Posts by Simon Grigg
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But housing in the slums of Jakarta is not comparable to housing in South Auckland in terms of things universally considered good such as running water, electricity, space per person etc
Sounds like the South Bronx. No, the slums of Jabotek are awful but those as often as not tend to be full of people not working in the factories on a wage..internal immigrants, scavengers, and the like..and there are vast numbers of them. There are also millions of people in Jakarta living in vast leafy suburbs, and some fairly large housing estates not a million miles from the ones you see in London.
Yeah Joe, the funny thing about Bali is that overwhelmingly the tourists are from Indonesia..the foreign ones, here in record numbers now, are the cream. I love that line about the future...I may borrow it if that's ok. This is an incredible country, no?
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it appears that globalisation is very much subject to being shaped by mass political will.
indeed, as it has been here. It's not the first world guilt burden that has forced through the changes, slow that they may be, its the 80% turnout in the last election here and the consensus, and political pressure, that drives.
Indonesia has a hell of a way to go, but watch it go....unless of course the army goes stop again, circa 65, that's always at the back of your mind. But I think its gone too far now.
Joe, as an Indonesian observer, you gotta see the party rallies here..quite something, and there is a massive pride in what has been achieved, as there should be.
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South Auckland factory workers have considerably more purchasing power than their Indonesian equivalents doing similar work - they recieve a greater share of value within the business process...
In Indonesia Marcus, I would dispute that. I'm not sure if a worker South Auckland paying rent or mortgage and feeding kids is significantly better off that somebody in Bandung working in a textile factory, or has more disposable income in real terms inside the economy.
When you can feed a family for a day on about seventy US cents..and with fresh fruit and vegetables, an SMS on your cellphone is 1.5 cents, which it is
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ah...I remember...: "stress levels..."
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er....."massive parking charges and...." something I forgot....
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In advocating $3 a day wages you are directly advocating the strategic use of poor people around the world for the benefit of the owners of Western firms and local elites, and to a lesser extent middle-class Western consumers.
firstly I think those middle class western consumers are being as royally screwed as many in the third world...what is America anymore other than 300 million people to enrich banks and large corporations. New Zealand and Australia may have health benefits and such, but they certainly pay for them via tax regimes, indirect taxes, mortgages, interest, rates and a multitude of little taxes like massive parking charges and . And I'm always hit by how unhealthy everybody looks when I return to Australia or NZ. And why do you have to pay two or three times as much for an item as you do in Indonesia or Vietnam when the labour is the fixed. Those insurance companies and banks that dominate every street corner in Queen Street made most of their money from NZ's middle class, and those that supply them. Microsoft might manufacture in Asia but it makes almost all its money charging the western middle class.
The thing is Marcus there is grinding poverty here, which has to be addressed, but it exists beyond the sweatshops you talked about when this thread started. Unreasonably inflating the salaries there will not help those people, even if done gradually. Quite the opposite..it will push them further down the heap, and cause quite some pain.
And yep, I'm sorry, even if it does sound condescending, for those in Fiji and Argentina (although I understand there is quite some growth in other sectors there) but, as hard as it sounds, in an imperfect capitalist world there is a degree of Canute-ism in your comments.
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Australian elite is terrorfied of offending Indonesia, and is very eager to please its northern neighbour.
quite right too with all those billions in processing charges being extracted from the Timor oil and gas fields before the "net split" with Timor...nobody actually thought they were sending troops into Timor Leste to defend democracy...oh, I think NZ did......
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And as a footnote, commenting on your remarks on Australian-Indonesian relations - I am not an expert - but I do think that the Indonesian elite finds its southern neighbour very useful as a bogey-man for consumption in the imagination of its masses.
I would say exactly the opposite is true. The Indonesian masses, if there is such a thing, which there is not in a nation of 250 million with the fastest growing middle class in the world I (nor is there such a thing anymore as a controlling "elite"), don't even think about Australia...the nation is largely a non issue here...it exists, that's about all. Generally Indonesia looks inward. It's the Australians who have spent billions building bases in the NT and have had a defense policy for decades dominated by a ludicrously non existent threat from the north. Fifteen minutes here with ones eyes open would illustrate how absurd the notion is. Downer is perfectly relevant, as he's indicative of the "you need to do this" or "this is how we can help" quite racist patronising that comes from the Southern Continent all the time.
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They source motorbikes..Vespa mainly, out here for Europe, but the paperwork and tax on exporting these I understand is prohibitive.
The other major difference between Japan and RI of course is that cars get retired in Japan...not so here..and there is a three month waiting list on many cars
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Marcus,
truly, if you don't think that paying a percentage of the Indonesian population (perhaps 2-3%) a wage that is five times the national average would not instantly throw this country into turmoil, then I really don't know what to say. If you don't think that elevating a large percentage of the urban blue collar to an elite level wouldn't fuel massive inflation, destroy the rural economy which drives Indonesia and cause an immediate rise in unemployment....I'm pretty sure I know what most Indonesians I know (and I mix with a fairly activist bunch involved with, amongst other things, the landmark press freedom Playboy case) would say...phrases like condescending paternalism, white man's burden and the like. They are used to it from Australia...Downer is forever coming here and saying "haven't you done well". The general response is who the fuck do you think you are..oh, you're a white man......Even the phrase "this does not absolve us in the West of our ongoing relations with the non-West" seems paternalistic, and is condescending.
This massive country, of 250 million, with a continuous history going back 4000 years, has had it's ups and downs, some terrible, but is far far more complicated than you seem to think. It's economy is massive, not only in dollar terms, but, much more importantly, in Rupiah (ie internal) terms, which you need to adjust for local scale. What you are suggesting would rock that local scale, perhaps destroy it.
There is an obligation on the part of the west to ensure fair trading terms, I agree, especially when one considers the pillaging and the acquiescence to pillaging of the past few hundred years (which still goes on in the Timor Sea and elsewhere) but assuaging guilt by raising some wages to some arbitrary western level is not smart. The biggest thing Indonesia needs is education....lots of it, at all levels for the rural masses and urban poor, but Indonesians educating Indonesians, not well meaning Westerners....educate the educators.
technology transfer?......visit the IT Malls in Mangga Dua and tell me where anything like that exists in Australia or the UK