Comment by kaoD | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kaoD | Hacker News Reader

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Welcome to "staying competitive".

Here at Spain (and generally Southern Europe) we've been told over and over again that we have to stay competitive, which is just an euphemism for working more and earning less (i.e. becoming Europe's China).

In a globalized market with a (still) steadily growing population, competition is growing and therefore salaries are shrinking.

It's happening in all industries (e.g. tech firms offshoring) but also at homes. I don't know about the USA but here in Spain housewives love hunting for sales, buying as cheap as they can, and proud about it. Why are they surprised later when their children can't find a decent salary? Buying Perú's asparagus cheaper than in our home country (including transportation across the Atlantic!) is only driving prices lower and lower, which hinders the whole economy in the long term.

And now the USA is going to sign a trade agreement with Europe which will further increase competition and will drive wages even lower than they're now for both parties.

On the other hand, isn't this just leveling the playing field for developing countries? After all, for them to grow, we have to shrink.

The wealthy in the United States have been extracting wealth from the middle-class and capturing more of the annually generated income for some time. This isn't about being competitive, it's about robber-barons actually robbing others through political capture.

> competition is growing and therefore salaries are shrinking

I'm a fan of asking naive questions, so here's one:

If salaries are shrinking everywhere, then where is all the money?

Towards second world countries like China that have been quietly busting their asses after WWII.

I agree, and would also add that economics is not a zero-sum game.

from the global data trends it seems clear that an increasing proportion is being captured and kept in th capitalist/owner class, at the expense of labor. there's been a noticeable shift worldwide overall

Seems to me it's the government which needs to stay competitive, not the workers, ie regulation and bureaucracy.

What a cliché.

EDIT (to elaborate): IMHO economy (like most things) is all about trade-offs. I know the states and bureaucracy are cumbersome, but they offload risk from individuals into society (which isn't always a bad thing).

I respect your views on deregulation (and share them to some extent), but your phrase is really a cliché and does not address my comment (since deregulation is orthogonal to labor competition).

A cliché? Or general agreement? I thought people generally agreed that Spain has issues in that regard.

"I know the states and bureaucracy..."

I wasn't referring to states in general, you were talking about Spain, I was responding about Spain. I'm not a ranting libertarian, I'm aware of a state's role in society. Knee jerk pouncing on a cliché that wasn't here.

we've been told over and over again that we have to stay competitive, which is just an euphemism for working more and earning less

How much of that extra work is unnecessary (in Spain)?

I wouldn't say bureaucracy or the State is the problem in Spain, but the political caste (in both our traditional left and right-wing parties), rampant corruption and a general lack of faith in democracy (or, more specifically, in the currently available democratic instruments).

As far as I can tell we're not facing this problem alone, but we're pretty young as a democratic society and most of our politicians inherited their position or remained on it under an amnesty after Franco's dictatorship (hence the usage of "caste").

I think (though it's hard to analyze when you're involved in the situation) we're in the middle of a social and generational change. We've got daily news of corruption cases amongst the mainstream parties and people are really fed up. "Podemos" (literally "We can", a left-wing grassroots party) rose as an alternative to that political caste, and most surveys situate them as a heavy contender (if not winner) for the upcoming elections.

Not long ago you'd hear lots of people claim they were not interested in politics, so they were pretty much puppets in the hands of our politician's interests. Nowadays, thanks to the 15M movement and Podemos, there are political debates on Saturday night prime time. Politics are in vogue.

Perhaps that's the government competition you were talking about?

We'll see what happens.

That's not the competition I talking about, but it is good to hear that it's there. The UK is also sick of its traditional parties, but is voting to the right, away from Europe. Party loyalty is usually ideology loyalty, and in a changing world the suitability of an ideology to the global context will change, so the traditional parties are likely a write off as their idea of keeping abreast is fringe tinkering. My point was that all of the responsibility of competition shouldn't have to fall on the worker when there is scope for the government to ease things for the worker. I'm not saying eg get rid of the health service, (Republicans, we're talking Europe here) but aligning processes with countries that have obviously more efficient ways of doing things. A chap on TV the other night was talking about this, he'd moved north, iirc, Denmark, giving an example of company registration taking a matter of hours. What excuse is there for the Spanish government to slack off on such trivial lubricants, the result of which then weighs on the worker?

> [...] giving an example of company registration taking a matter of hours. What excuse is there for the Spanish government to slack off on such trivial lubricants, the result of which then weighs on the worker?

Crony capitalism, though I would call that an explanation, not an excuse. How else would you explain the tax on renewable energy?

I guess it's also incompetence. The traditional model of parties is fundamentally broken, and professional politicians (i.e. influence peddlers) are a plague in our Establishment.

The problem in Spain is that the government and its regulations are so bad, that the only way Spain can become competitive is if the government gets its act together. Until then (i.e. always) lower wages and longer hours will have to do.

(i.e. always)

Based on above comments I hope you're voting for Podemos.

* if the government gets its act together*

That won't happen spontaneously.

> I hope you're voting for Podemos.

It doesn't appeal to everyone.

Although Podemos isn't trying to market itself as a left-wing party, it indeed is (and everyone knows it). Its leaders had strong political connections with left-wing movements (some of them were political advisors for Chávez) and promote socialist ideas (some of them good, some bad, in my opinion).

Unfortunately a right-wing Podemos is unlikely to succeed due to the traditional conservatism of the right-wing, and the "indignado" market share is already taken by Podemos.

Some far-right parties grew a bit nothing real but for the moment.

Governments don't have to be competitive if they mutually limit migration - and this is one problem.

People need the option to leave a system that doesn't work for them, or that system won't see a need for change. The same competitive forces that are so important to capitalism should apply to nation-states as well.

They do have the option to leave, and looking around London that's exactly what they're doing, which is not good for the countries they're leaving. I'd say it's more important that they have the means to change that system.

Why do you think it's bad for the countries they are leaving that people can go and find work elsewhere and gain experience and skills (and most likely, return with these)?

There doesn't seem to be much of a downside to me.

In the context of Spain: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f7bdd5ce-995e-11e3-91cd-00144feab7...

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