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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Omar Yaqub

Omar Yaqub

The awful truth: education won't stop the west getting poorer | Peter Wilby | Comment i... - 0 views

  • Skilled jobs will go to the lowest bidder worldwide. A decline in middle class pay and job satisfaction is only just beginning
  • Americans are about to suffer a profound shock. For the past 30 years governments have explained that, while they can no longer protect jobs through traditional forms of state intervention such as subsidies and tariffs, they can expand and reform education to maximise opportunity. If enough people buckle down to acquiring higher-level skills and qualifications, Europeans and Americans will continue to enjoy rising living standards. If they work hard enough, each generation can still do better than its parents. All that is required is to bring schools up to scratch and persuade universities to teach "marketable" skills. That is the thinking behind Michael Gove's policies and those of all his recent predecessors as education secretary.
  • "Knowledge work", supposedly the west's salvation, is now being exported like manual work. A global mass market in unskilled labour is being quickly succeeded by a market in middle-class work, particularly for industries, such as electronics, in which so much hope of employment opportunities and high wages was invested. As supply increases, employers inevitably go to the cheapest source. A chip designer in India costs 10 times less than a US one.
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  • Alan Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has estimated that a quarter of all American service sector jobs could go overseas.
  • Western neoliberal "flat earthers" (after Thomas Friedman's book) believed jobs would migrate overseas in an orderly fashion. Some skilled work might eventually leave but, they argued, it would make space for new industries, requiring yet higher skills and paying better wages. Only highly educated westerners would be capable of the necessary originality and adaptability. Developing countries would obligingly wait for us to innovate in new areas before trying to compete.
  • But why shouldn't developing countries leapfrog the west? Asia now produces more scientists and engineers than the EU and the US put together. By 2012, on current trends, the Chinese will patent more inventions than any other nation.
  • t suggests neoliberals made a second, perhaps more important error. They assumed "knowledge work" would always entail the personal autonomy, creativity and job satisfaction to which the middle classes were accustomed. They did not understand that, as the industrial revolution allowed manual work to be routinised, so in the electronic revolution the same fate would overtake many professional jobs. Many "knowledge skills" will go the way of craft skills. They are being chopped up, codified and digitised. Every high street once had bank managers who used their discretion and local knowledge to decide which customers should receive loans. Now software does the job. Human judgment is reduced to a minimum, which explains why loan applicants are often denied because of some tiny, long-forgotten overdue payment
  • Digital Taylorism makes jobs easier to export but, crucially, changes the nature of much professional work. Aspirant graduates face the prospect not only of lower wages, smaller pensions and less job security than their parents enjoyed but also of less satisfying careers. True, every profession and company will retain a cadre of thinkers and decision-makers at the top – perhaps 10% or 15% of the total – but the mass of employees, whether or not they hold high qualifications, will perform routine functions for modest wages. Only for those with elite qualifications from elite universities (not all in Europe or America) will education deliver the promised rewards.
  • The effects of the financial squeeze and deficit reduction programme will threaten much more than this government's survival. We shall see, in all probability, a permanent reduction in British living standards that can't be arrested by educational reform. Neoliberalism, already badly dented by the financial meltdown, will be almost entirely discredited. Governments will then need to rethink their attitudes to education, inequality and the state's economic role.
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    Skilled jobs will go to the lowest bidder worldwide. A decline in middle class pay and job satisfaction is only just beginning
Omar Yaqub

Alberta puts two immigration programs on hold - 0 views

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    Alberta puts two immigration programs on hold
Omar Yaqub

Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program : Alberta, Canada - Immigration - 0 views

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    The AINP is currently not accepting applications under the AINP U.S. Visa Holder Category and the AINP Family Stream. Applications postmarked after August 23, 2010 will be returned. Applications postmarked on or before August 23, 2010 that meet all program criteria will be accepted for processing and will be processed according to AINP Processing Times and U.S. Visa Holder Category or Family Stream criteria. See the following News Release for further information
Omar Yaqub

Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Performance reviews corrupt the system by getting employees to focus on pleasing the boss, rather than on achieving desired results. And they make it difficult, if not impossible, for workers to speak truth to power.
  • performance preview. Instead of top-down reviews, both boss and subordinate are held responsible for setting goals and achieving results. No longer will only the subordinate be held accountable for the often arbitrary metrics that the boss creates. Instead, bosses are taught how to truly manage, and learn that it’s in their interest to listen to their subordinates to get the results the taxpayer is counting on.
  • Instead of the bosses merely handing out A’s and C’s, they work to make sure everyone can earn an A. And the word goes out: “No more after-the-fact disappointments. Tell me your problems as they happen; we’re in it together and it’s my job to ensure results.”
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  • eplaced traditional performance evaluations with a system that emphasized goal-setting and continuous improvement. It encouraged supervisors to act as coaches and mentors, and officers (who are unionized) to offer feedback on their superiors.
  • Performance reviews aren’t the only ways to measure effectiveness, to be sure. Workers whose output is tangible and measurable — how much garbage is picked up, how many streets are cleared of snow — are increasingly evaluated according to numerical goals. I’d argue these measurements are similarly flawed. Workers are almost always better at coming up with metrics that lead to systemwide gains than bosses alone are. The key to systemwide success (as opposed to individual success) is still employees working together under the leadership of good managers.
  • performance review makes it nearly impossible to have the kind of trusting relationships in the workplace that make improvement possible.
Omar Yaqub

