Global Wellbeing

Look at the new mobile phone Apps and Web services , Most are underpinned by advertising in an increasing crowded marketplace for traditional goods and services and are not highly valued products in their own right. You state that there is no problem with automation currently creating unemployment in Germany but this does not mean it isn’t elsewhere or wont in the future. Germany enjoys a massive trade and current account surplus with the rest if the world . This until now has allowed it to not only create additional jobs directly related to the surplus but also many more internal service sector jobs that are supported by it. In our technologically driven marketplace the incumbents have a vast advantage due to knowledge and expertise that take decades to foster and accumulate plus brand and market prestige plus already possessing large economies of scale which also allows them large long term research budgets to keep ahead. Given the unit cost of production/distribution is getting...

Workers in rich countries earn more than those in poor countries partly because they are better educated but mostly because they live in societies that have, over many years, developed institutions that foster prosperity and peace. Workers become far more productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. Those who used to scrape a living from the soil with a wooden hoe start driving tractors. Those who once made mud bricks by hand start working with cranes and mechanical diggers. Those who cut hair find richer clients who tip better.“Labour is the world’s most valuable commodity—yet thanks to strict immigration regulation, most of it goes to waste,” argue Bryan Caplan and Vipul Naik in “A radical case for open borders”. Mexican labourers who migrate to the United States can expect to earn 150% more. Unskilled Nigerians make 1,000% more.“Making Nigerians stay in Ni...