Re: Free trade and wages

["Anthony D'Costa" <dcosta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Low wages is a challenge, no doubt, especially when combined with high
productivity.  Harley Shaiken's study on the maquiladoras (1990) and my
own study of the South Korean steel industry indicate.  Increasingly I
see the possibility of other products, software for example, to be driven
by low wages and high productivity.  India is a case in point.  The
difference with the past low wage driven "new international
division of labor" by MNCs is that such low wage labor is not raw labor.
Rather it is quite educated and skilled.  In other words, capitalist
expansion is taking place based on both absolute and relative surplus
value.

Anthony D'Costa
U of Washington, Tacoma
On Wed, 26 Jan 1994, D Shniad wrote:

> On the issue raised a while back by Nathan Newman, quoting
> the Economist to the effect that free trade has had little
> effect on wages, I would strongly recommend Walter Russell
> Mead's "The Low-Wage Challenge to Global Growth" by way of
> rebuttal.
>
> It's published by the Economic Policy Institute in
> Washington, D.C.
>
> ISBN # 0-044826-21-0
>
> Sid Shniad
>
> Sid Shniad
>
>