Deciding migration destination
Sunday, 24 January 2010
M Arifur Rahman
Anush, an Indian-born British software engineer, was declared redundant by his company in early 2009. He was given two months of time to search another job and before the two months ended his company declared itself bankrupt and stopped its operation. Anush didn't find a job after that. Eventually, he failed to pay for his mortgage and his house was repossessed. He and his wife are now working in a superstore as sales assistants and struggling hard to pay for their rents, utility bills and maintaining their usual life standard.
Anush is just one of millions who lost jobs in the aftermath of the most horrendous financial collapse in history. Anush and similar other may blame the government, crooked high-profile corporate heads and bankers for this mishap. But, honestly, this is natural. When good times reach the peak, bad times emerge. And a long century of good time in the United States of America and United Kingdom is thus just over.
The streets of London today are full of job seekers - the people who lost their jobs last year and thousands of newly imported students and migrants deliberately brought by British government as part of economic policy. British budget deficit is widening, government loan is skyrocketing, and funds for national security and benefits are diminishing. Financial services industry, the biggest contributor in UK GDP, is showing no sign of recovery. Value of pound sterling is depreciating almost every month and, unfortunately, no economic policy of Alistair Darling is working. The USA, the creator of this financial crisis, finds itself in a worse condition. Burdened with national debts, amounting more than $12 trillion, which are growing at compounding rates every second and there being no real hope of generating income to pay back the debts in 40 years, the USA is not far away from becoming bankrupt.
Obviously, the haunted governments of the USA and United Kingdom are not sitting idle. They are using their maximum talent to find solutions. However, they are using pretty old techniques to come out of this bad time-slashing interest rates, printing more and more money and taxing the incomes at very high rates. Cutting interest rates is failing to encourage investments, printing more money is endangering the economy with inflation and taxing the income at higher rate is depleting living standards.
Level of income and living standards in these countries are set to go down. If Britain and the USA want to rebuild their economies, they must convert themselves to low-cost economies like China or India. To win this fierce economic warfare there is no way left for the USA and UK other than calling back all the industries that they shifted to low-cost developing countries over the last three decades. This means that the struggling governments should eventually abolish national minimum wage rate or make it almost half of its current level. Lower minimum wage definitely will attract more investments than cutting interest rate can. Continuous pumping of money should be stopped right now unless it's extremely necessary to devalue dollar or pound sterling quickly. However, whatever steps may be taken, dollar cannot be saved from falling down in the near future. Like British pound, US dollar will cease to be the reigning currency all over the world.
Over the last few decades, the USA, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia had been the most attractive destinations of skilled manpower from Asian and other developing countries. Main sources of attraction were high level of income, excellent living standard and social security provided by the governments of these countries which no more exist in today's economic circumstances.
The next twenty years are going to be a very crucial period for world economy. As the global economic power is expected to shift from the west to east, one should be very careful in choosing one's migration destination during this period. One should decide where one should be and in what currency one should earn. Any wrong decision will cost a person a lot as already is being experienced by the recently migrated Asians and Africans in the United Kingdom, America and Canada.
(An investment manager & financial consultant, the writer works with a global investment firm in London. He can be reached at e-mail: arif.rehman@yahoo.com)
Anush, an Indian-born British software engineer, was declared redundant by his company in early 2009. He was given two months of time to search another job and before the two months ended his company declared itself bankrupt and stopped its operation. Anush didn't find a job after that. Eventually, he failed to pay for his mortgage and his house was repossessed. He and his wife are now working in a superstore as sales assistants and struggling hard to pay for their rents, utility bills and maintaining their usual life standard.
Anush is just one of millions who lost jobs in the aftermath of the most horrendous financial collapse in history. Anush and similar other may blame the government, crooked high-profile corporate heads and bankers for this mishap. But, honestly, this is natural. When good times reach the peak, bad times emerge. And a long century of good time in the United States of America and United Kingdom is thus just over.
The streets of London today are full of job seekers - the people who lost their jobs last year and thousands of newly imported students and migrants deliberately brought by British government as part of economic policy. British budget deficit is widening, government loan is skyrocketing, and funds for national security and benefits are diminishing. Financial services industry, the biggest contributor in UK GDP, is showing no sign of recovery. Value of pound sterling is depreciating almost every month and, unfortunately, no economic policy of Alistair Darling is working. The USA, the creator of this financial crisis, finds itself in a worse condition. Burdened with national debts, amounting more than $12 trillion, which are growing at compounding rates every second and there being no real hope of generating income to pay back the debts in 40 years, the USA is not far away from becoming bankrupt.
Obviously, the haunted governments of the USA and United Kingdom are not sitting idle. They are using their maximum talent to find solutions. However, they are using pretty old techniques to come out of this bad time-slashing interest rates, printing more and more money and taxing the incomes at very high rates. Cutting interest rates is failing to encourage investments, printing more money is endangering the economy with inflation and taxing the income at higher rate is depleting living standards.
Level of income and living standards in these countries are set to go down. If Britain and the USA want to rebuild their economies, they must convert themselves to low-cost economies like China or India. To win this fierce economic warfare there is no way left for the USA and UK other than calling back all the industries that they shifted to low-cost developing countries over the last three decades. This means that the struggling governments should eventually abolish national minimum wage rate or make it almost half of its current level. Lower minimum wage definitely will attract more investments than cutting interest rate can. Continuous pumping of money should be stopped right now unless it's extremely necessary to devalue dollar or pound sterling quickly. However, whatever steps may be taken, dollar cannot be saved from falling down in the near future. Like British pound, US dollar will cease to be the reigning currency all over the world.
Over the last few decades, the USA, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia had been the most attractive destinations of skilled manpower from Asian and other developing countries. Main sources of attraction were high level of income, excellent living standard and social security provided by the governments of these countries which no more exist in today's economic circumstances.
The next twenty years are going to be a very crucial period for world economy. As the global economic power is expected to shift from the west to east, one should be very careful in choosing one's migration destination during this period. One should decide where one should be and in what currency one should earn. Any wrong decision will cost a person a lot as already is being experienced by the recently migrated Asians and Africans in the United Kingdom, America and Canada.
(An investment manager & financial consultant, the writer works with a global investment firm in London. He can be reached at e-mail: arif.rehman@yahoo.com)