“What the world lacks is willing customers, not willing workers.”
That statement in this week’s The Economist magazine may be one of the most insightful among all the worried economic chatter in the media these days. The magazine’s cover story this week covers the woes of the Chinese worker, no longer docile migrant laborers willing to make pennies. According to the magazine, Chinese wages have risen 17 percent over the last year alone. Moreover, “Chinese labor costs tripled in the decade after 1995, but output per worker quintupled.”
The article continued: “China’s economy relies too much on investment and too little on consumer spending…. Letting wages rise at the expense of profits would allow workers to enjoy more of the fruits of their labor.”
