miércoles, 20 de enero de 2010

Wages and welfare, ecological employments

Job and a fair wage is the essence of the economic and social development.

But, what is a just wage?

It is the amount of money for acquiring the goods that a person or a family need for getting welfare.

And what is the welfare?

It is health, food, dress, house, education, recreation, security and stable job; this mean quality of live. The problem is that the most part of the world population do not enjoy of those benefits; the great challenge is changing that situation.

Restrictions of natural resources, especially of water and energy, the scarcity of capital ---know how, technology, goods of capital, infrastructure and money--- do not help to carry out a global and effective program of employments and just wages.

A cause of the poverty

The other great problem is the inequality in the income distribution. The salaries are the basic indicator of the poverty or the well-being of a society.
There is a huge gap between the bosses and executives earnings and the workers salaries.

Only in the developed industrialized nations the workers receive an income for satisfying part of its necessities. In the rest of the world the wages are not enough neither to eat, as it is demonstrated in the following tables.


In Australia an executive receive an average of 200,000 US $ of salary per month, but a worker obtain (minimum wage) 1,908 US $ per month; something similar happen in Germany where the average salary of an executive is of 316,666 US $ per month while a worker obtain (minimum wage) 1,701.26 US $.
But the most difference is in the United States, where the monthly of a worker is of 1,209.60 while the executive earning (average) is of 525,000 US $; this mean 434 times more than the former.


Australia pays the higher wages to their workers, followed by France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy in the first five places. In this table the United States is in the sixth position regarding the workers earnings, but the United States is in the first place regarding the remuneration of their executives.

Of the selected countries of Asia, Bangladesh has the lesser income followed by Vietnam and China. A person that visited the industrial city of Guangzhou said to me that the workers in that city are practically slaves; they receive a salary of approximately 120 US $ per month and work the thirty (30) days of the month.
Of the selected countries, the communist nations of the past (Russia) and of the present (China and Vietnam) are the societies where the workers receive the lesser wages; in change, in the developed capitalists nations the workers obtain the higher salaries. This reveal the failure of the communism system and it explain why the communism disappeared in the former Soviet Union and in the Eastern Europe.


The situation in Africa is worse than the situation in the poorest nations of Asia.
In Latin America the Dominican Republic has the major wage but that is an exception in the region and in the rest of the underdeveloped nations.

The extreme poverty in Latin America is a sad reality. The case of Brazil and Mexico, which economies are situated between the first ten economies of the world is something that deserves to be considered with special attention: in both countries the minimum wage was less of 100 US $.

Brazil and Mexico have an important industrial development but is evident that their governments have been not able of establishing a fair wage for the workers.
In the most countries of Latin America still exists concentration of the property of the land and a good part of the peasants live in precarious conditions.



Key of the economic expansion
The economic expansion is not possible without just salaries; the politicians and the private entrepreneurs should be aware of this true.

The wages are the force that impulse the market; they are the key factor that determines the effective demand behavior.
A first step for combating the poverty is to increase the wages to a level that let to the workers satisfying its basic necessities.

If the underdeveloped nations do not make an effective effort for improving the wages the poverty will remain and vice verse.

Conclusion
The analysis of the economic reality lead to a conclusion: the most workers in the world are practically slaves because its salaries hardly let them to eat. Only in the developed industrialized nations this does not happen. Nevertheless, the difference between the wages of the executives and the workers earnings in the industrialized countries is something unbelievable: is hundreds of times superior.

It is necessary to carry out a global program for combating the poverty, preserving the natural resources and the environment.
One way are the ecological employments, through a global program of reforestation and conservation of the forests that still survive, as the Amazonia Region. The base of that program should be fair wages for the workers.

This program does not require a great amount of energy for to be developed; in change, other economic activities in the agriculture and the manufacture need a very important amount of energy, oil and coal especially. The world is running out of basic natural resources as water and petroleum. It is a global shortage of resources that change the economic paradigm.

The great problem of the humankind is that the worlds need more food and more manufactured goods, but there is not enough water nor petroleum for sustaining those requirements. In some regions, like China, there is abundance of coal but this is most contaminant source of energy. The other sources as the nuclear energy are too very dangerous, while the industrial eolic and solar energy are not enough developed. So far, the research with hydrogen has been a success, especially in the transport sector, but still it is in the beginning.

The other great problem is that for developing the agriculture the forests are razed and without the forests the live is not possible.

It is necessary a balance between the necessity of producing the essential goods, the use of the natural resources, the creation of jobs and fair wages. Those are great challenges for the creative capacity, especially for the thinkers, scientists, politicians, economists, entrepreneurs and the mass media.

sábado, 2 de enero de 2010

By lack of water China might increase their cereals imports

Asia -the most populated continent of the world- suffers the consequences of the earth resources overexploitation. A clear example of it is what happens with the underground waters and the China Rivers that irrigate good part of the agricultural lands. Those sources of water present a process of exhaustion that put in danger the agricultural production and might obey at China to increase their imports of food, specifically grains, since might be not able to satisfy their population's demand. This phenomenon already was observed in the Chinese society and was one of the reasons that motivated in 1995 the exports reduction of grains toward North Korea. When China interrupted the sale of grains to North Korea this country didn't have another alternative but requesting international help to the United Nations.

A restitution of the help in foods to North Korea by China seems not very probable since this country continues confronting serious production problems derived of the shortage of the most important inputs for the agricultural production as the water. An example is what happens in the Yellow River that had lost their flow and already doesn't reach the sea. In the year 1996 the River was dry during 133 days while in 1997 remained dry during 226 days. The County of Shandong is the last route of the river before arriving to the sea. This county produces good part of the corn and of the wheat and it has been seriously affected as consequence of the river drought.

What happens with the Yellow River also passes with other important rivers of China and with the more and more scarce underground sources of water. It is considered that China has around of 50,000 kilometers of rivers of certain magnitude and 80% of them are degraded and are not capable for the fishing, due to the contamination that receives. The Yellow River, for example, is polluted of heavy metals and other toxic matters that impede its use for human consumption and irrigation in good part of its route.

The decrease of the China capacity for producing foods will generate an important impact in the world economy, since will look those foods in the international markets causing the increase of its prices. The poor’s countries are not in capacity of resisting an increment in the price of the foods, they would not have how to pay the new prices and, in consequence, they would be in front of a true problem of survival. If the countries with more population as China and India diminish their foods production capacity, the world situation will be aggravated. India, the other giant of the world suffers a similar situation and should use very important part of the energy that produce to pump water of the underground.

World experts estimated that China would have enough water for few years more; this means that would have to import a good parte of their necessities of cereals. If this happen, the impact for the politics and the world economy would be very important.