Radical
Statistics
Missing Jobs - And Missing Statistics
Ivor Kenna
Is there any connection between income differentials, lack of jobs and missing statistics? I believe that we need to take an international, as well as a British perspective.
I shall work in added value which gives a fuller picture than wages and salaries, profits, or whatever. Briefly, an industrial process adds value: yarn comes into a weaving factory and comes out as cloth which has a higher value than the yarn. The difference is the added value. The added value in productive industry pays not only the wages and salaries. It also provides the wherewithal for capital investment, profits, taxes, and the wages and salaries of non-productive workers.
Productive industry includes tea plantations as well as car manufacturers and the makers of capital goods.
I shall assume that all workers are working to the highest levels of efficiency and productivity in their particular industry.
When I say that the added value is, say, £1,000 I am making no judgement as to whether this is what it should be. The £1,000 is simply its price on the international market.
A worker-year of added value is the amount of added value produced by a worker in one year.
Finally, my figures are based on the facts that are available. I have rounded them off for ease of comprehension. I have avoided repeating the words "average" and "say".
The average of one worker-year's added value I take to be £1,000 in China and £30,000 in Britain.
Suppose a branch of production where one worker-year's added value is £20,000 is exported from Britain to China.
Goods produced for £1,000 in China are then shipped to Britain at a cost of, say, £1,000. Cost so far £2,000. The goods are eventually sold for £15,000 in order to undercut goods which are still made in Britain. Consumers thereby gain £5,000. The difference of £13,000 has gone in unloading, warehousing, transport, agent's fees, wholesaling, retailing, insurance, rates and taxes, repayment of capital and interest to the banks, etc.
Undoubtedly, China is being heavily exploited. Otherwise it looks like a win-win situation. Chinese workers get jobs. If a Chinese worker has to call on a plumber he probably pays no more, relative to his wage, than a British worker.
It is only when the Chinese want to buy British goods and services that they will receive an unpleasant shock. There are numerous British tourists to China but few Chinese tourists to Britain.
Looking a little closer, though, things are not so advantageous. There is still some productive industry which will have to remain in Britain. For example, much of agriculture and brewing, catering, construction, internal transport.
However, most productive jobs either have been or can be exported to the benefit of those of us who are not in productive industry.
The difficulty is that, while Britain can export the jobs, it cannot export the people who would have been doing these jobs. We are not all capable of performing very high added value jobs even if that number of jobs were required. Nor can Britain hope to survive for long as a non-productive country as far as the international community is concerned.
Real unemployment in Britain will therefore grow, masked for some time, perhaps, by early retirement, job creation schemes, more stringent social security regulations, and inadequate data.
Britain and the West are not going to stop exploiting China and the rest of the World.
A temporary palliative for unemployment in Britain would be to pay the unemployed a living wage, something like what they would have received if jobs still existed. This would have a knock on effect on pensioners, housewives, the low-paid, and others. The rest of us would have to meet the cost.
The Chinese, and other Third Worlders, are people, too. If they were not so much exploited by Britain, and the West generally, they could have better lives and more resources to spend on development.
Radical statisticians should be demanding the facts so that people can see the injustice of it all. Namely, in comparable terms, such as US dollars, the worker-year added value for every-industry in every industry in every country in the World.
If, for some reason, a particular industry is not working to the highest levels of efficiency and productivity (e.g. the Chinese car industry) this could be asterisked and explanation given in a footnote.
Ivor Kenna
72 Compton Street
London
EC1V 0BN
