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Overpaid scvmbag IT people

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    Overpaid scvmbag IT people

    Technology is root of all evil, says IMF
    Proposals for tax on engineers, compulsory arts degrees
    By Lewis Page → More by this author
    Published Tuesday 23rd October 2007 08:39 GMT
    Jobsite - find your next IT job quickly & easily

    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has this month brought out its World Economic Outlook for 2007, and the various heavyweights of financial news have all had their bash at reporting on it. Normally, no vulture would stir on his/her perch over this type of thing - unless, perhaps, Paris Hilton had been implicated in some kind of major economic upthrust - but in this case, the economists make some rather startling pronouncements about technology.

    In essence, according to the IMF, technological innovation is what causes economic inequality among the human race. Yes, you read that right: technology - and not just the machinery, but people with tech skills - are to blame for the fact that some people are dirt poor and others disgustingly rich.

    "Technological progress alone explains almost all of the increase in inequality from the early 1980s," according (pdf - page 2) to the IMF.

    The authors admit that globalisation has also been a factor in the way the poor are now so much further behind the rich, but technology is the true villain.

    "Increased financial globalisation - and foreign direct investment in particular - has also played a role in increasing inequality, but contrary to popular belief, increased trade globalisation is associated with a decline in inequality," say the IMF writers.

    "Technological advances have contributed the most to the recent rise in inequality."

    This is held to be because higher tech "increases the premium on skills and substitutes for relatively low-skill inputs".

    In other words, overpaid scumbag IT people with their systems, networks etc are stealing bread from the mouths of poor but honest file clerks, printers, semaphore operators, call-centre people, recording execs and so on. IT, powered machinery, cheap tools, new drugs - it's all evil and divisive, promoting war, rebellion and strife. Big global business trading in old-fashioned stuff like commodities - you know, mining, agribusiness - these people are your friends.

    Most of the mainstream financial press have chosen to ignore this dazzling suggestion from the world globalisation bureau that globalisation is great and if something has gone wrong it must be someone else's fault. But noted economics pundit Clive Crook, writing for the Financial Times, has fallen on it with glee.

    "I want to be constructive," writes the Oxford-trained economics egghead.

    "Let us agree that reducing inequality is the overriding goal – more important than lifting people out of poverty (which globalisation is doing), more important than raising living standards in the aggregate (which globalisation is doing). Let us also agree that efforts to improve education are useless palliatives, not worth discussing... It is surely time to name the real enemy... the world needs critics of technological progress. If we can only stop or slow that, we can have more equal societies."

    Crook even makes the mistake - surely fatal to this kind of thinking - of going back into history.

    "Ned Ludd was right," he says. "The world has put up with progress and its consequences too long."

    It's always possible that the man is merely being comical in some leaden economist fashion. If not, well, he must have a very narrow idea of what technological progress actually is and when it began. Perhaps you might contend that Stone Age society was more equal than today's, though the Inca nobility seem to have been a hell of a lot better off than their peasantry even then. It seems reasonable to suggest that the technically sophisticated but still mainly agrarian society which produced the Luddites was more equal than that of ancient Egypt, or Rome, or the Middle Ages; and that today's arrangements - even worldwide - are overall fairer than that.

    The idea that societies in which most people can't read and make their living shovelling tulip have fairer distribution of wealth than high-tech millieux seems frankly insane, in fact.

    Sure, Bill Gates' personal wealth is five or six orders of magnitude greater than that of ordinary Americans. But Georgian labourers sometimes didn't have any personal wealth at all, or measured it in farthings. A great noble of those days' annual income was sometimes a million or ten million times as much, representing immense capital holdings and disparity a hundred times worse. And there just wasn't that much of a middle class back then; poor folk literally were common. The old-time French toffs were worse, and those everywhere else often worse still. In America back then a lot of labourers were still slaves - tax-averse American capitalists having broken with Blighty to create the land of the free - and by definition were wealth rather than owning any.

    How to get back to those glorious, free and equal days? Not to worry, Crook has the answer.

    "An impossible dream?" he writes.

    "By no means. Here are some practical first steps. Punitive taxation is a no-brainer. Include a surtax on scientists and engineers. Restrict postgraduate education to the arts, humanities and the law. In fact, make postgraduate study in those fields compulsory."

    Before you head over to Crook's place with the hot tar and feathers to give him a proper taste of the old days, though, be aware that he does plan one move which could be popular with (some) techies.

    "Dismantle all the legal protections of intellectual property," he says.

    Also remember that in this case it might actually be the IMF and its mindset that are the problem, rather than a plague of Oxford economics graduates, even if it doesn't seem like that in normal daily life.
    I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, Rome is the light.