Industrial policy: Moving the movie business | The Economist - 0 views

  • Yet it's worth thinking about why it's absurd to argue that every state should try to subsidise up a local film industry but not crazy to support local universities. Certainly, there are huge efficiencies being sacrificed by duplicating administrative capacity all around the country. And academics benefit from close proximity to those working on similar problems; the efficacy of research is reduced when it's spread more thinly around the country. If America had fewer, bigger states, it would probably have fewer, bigger universities, and that might well be a very good thing.
  • The joke, I'm sure I don't need to explain, is that not every state can succeed by poaching productions from other states, since what's made in one state can't be made in another. But that's not quite right. A subsidy allows a business to cut prices and artificially raise demand. Given generous enough subsidies, many more movies would be made, and each state could, potentially, have a thriving film industry. This is how higher education works, more or less. New Mexico has state universities just like California and Iowa and Alaska. These schools are understandably viewed as foundations of the local economies in which they're located, as well as important cultural institutions. And we obviously view the subsidisation of the production of college graduates as a worthwhile contribution to long-run growth, again, understandably.
  • [Former New Mexico Governor Bill] Richardson says that the film and TV subsidy has brought "nearly $4 billion into our economy over eight years" and has created 10,000 jobs. By "our," he means New Mexico. He says every state should emulate this success.
Omar Yaqub

- Cities - GOOD - 0 views

shared by Omar Yaqub on 02 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • mid-sized cities in developed countries with relatively low population densities tend to score well by having all the cultural and infrastructural benefits on offer with fewer problems related to crime or congestion
  • oderately sized and populated, can more thoroughly address urban infrastructural and governmental needs like public education, healthcare, and safety than their larger, denser global counterparts.
Omar Yaqub

A Toronto immigrant mentoring program is keeping New Canadian professionals out of cabs - 0 views

  • The Mentoring Partnership Program is run by the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) through 12 agencies and 27 corporate partners. Since its creation six years ago, it's arranged 5,300 matches, with the help of more than 3,800 volunteer mentors.
  • "Of all our programs, it's probably the initiative that's caught the imagination of our corporate partners. It has a real return for them," says TRIEC executive director Elizabeth McIsaac. "It can be a form of soft recruitment and it helps its leaders become more cross-culturally competent."
  • it's in unlicensed professions where networking is crucial that the mentoring program makes the biggest difference.
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    Write up on the program ERIEC was modeled on. 
Omar Yaqub

CDS Monthly Update - February 2011 | CDC Development Solutions - 0 views

  • IBM Corporate Service Corps Teams Head to India and Ghana CDS is kicking off the third year of its partnership with IBM’s Corporate Service Corps (CSC) with teams heading to Ghana and India at the end of February.
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    Corpoate Service Corps Teams Head to India and Ghana CDS is kicking off the third year of its partnership with IBM's Corporate Service Corps (CSC) with teams heading to Ghana and India at the end of February.
Omar Yaqub

IBM100 - Corporate Service Corps - 0 views

  • Corporate Service Corps, through which the company disperses small teams of high-performing employees, for weeks at a time, to help communities around the world address economic and societal challenges. The mission of these teams combines corporate responsibility with leadership training and business development—representing a new integration of the company’s business and societal goals.
  • That work roster suggests why the Corporate Service Corps represents not only cutting-edge career training but also a major advance in the practice of corporate social responsibility. The latter has come a long way over the past 100 years. A century ago, businesses answered only to their shareholders, and philanthropy was a personal (and primarily financial) matter for wealthy industrialists and their companies. However, over the course of the twentieth century, the most enlightened corporations came to see developing responsible relationships with society as an important element of how they defined themselves. Today, engaging with society has increasingly become an essential part of doing business, woven into every decision about how the organization operates.
  • For IBM, the company gains experienced leaders, inspired employees, insights into new markets.
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  • “These kinds of skills are increasingly important. As the world gets flatter the ability to manage across all of these cultural differences is going to be much more important,”
  • CSC concept is now spreading to other companies. Industrial giants Dow Corning, Novartis and FedEx are launching similar programs, and the US Agency for International Development in 2010 began collaborating with IBM to help smaller companies get involved.
Omar Yaqub

Sustainable Happiness: How Happiness Studies Can Contribute to a More Sustainable Futur... - 0 views

  • Sustainable Happiness: How Happiness Studies Can Contribute to a More Sustainable Future This paper provides the rationale for integrating sustainability principles with happiness studies. Examples of sustainable happiness in practice are provided as well as recommendations for further applications.
Omar Yaqub

