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writingHistorisk skildring: “Vi är stolta över vår historia och vi vill hålla oss till vår höga standard i denna situation.”
Kris: “Vi måste försvara oss mot de faror som hotar oss.”
Besvikelse: “Vi baserade vårt beslut på den bästa, tillgänliga informationen, men nu vet vi att det var ett felaktigt beslut. Därför måste vi försöka med något annat.”
Möjlighet: “Vi vet något nu som vi inte visste förut, vilket ger oss nya möjligheter om vi agerar snabbt.”
Skiljeväg: “Vi har lyckats bra genom att följa denna väg, men nu har vi nya valmöjligheter och måste bestämma vilken väg vi ska ta.”
Utmaning: “Någon annan har åstadkommit något anmärkningsvärt - klarar vi att göra samma sak?”
Larm: “Även om det ser ut som om allt går bra har vi ett allvarligt problem som vi måste lösa.”
Äventyr: “Vi vet att det är riskabelt att testa nya saker, men det är bättre att ta en risk än att lunka på i samma spår.”
Svar på en order: “Vi har blivit tillsagda att göra detta, nu är vi här för att komma på hur det ska göras.”
Revolution: “Vi närmar oss katastrofens rand om vi inte radikalt förändrar det vi gör idag.”
Evolution: “Om vi inte hänger med i det senaste, kommer vi att halka efter.”
Den stora drömmen: “Om vi bara inser våra möjligheter kan vi göra dem till vår verklighet.”
Henry M. Boettinger, Moving Mountains (1989)
“They all say that if they could earn in Romania even half of what they earn in Spain and elsewhere, they would come back. But there are no jobs here,” says the mayor.
Hundreds of mayors in Romania and Bulgaria are in the same position as the two countries prepare to join the European Union on January 1. So are many of their counterparts in Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic states, which were among the 10 countries that became EU members in 2004. (…)
Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu, Romania’s foreign minister, says he is happy to see young Romanians going abroad but – like the mayor of Feldru – hopes that one day some will return. “I know some Romanians think emigration is a brain drain but I don’t. Romanians living abroad maintain their identity. They work hard and bring Romania a good name. What would be really interesting would be in future to attract back people from abroad as investors.” (…)
For Romania and Bulgaria this gap is even larger than for the 2004 entrants. Average incomes in purchasing power terms are just 28 per cent of the west European level, compared with 45 per cent in central Europe. (…)
An estimated 2m Romanians are employed abroad – about 20 per cent of the working-age population. (…)
After lurching from crisis to crisis in the 1990s, the Romanian economy is now among the fastest-growing in Europe with an expected real increase in gross domestic product for 2006 of 7 per cent. (…)
Migrants, too, are playing a role in boosting the economy, contributing an estimated €3.5bn ($4.4bn, £2.3bn) to €4bn in remittances – enough to cover almost half the country’s 2005 current account deficit. (…)
But there is still a long way to go. Some 40 per cent of Romanian workers are nominally employed in agriculture (…)
Economists estimate that at current economic growth rates it could take 20 years before Romanians reach the living standards of today’s west Europeans. (…)
As the figures show, most migrants leave their children (…) usually in the care of grandparents. (…) school examination results have declined sharply, with just half of those aged 14 and 15 passing their year-end tests in 2006, compared with 80-90 per cent in the past.
FT.com
Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), Roman Emperor, Stoic philosopher: “The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
Amartya Sen, i Development as Freedom (1999): “Framgången hos en ekonomi och hos ett samhälle kan inte skiljas från det liv som samhällets medlemmar har möjlighet att leva … Vi värdesätter inte bara att kunna leva gott och tillfredsställande liv, utan att också ha kontroll över det.”
Wiliiam Shakespeare - Julius Cesar, akt I, scen II: “Felet, min Brutus, är ej stjärnornas; det är vårt eget fel att vi är nollor. Ibland är människan sin ödes herre.”
Broadband is freeing us from the geographic restrictions. Will this trend continue to gain momentum? Hard to say, but early indicators show that office is where the laptop is.
Web Worker Daily
A couple of factors seem to be driving the trend. First, the option of telecommuting is an enticing benefit to prospective high-talent employees. “The war for talent, combined with commuting times and costs, and an increasing need for work-life balance are all factors that promote telecommuting,” says Jim Lanzalotto, vice president of strategy and marketing for Yoh. “This survey validates what we’ve seen over the years: High-impact talent prefers - indeed, thrives - in an environment that provides a flexible work-life balance.” (…)
Interestingly, though, the study seems to contradict findings from a Gartner study from earlier this year, as reported by Dave Margulius. In a report, Gartner said it expected the growth of telecommuting to slow, from 12 percent — worldwide and in the United States — in 2005 to 5.5 percent worldwide and 3.7 percent in the United States by 2008.
InfoWorld Tech Watch
Robert H. Wade: In thinking about these issues, we should also give up talk of “the developing world” in contrast to “the developed world,” and talk instead of a “1:3:2 world” (one billion people live in the rich countries, three billion live in countries where growth rates are faster than those of the rich countries, and two billion live in countries where they are substantially slower).
When will the states representing the slow-growing two billion link up with the states representing the fast-growing but low-income three billion to force changes in the rules of engagement in the international economy? Perhaps the state representatives of the fast-growing three billion — when and if those states’ average income reaches, say, two-thirds that of the rich countries — will come to subscribe to neoliberal policy norms as the basis of a just world economic order. After all, most others have done the same as their states have come toward the top of the pile.
Foreign Affairs
Report from CGD: 51% of Kenya’s doctors are abroad. 81% of Liberia’s nurses have left.
How many doctors and nurses have left Africa? Which countries did they leave? Where have they settled? To answer these questions, CGD’s Michael Clemens and Gunilla Pettersson have compiled a dataset of the cumulative bilateral net flows of African-born physicians and nurses to the nine most important destination countries.
Swamp Cottage
Critics said the fence does not take into account the extraordinarily varied geography of the 2,000-mile-long border, which cuts through Mexican and U.S. cities separated by a sidewalk, vast scrubland and deserts, rivers, irrigation canals and miles of mountainous terrain. (…)
And, they say, the estimated $2 billion price tag and the mandate that it be completed by 2008 overlook 10 years of legal and logistical difficulties the federal government has faced to finish a comparatively tiny fence of 14 miles dividing San Diego and Tijuana.
“This is the feel-good approach to immigration control,” said Wayne Cornelius, an expert on immigration issues at the University of California at San Diego.
washingtonpost.com