    #2
    How is life like in Swiss Alps? Did you get an assault rifle yet?
    Last edited by AtW; 24 October 2007, 23:27.

    Comment


      #3
      Include a surtax on scientists and engineers. Restrict postgraduate education to the arts, humanities and the law.

      Ok, so let's make it prohibitively expensive, or even impossible, to be a medical practicioner.

      So the next time the author of the article needs medical attention, he won't be able to get a doctor; but Claudé, the 19 year old Art Student can pop round and do him a nice oil painting.

      IMF ?

      International Monetary Flipwits....
      Last edited by Board Game Geek; 25 October 2007, 00:52. Reason: I decided to self-censor and chang Fúckwits to Flipwits in order to ensure the post meets T&C posting regulations.
      Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

      C.S. Lewis

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by AtW View Post
        How is life like in Swiss Alps? Did you get an assault rifle yet?
        Like boring like. No, too many temptations.
        I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, Rome is the light.

        Comment


          #5
          In a way it is right, but not in the way they say.

          Technology has meant that goods can be produced by machine and transported cheaply and quickly around the world.
          This allows the globalised companies to exploit the cheap producers whilst still charging top whack in the richer countries.
          Without technology they would have to produce local goods at local prices.

          Globalised companies ar the modern equivelant of Industrial revolution mill and pit owners exploiting workers with no rights in the third world. Shame on them and shame on NL for supporting them. The Tolpuddle martys and the Jarrow marchers will be spinning in their graves.

          <mantra>we want 3rd world goods at 3rd world prices</mantra>
          I am not qualified to give the above advice!

          The original point and click interface by
          Smith and Wesson.

          Step back, have a think and adjust my own own attitude from time to time

          Comment


            #6
            i'd rather pay higher prices to ensure that the expolited are given a fair wage and decent conditions.

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by DS23 View Post
              i'd rather pay higher prices to ensure that the expolited are given a fair wage and decent conditions.
              Hear, hear with that comment, but it isn't going to happen. Pushing for that kind of thing only means more government intervention and that just leads to civil servants with gold edged pensions and the poor workers ending up with even less. Yet people will feel happy because the government statistics will show they are better off.
              Insanity: repeating the same actions, but expecting different results.
              threadeds website, and here's my blog.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by DS23 View Post
                i'd rather pay higher prices to ensure that the expolited are given a fair wage and decent conditions.
                That is the situation we have now except the higher price is not reflected in higher wages and better conditions.
                Didn't you read my post?
                Goods are produced in the 3rd world. Cheap labour. Poor conditions. No concern for welfare from global corp.
                Goods are sold at local market prices.
                Difference goes to profit => share holders.
                I am not qualified to give the above advice!

                The original point and click interface by
                Smith and Wesson.

                Step back, have a think and adjust my own own attitude from time to time

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by The Lone Gunman View Post
                  In a way it is right, but not in the way they say.

                  Technology has meant that goods can be produced by machine and transported cheaply and quickly around the world.
                  OTOH modern technology has given more jobs that can "amplify" peoples' earning ability by allowing them to produce a multiplicity of products, and I don't just mean someone sitting on a production line.

                  For example, if it takes a month to write a novel and it sells a million copies then the author can earn ten years' "wages" within weeks, whereas a solicitor in their normal occupation can only deal with a certain number of cases, a teacher can only teach a certain number of pupils face-to-face, a bus driver can drive only one bus at a time, etc.

                  Obviously some "amplification" has been possible for centuries, such as the novelist example. But these days there are many more types of job like that than there were, and the point I'm leading up to is that these product-limited jobs naturally entice workers away from the man-hour-limited jobs, that rely on personal presence, which in turn means the latter jobs are in more demand and rates go up, which is why most types of "personal service" jobs such as plumbers and teachers cost more and more - It's partly to compete with the "open ended" opportunities. So in short, technology isn't all bad for manual workers.

                  Talking about plumbers, where is the fekker? I'm sitting at home waiting for the gas man, and he's already 40 minutes late
                  Work in the public sector? Read the IR35 FAQ here

                  Comment


                    #10
                    "By no means. Here are some practical first steps. Punitive taxation is a no-brainer. Include a surtax on scientists and engineers. Restrict postgraduate education to the arts, humanities and the law. In fact, make postgraduate study in those fields compulsory."
                    Excellent suggestion! That way countries that dont follow this course of action, can come back in 100 years with laser weapons and sonic cannons and inavde Britain, enslaving the entire population and making them all very equal.
                    Of course I am comforted by the fact we would have so many lawyers around to tell them thats illegal to be enslaving us.

                    Comment

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