Missing the Bear on green jobs:
Labour’s conference pamphlet (via @thedancingflea) talks about reviving the British economic future using green jobs but offers conflicting policy in two breaths.
“Many of our major cities and urban centres display a rich diversity of cultures. This strength can create tensions unless we manage the impact carefully. Increased diversity requires us to respect and honour difference while maintaining cohesion and the solidarity that underpins universal services and a healthy society. Migration remains an important driver of economic success. Our history is of a nation built on openness-- to trade, ideas, and talent-- and our future must be too.”(The Choice for Britain, 17)
Yes migration has done and it does, but Labour doesn't seem to quite grasp how. How, for example, does social cohesion feed diversity-- isn’t it an anathema? Several pages later Labour shows that it’s missed the bear:
“We believe a tough but flexible system, rather than an arbitrary quota or cap, is better for British business and the British economy.”(28)
Really? How is it that Labour expects to “see a significant rise in professional and high-skill jobs over the next decade” and realize returns from “rising demand from the middle-class in China and India, and increased demand for personalized goods and services in the UK.” (26) How is it that Labour expects that Britain will see economic returns from green innovation if its immigration policy blocks those with new ideas from migrating or even being educated there?
IPR and innovation guru Vivek Wadhwa writes in a new piece, “It is necessary to accept that R&D will migrate to areas of higher growth in order to tap into the new brains in those labor markets, and to gain better knowledge of those markets as well as tap into cultural and economic ties.” For this reason, he explains, it’s vital that developed countries (his article specifically sites the US, but the same can be easily applied to the UK and EU) allow freedom of movement between China and India, and the US in order to encourage the development of innovative ideas from business.
The points based system Labour has come up with is staunchly protectionist (also read here and here). In one breath Labour has admitted that in order to grow the British economy in the future it needs an infusion of brain power from outside its borders, and in the next said that that brain power is only welcome if it conforms to British culture. New ideas won’t be bourne from conforming to British culture. Isn’t that the whole point of soliciting new ideas in the first place-- to discover something that doesn’t conform?
The problem Wadhwa explains (in another new piece), “Only 7% of Chinese students, 9% of European students, and 25% of Indian students believe that the best days of the U.S. economy lie ahead. Conversely, 74% of Chinese students and 86% of Indian students believe that the best days for their home country’s economy lie ahead.”
In other words, the place to be for innovation and opportunity to add to and learn from new research is about to shift away from the US and UK’s universities. The US and the UK can either fight it, as they are doing, with tighter immigration policies (though kudoos to the EU for making visa policy extra accessible to Chinese), they are effectively nailing shut their own economic coffins. According to the American Chamber of Commerce in China, US visa policies have had severely negative effects on Chinese-American business relations:
“In our 2001 survey on the business environment in China, 39 percent commented that U.S. visa policies had a slightly negative or strongly negative impact on their business. In our 2004 survey, those suffering a negative effect went up to 70 percent. Asked if travel to the U.S. is substantially more difficult than to other countries, 55 percent responded that it is and 50 percent said they now send people to other countries for business meetings that would previously have been held in the United States.”
Unfortunately for the US and UK, China is already poised to lead the way renewables. India’s got plenty to offer in terms of social entrepreneurial innovations. But the British points systems and recent restrictions on US visas are keeping students out. Students who might share ideas, stay and teach for a few years, interact as postgrad students with undergrads, and feed more innovation in Western economies. The US and the UK are starting from behind already and doesn’t look like they are doing much to catch up.
Labour claims that it’s concerned about another “lost generation” of British workers, but it’s policies will lose that generation for Britain. And it isn’t just the visas: Labour’s policy on renewables has been all talk and no swagger. Lest we forget Vestas. And more could be done to sway the public, especially the rural public, towards wind power.
Labour hasn’t just missed the bear, they’ve mistaken it for a fox in green dress, asked it to dance, and are about to be eaten by it.