Home | Wiganplus - 0 views

shared by Omar Yaqub on 28 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • WiganPlus is an exciting new scheme that rewards people who live and work within Wigan for continuing to shop in our local town centre. With exclusive promotions from Arriva on local bus travel to Wigan town centre and exciting offers and incentives from the towns favourite retailers, WiganPlus makes local loyalty more rewarding. 
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    Incentive to promote local business, shopping, and cooperation WiganPlus is an exciting new scheme that rewards people who live and work within Wigan for continuing to shop in our local town centre. With exclusive promotions from Arriva on local bus travel to Wigan town centre and exciting offers and incentives from the towns favourite retailers, WiganPlus makes local loyalty more rewarding.
Omar Yaqub

Productivity key to increased personal - and national - luxuries - thestar.com - 0 views

  • What if, however, you were told most of your mortgage or all of your rent could be paid off instantly, or you could send your kids to a national daycare program? Still bored? Yet that’s exactly what could have happened if Canada didn’t have a productivity gap with the U.S., according to Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
  • Canada trails the U.S. in GDP per capita by $9,300. In 1981 that gap was only $2,600. If we got back to the 1981 gap, the average family would see their disposable, after-tax income go up by $8,800, according to the institute, which is the research arm for the task force chaired by Martin.
  • That would be like having almost all the mortgages and rental payments disappear. It would be like having enough money to pay for a national child-care program and still have enough left over for the biggest tax cut in history
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  • Lest you assume productivity gains are more a concern of free marketers and other pro business forces, that extra income would generate another $76 billion in tax revenue for various levels of government, according to the institute. That would be enough to pay for a national daycare program, fund the healthcare recommendations by the Romanow Commission, cover the cost of Canada’s commitments under the Kyoto Accord, and pay for a $55 billion tax cut.
  • what’s behind the gap?
  • Canada’s resource boom, a lack of innovation by Canada’s businesses, and a lack of investment in new, more efficient equipment are the three biggest causes
  • resources are hard to find. . . . By becoming more focused on resources, we’ve hurt our productivity numbers
  • tar sands are particularly bad for productivity numbers because of the sheer amount of time and effort of extracting the oil,
  • lack of innovation can also partly be blamed on the size of Canada’s resource sector,
  • Because it’s easy to make big amounts of money extracting and exporting resources; businesses haven’t had to innovate. Our abundance of natural resources is actually something of a curse,
  • In business sector spending on R&D, Canada ranks a disappointing 17th among OECD countries, and when it comes to innovation, the World Economic Forum rates us 19th, far behind the United States, Germany and Japan,” Macklem told a Calgary audience. Macklem also pointed out Canadian companies don’t spend much on new, efficient equipment. That means it takes a Canadian longer to make whatever’s being produced, whether it’s clothes, widgets or iron ore. That pushes down productivity.
  • “It will take a lot more than just freeing our private sector. … None of that works. In fact, it takes a deliberate state strategy,” argued Stanford, pointing to countries such as Finland.
  • “Economists, policy makers and corporations have been too focused on the denominator, and not enough on the numerator. … People always say ‘gee, it’s too bad that auto plant closed, even though it was really efficient and made things quickly.’ Well guess what? If the price of the car gets cut to $10,000 because it’s something nobody wants to buy, that affects productivity numbers too.”
Omar Yaqub

The Daily, Thursday, February 24, 2011. Study: Apprenticeable occupations and the emplo... - 0 views

  • Welders, exterior finishing occupations, machinists, carpenters and heavy equipment and crane operators, including drillers, experienced the largest employment losses among apprenticeable occupations. For all occupations combined, the employment downturn took its heaviest toll in Ontario and Alberta, where employment decreased by 3.1% and 3.3%, respectively.
Omar Yaqub

How cities take the renewable energy lead when provinces don't | Pembina Institute - 0 views

  • n the absence of a comprehensive renewable energy plan for Canada, several have begun forging ahead with their own long-term visions to produce renewable energy locally.
  • We see this across Alberta. More than 20 communities, from Athabasca to Pincher Creek, have installed solar electricity systems on highly visible public buildings.
  • at a meeting of the City of Edmonton's Task Force on Renewable Energy that we heard the story of one of the boldest municipal steps to encourage local renewable energy in North America. Gainesville, Florida - home of the Gators and Gatorade - made headlines when they launched the very first municipal feed-in tariff program to facilitate solar energy on homes and businesses.
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  • describing her community, Hanrahan painted a picture familiar to Albertans. Gainesville is an inland medium-sized centricity with a large university, surrounded by agriculture and forests. Coal fuels most of their electricity production. While Gainesville has a (much!) warmer climate than Alberta's cities, it only has about a seven per cent better solar resource for generating electricity than Edmonton does.
  • Gainesville's feed-in tariff guarantees a payment for 20 years for electricity fed back to the grid, set at a rate that will allow owners to recover their costs and obtain a four to five per cent rate of return. To control costs, the program is capped so that contracts are only available for four megawatts of new installed capacity each year. The first 4 MW has cost the average resident about 70¢ per month. As installation costs quickly decrease with a new, robust local solar market, future phases will cost even less.
  • the political obstacles are less daunting at the municipal level.
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    How cities take the renewable energy lead when provinces don't
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