h******t
发帖数: 872 | 1 Think of what The Times reported last February: At little Grinnell College
in rural Iowa, with 1,600 students, “nearly one of every 10 applicants
being considered for the class of 2015 is from China.” The article noted
that dozens of other American colleges and universities are seeing a similar
surge as well. And the article added this fact: Half the “applicants from
China this year have perfect scores of 800 on the math portion of the SAT.”
...........
A Theory of Everything (Sort Of)
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: August 13, 2011
LONDON burns. The Arab Spring triggers popular rebellions against autocrats
across the Arab world. The Israeli Summer brings 250,000 Israelis into the
streets, protesting the lack of affordable housing and the way their country
is now dominated by an oligopoly of crony capitalists. From Athens to
Barcelona, European town squares are being taken over by young people
railing against unemployment and the injustice of yawning income gaps, while
the angry Tea Party emerges from nowhere and sets American politics on its
head.
There are multiple and different reasons for these explosions, but to the
extent they might have a common denominator I think it can be found in one
of the slogans of Israel’s middle-class uprising: “We are fighting for an
accessible future.” Across the world, a lot of middle- and lower-middle-
class people now feel that the “future” is out of their grasp, and they
are letting their leaders know it.
Why now? It starts with the fact that globalization and the information
technology revolution have gone to a whole new level. Thanks to cloud
computing, robotics, 3G wireless connectivity, Skype, Facebook, Google,
LinkedIn, Twitter, the iPad, and cheap Internet-enabled smartphones, the
world has gone from connected to hyper-connected.
This is the single most important trend in the world today. And it is a
critical reason why, to get into the middle class now, you have to study
harder, work smarter and adapt quicker than ever before. All this technology
and globalization are eliminating more and more “routine” work — the
sort of work that once sustained a lot of middle-class lifestyles.
The merger of globalization and I.T. is driving huge productivity gains,
especially in recessionary times, where employers are finding it easier,
cheaper and more necessary than ever to replace labor with machines,
computers, robots and talented foreign workers. It used to be that only
cheap foreign manual labor was easily available; now cheap foreign genius is
easily available. This explains why corporations are getting richer and
middle-skilled workers poorer. Good jobs do exist, but they require more
education or technical skills. Unemployment today still remains relatively
low for people with college degrees. But to get one of those degrees and to
leverage it for a good job requires everyone to raise their game. It’s hard.
Think of what The Times reported last February: At little Grinnell College
in rural Iowa, with 1,600 students, “nearly one of every 10 applicants
being considered for the class of 2015 is from China.” The article noted
that dozens of other American colleges and universities are seeing a similar
surge as well. And the article added this fact: Half the “applicants from
China this year have perfect scores of 800 on the math portion of the SAT.”
Not only does it take more skill to get a good job, but for those who are
unable to raise their games, governments no longer can afford generous
welfare support or cheap credit to be used to buy a home for nothing down —
which created a lot of manual labor in construction and retail. Alas, for
the 50 years after World War II, to be a president, mayor, governor or
university president meant, more often than not, giving things away to
people. Today, it means taking things away from people.
All of this is happening at a time when this same globalization/I.T.
revolution enables the globalization of anger, with all of these
demonstrations now inspiring each other. Some Israeli protestors carried a
sign: “Walk Like an Egyptian.” While these social protests — and their
flash-mob, criminal mutations like those in London — are not caused by new
technologies per se, they are fueled by them.
This globalization/I.T. revolution is also “super-empowering” individuals,
enabling them to challenge hierarchies and traditional authority figures —
from business to science to government. It is also enabling the creation of
powerful minorities and making governing harder and minority rule easier
than ever. See dictionary for: “Tea Party.”
Surely one of the iconic images of this time is the picture of Egypt’s
President Hosni Mubarak — for three decades a modern pharaoh — being
hauled into court, held in a cage with his two sons and tried for attempting
to crush his people’s peaceful demonstrations. Every leader and C.E.O.
should reflect on that photo. “The power pyramid is being turned upside
down," said Yaron Ezrahi, an Israeli political theorist.
So let’s review: We are increasingly taking easy credit, routine work and
government jobs and entitlements away from the middle class — at a time
when it takes more skill to get and hold a decent job, at a time when
citizens have more access to media to organize, protest and challenge
authority and at a time when this same merger of globalization and I.T. is
creating huge wages for people with global skills (or for those who learn to
game the system and get access to money, monopolies or government contracts
by being close to those in power) — thus widening income gaps and fueling
resentments even more.
Put it all together and you have today’s front-page news. |
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