One of the worries people have about globalisation is that all the jobs will end up where the labour is cheapest, leaving workers in already-rich countries out of work. Empirically, this is not the case. There are more jobs today in Europe and in United States than ever before. Sunday’s issue of The Observer gives an indication of why this is the case. It refers to a report from the Work Foundation, out sometime on Monday, that says that sectors including architecture, TV, fashion and music are the UK’s “great unsung success story”, employing 1.8 million people.
British workers are not competitive at manufacturing laser printers, but they’ve gone up the economic ladder and are doing innovative things with architecture. Inefficient French and Italian textiles manufacturers complain about cheap imports (responsible for the £79 Marks and Spencer suit and the £3 ASDA pair of jeans) but London-based fashion designers are doing a roaring trade, benefitting from the mundane work being doing cheaply in Asia.
I haven’t been able to get my hands on the report, but the Observer article says the Work Foundation, “warns that its growth could slow without ‘targeted public investment’”. Oh dear. Are they in favour of old-fashioned corporate welfare, which has a great tendency to produce inefficient, non-innovative industries? What my friends working in the UK’s independent television and film production industry tell me is that their biggest threat is any action by the government. The government introduces a tax regime on which they budget and then the government comes along a little later and rearranges it, messing up all their fragile plans.
The best thing the government could do for that industry is to cut taxes and then offer consistency. That and increasing the role of the independent sector in the BBC. The requirement imposed in the early 90s that the BBC has to buy 25% of its programming from the independent sector created what is arguably the most dynamic independent production sector in the world. Why not take that to a new level and set a requirement of 85% of its output?
Tags: bbc, work foundation