working on a farm or a factory or a traveling salesman were about the only options in life for a non-college graduate. Nobody could imagine back then that non-college people could make big bucks opening chains of fast-food restaurants, writing code for video games (not that they'd even know what you were talking about), starting up high-tech companies, inventing new ways of doing things, etc., etc. The possibilities of making money in our economy are endless - whether you start up your own company or work for one that is doing new and innovative things.
But many American's are still stuck in the mindset that it is a bad thing that we are losing low-skill jobs to third-world countries. And yes, I'll have to throw lawyers and accountants into that mix as well. Anybody who thinks you have to be a genius to be a lawyer or accountant are fooling themselves and it is no big loss to have less Americans lawyering and crunching numbers on some Excel spreadsheet.
This is just blowing smoke - horseshit.
What's of interest is the fate of millions of individual citizens. If millions of American jobs go to Indians but the result is that the GPP of both countries increases can we say that both countries benefitted? If protectionism saves most of those jobs but lowers American GDP is that bad?
I surely hope that economists go the way of dinosaurs if this is an example of their thinking...and it is.
Or we will be eaten by the manbearpig.
Why?
Isn't our Cngress completely infested with lawyers? Aren't something like 2/3rds of Congresscritters lawyers? Say what you want, but they WILL protect their own. The ABA would have a snit-fit, the political lube of cash would be pinched, and pols would roll over like the wh*res they are.
A future with no lawyers or accountants,come on your just trying to make us feel good right ???
The logistics would be staggering.
5.56mm
A significant problem with this "solution" is one of national security.
If we don't lead the world in technology, we won't have the world's leading military. We won't lead the world in technology if we are largely educating our children to go into trades jobs and telling them not to study the sciences and not to study mathematics.
While this will suit leftists who would like to see our military destroyed, such a foolish strategy will place our children in dangerous straits.
NAFTA and CAFTA et el will destroy the US Middle Class....10 years at the Max....Life will bear no semblence to what we see and expect today.
I’ll bet the farm on that prediction...
Observant people see things as they are not as they wish them to be.
Your prediction was made by others 10 years ago and even before that by many others. I suppose eventually it will come true - but likely for other reasons.
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