Labour’s conference pamphlet (via @thedancingflea) talks about reviving the British economic future using green jobs but offers conflicting policy in two breaths.
“Many of our major cities and urban centres display a rich diversity of cultures. This strength can create tensions unless we manage the impact carefully. Increased diversity requires us to respect and honour difference while maintaining cohesion and the solidarity that underpins universal services and a healthy society. Migration remains an important driver of economic success. Our history is of a nation built on openness-- to trade, ideas, and talent-- and our future must be too.”(The Choice for Britain, 17)
Yes migration has done and it does, but Labour doesn't seem to quite grasp how. How, for example, does social cohesion feed diversity-- isn’t it an anathema? Several pages later Labour shows that it’s missed the bear:
“We believe a tough but flexible system, rather than an arbitrary quota or cap, is better for British business and the British economy.”(28)
Really? How is it that Labour expects to “see a significant rise in professional and high-skill jobs over the next decade” and realize returns from “rising demand from the middle-class in China and India, and increased demand for personalized goods and services in the UK.” (26) How is it that Labour expects that Britain will see economic returns from green innovation if its immigration policy blocks those with new ideas from migrating or even being educated there?
IPR and innovation guru Vivek Wadhwa writes in a new piece, “It is necessary to accept that R&D will migrate to areas of higher growth in order to tap into the new brains in those labor markets, and to gain better knowledge of those markets as well as tap into cultural and economic ties.” For this reason, he explains, it’s vital that developed countries (his article specifically sites the US, but the same can be easily applied to the UK and EU) allow freedom of movement between China and India, and the US in order to encourage the development of innovative ideas from business.
The points based system Labour has come up with is staunchly protectionist (also read here and here). In one breath Labour has admitted that in order to grow the British economy in the future it needs an infusion of brain power from outside its borders, and in the next said that that brain power is only welcome if it conforms to British culture. New ideas won’t be bourne from conforming to British culture. Isn’t that the whole point of soliciting new ideas in the first place-- to discover something that doesn’t conform?
The problem Wadhwa explains (in another new piece), “Only 7% of Chinese students, 9% of European students, and 25% of Indian students believe that the best days of the U.S. economy lie ahead. Conversely, 74% of Chinese students and 86% of Indian students believe that the best days for their home country’s economy lie ahead.”
In other words, the place to be for innovation and opportunity to add to and learn from new research is about to shift away from the US and UK’s universities. The US and the UK can either fight it, as they are doing, with tighter immigration policies (though kudoos to the EU for making visa policy extra accessible to Chinese), they are effectively nailing shut their own economic coffins. According to the American Chamber of Commerce in China, US visa policies have had severely negative effects on Chinese-American business relations:
“In our 2001 survey on the business environment in China, 39 percent commented that U.S. visa policies had a slightly negative or strongly negative impact on their business. In our 2004 survey, those suffering a negative effect went up to 70 percent. Asked if travel to the U.S. is substantially more difficult than to other countries, 55 percent responded that it is and 50 percent said they now send people to other countries for business meetings that would previously have been held in the United States.”
Unfortunately for the US and UK, China is already poised to lead the way renewables. India’s got plenty to offer in terms of social entrepreneurial innovations. But the British points systems and recent restrictions on US visas are keeping students out. Students who might share ideas, stay and teach for a few years, interact as postgrad students with undergrads, and feed more innovation in Western economies. The US and the UK are starting from behind already and doesn’t look like they are doing much to catch up.
Labour claims that it’s concerned about another “lost generation” of British workers, but it’s policies will lose that generation for Britain. And it isn’t just the visas: Labour’s policy on renewables has been all talk and no swagger. Lest we forget Vestas. And more could be done to sway the public, especially the rural public, towards wind power.
Labour hasn’t just missed the bear, they’ve mistaken it for a fox in green dress, asked it to dance, and are about to be eaten by it.
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