The three phenomena of growing inequality, unemployment and
immigration in the developed world – meaning Europe and America – top
the list of problems whose ramifications go beyond them to the rest of the planet.
While different people focus their attention on a different problem each, the
fact is that a common thread runs through all the problems. This makes it so
that they are better understood when viewed and analyzed together. The idea
here is not to propose one solution for everything or everyone; it is to help
all concerned see the same picture, thus allow them to fashion a solution that
suits each jurisdiction without them working against each other.
What is ailing Europe and America at this time is something
that had its origin a couple of centuries ago. It was industry's need for large
pools of labor at the start of the Industrial Revolution. But then things
developed differently on each continent, and given that each is made of several
jurisdictions, the solutions will be many and the combination for each
jurisdiction will be unique. To understand how all this began and how it
developed, we must remember that the Industrial Revolution came at the heels of
a feudal system that existed in Europe, and had a presence in North
America through the colonial policies of the big powers of the
day.
The reality of the feudal system made it imperative that
what came after it be the capitalist system given the close resemblance between
the two. And it was capitalism that played a major role in how things developed
during the following two centuries. One of the tenets of capitalism being that
when you have assets, you want to preserve them and where possible add to them,
you constantly invest some of the assets; an endeavor that carries a risk
because it can also happen that you may lose rather than gain.
For this reason, when you have something to sell, you talk
up its value; and when you see something you like to buy, you talk down its
value. This is because the gain or loss you make after all is said and done,
will be the difference between the price of purchase and the price of sale.
Unfortunately, the habit of talking things up or down while knowing we are in
error, is still with us today. It even developed into a sharper instrument
because the modern means of communication allow for the amplification of the
message.
Furthermore, when you consider that the marketplace carries
more than commodities, you see that talking up or talking down the value of
something applies to many other things, one of them being labor. Thus, you have
on the one hand the business groups – which are purchasers of labor –
constantly trying to undermine the labor groups called unions. In response, the
labor unions seek to protect their members by talking up the value of organized
labor. And each camp uses the resources available to them to achieve their end.
One of the surest ways to raise the value of something is to
make it rare. If it is a commodity, you hoard it and keep it hidden for a
while; if it is your labor, you go on strike and make your demands known. On
the opposite side of the coin, the surest way to cheapen something is to
restrain yourself from buying it. If it is a commodity, you boycott it; if it
is labor, you do not hire it or if you're employing it already, you lock it
out. And this is the sort of to and fro drama that has been playing itself out
in one form or another since the onset of the Industrial Revolution both in
Europe and in America.
Then something big happened called globalization, and things
began to change fundamentally. It is that the world opened itself to business,
and the developing countries began to supply the businesses in the advanced
countries with plenty of cheap labor. America which used to rely on
immigration to maintain the demand of the labor unions at a moderate level
could now do without immigration by relocating itself outside the country. This
caused the foreign skilled labor to stay home, leaving it to the unskilled and
the illiterate to seek entry into America by legal means or by
illegal ones. And this development contributed to the start of a movement in America seeking
to keep illegal immigrants out.
At the same time, Europe
that was not in the business of receiving immigrants on a large scale began to
open its doors to immigration a little wider to persuade its own businesses to
stay home rather than relocate in the developing countries. And this move
contributed to the start of an anti-immigration movement in Europe .
It must be said, however, that the locals in America
are more tolerant of the legal immigrants than their European counterparts
because America
is largely made of immigrants whereas the European societies are as monolithic
as any “old” country and have a strong chauvinistic bent.
What that picture of the world says is that the problems of
inequality, unemployment and immigration are no longer phenomena associated
solely with the two advanced continents, but that they branch out to the rest
of the world. And more importantly, they are connected with each other, which
suggests they can only be solved together in a comprehensive way – albeit with
a different combination of measures to suit each jurisdiction.
The tools employed to solve the problem of inequality have
been the use of taxation, the social programs, the minimum wage, the retraining
of the workers and the like. The tools to solve unemployment have been the
monetary and fiscal measures, the retraining of the workers and so on. The
tools to solve immigration have been reforms that range from amnesty, to the
education of newcomers, to the enforcement of a kind of dress code, etcetera.
What complicates things is the fact that the governments of
unitary states as well as those of federations are made of several levels of jurisdictions
ranging from the municipal to the federal. Each controls one thing or another
and the jurisdictions often work at cross purposes. This is not to mention that
a small municipality may at some point wish to implement a rule that would
contravene an international agreement, thus be forbidden to do so. And this is
why it is advisable that everyone look at the same picture when fashioning a
combination of solutions that suit their individual jurisdictions.