Irish economy - are there clouds ahead?

very interesting article. Essentialy because of the doubling of the world workforce the power of workers around the world to achieve increases in real wages is diminished. However I believe that the real wages of western workers will be reduced by very high rates of inflation caused by energy and raw material costs. The optimists would argue that this huge global workforce can all be lifted to middle class earnings and that everyone will prosper.
 
Eventually the poor countries will catch up but this will take many decades and in between now and that future time there will be a lot of hardship/rough transition in western countries like ireland particularly. Maybe the euro will fall a lot and make us more competitive but i would'nt bet on it.
 
joe sod said:
The optimists would argue that this huge global workforce can all be lifted to middle class earnings and that everyone will prosper.
Click to expand...
Not going to happen - there are simply not enough natural resources in the world for every family to own an SUV.
 
In germany 25% of the workforce is now estimated to be on fixed contracts that either are renewed or not. Germany with export led focus has experienced above big time and is now more competitive. Because we are so construction led real wages in ireland have been able to shoot up (cannot import house from china). However the cost has been the loss of the manufacturing jobs and probably multinational jobs that would previously have come but now do not.

When people talk about our R&D future though it assumes we will quickly be able to transfer huge numbers of high paid construction workers and followers to high paid R&D.

Hank Paulson ex G Sachs has stated in recent weeks that that middle america have not seen wage increases in current 4 year recovery.

IMO the transfer from huge well paid construction will be massive downward pressure on wages. Same as has been case past couple of years in Germany anyone losing a job will find that their wages will fall say 30% to get a new one.
 
I think it is only fair that Asia and poorer countries should be able to use more of the world's natural resources in order to achieve decent standards of living which they do not now enjoy and which they can only achieve by increasing their consumption of these. However Western countries have already achieved this long ago and yet consumption of natural resources in the richest countries in the world is still increasing. In Ireland the last 5 years especially and the economic growth has been achieved by borrowing money from the future to buy things encouraged by excessive advertising and peer pressure. We already had a decent standard of living 5 years ago and yet people are encouraged to buy more stuff. The clouds are gathering in the future and this situation cannot and will not continue. Either the world imbalance realigns slowly or it realigns radically with a collapse in the world financial system.
 

You sound like my Economics Lecturer of old. He hadn't got a clue what he was talking about either.
 
it may be fair but the worlds supply of natural resoucres is limited
china and india are now using so much oil and metals that the world is running out these materials
its going to be a real power play by the big powers to get their hands on these resoucres
a chinese worker makes 3% of what a western worker makes_life is not fair
this drive to make everyone or at least a large% of the population middle class is doomed to failure as resocres such as oil run out and become very expensive
people will become poorer and be reduced to a more subsistance way of life
just think for a second_ if the average chinese worker made 3 dollars an hour _the purchasing power to buy the worlds resoucres would increase 10 fold and so the price of oil and metals would rocket not to mention the price of manufactured goods causing huge inflation
the present status quo suits china lots of jobs investment and exports
and the west cheap manufactured goods,low inflation
moral this idea of making poor asian countries richer so they can use more of the worlds resoucres and so become "middle class" will only happen at our expense
 
SR, [SIZE=-1]Please Punctuate!

[/SIZE]
 
Maine said:
In germany 25% of the workforce is now estimated to be on fixed contracts that either are renewed or not. Germany with export led focus has experienced above big time and is now more competitive.
Click to expand...

Read today that Germany is set to lower its [broken link removed]
 

The impression that the Indian-Asian-African subcontinents will laboriously move in time through the same kind of development as the west is a fallacy. They are by by-passing all that industrial revolution/social contract stuff and taking already-existing concepts formulated by the west and making them cheaper and faster. The sheer scale is phenomenal and hard to envisage within these 'old' economies.
The future role of Ireland is increasingly ambiguous and a bit of a worry . It could have become the "granary of Europe" having plenty of relatively-unpolluted land and rivers and existing agricultural acumen which were characteristic strengths. That moment has passed. Being a small island on the edge of Europe with the high transportation and fuel costs involved nowadays in any kind of physical production fairly excludes salvaging any manufacturing role (though one Irish speciality I learned of recently is an online supplier of waterproof dog-socks to the veterinary sector) . What attributes does the current Irish economy have which are unique to it which could be developed?
 
[quote=sunrock;30948
It might be fair if the people of poor asian countries could aspire to a western standard of living,but the worlds supply of natural resoucres is limited.
China and India are now using so much oil and metals that the world is running out these materials.
Its going to be a real power play by the big countries to get their hands on these resoucres.
A chinese worker makes 3% of what a western worker makes_life is not fair.
This drive to make everyone or at least a large % of the population middle class is doomed to failure, as resoucres such as oil run out and become very expensive.
People will become poorer, and be reduced to a more subsistance way of life, as resoucres decline.This will effect every country, rich and poor until a more sustainable way of life is the only option left.
Just think for a second_ if the average chinese worker made 3 dollars an hour _the purchasing power to buy the worlds resoucres, by china would increase 10 fold, and so the price of oil and metals would rocket not to mention the price of manufactured goods causing huge inflation.
Chinese workers currently earn 30c an hour.
The present status quo suits china _lots of jobs, investment and exports;
and the west cheap manufactured goods,low inflation.
The lesson of the idea of making poor asian countries richer so they can use more of the worlds resoucres and so become "middle class" is self defeating.

Apologies for previous poor punctuation.
 

This is way off topic but should be answered because it's so wrong.
On a particular point Chinese/Indian oil consumption is less than 10% of global consumption.
For the rest google Thomas Malthus. Your arguments are straight out of his book Essays on Population written in the 19th century. They were wrong then and are wrong now.
The improvements in global living standards are to be welcomed. Certainly there will be shorterm pressures on resources but these problems can be solved as they were in the past. The huge increase in human capital will provide the brain power to do so.
Regards
 
Marie said:
What attributes does the current Irish economy have which are unique to it which could be developed?
Click to expand...

Spectrum. We've got lots of it going spare and it will be an increasingly rare resource in the future. We'd make a create testbed for dynamic spectrum allocation technologies.
 
Whathome,

Please familiarise yourself with the posting guidelines and in particular PG 17

aj

whathome said:
Finfacts article - Irish economic dependency on property

Comment: Irish Property Boom - It's easy to underestimate how much economic prosperity depends on it

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10007932.shtml
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register