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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bosco who wrote (7681)	12/8/1998 8:01:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 9980

Bosco, ... As long the workers who produce all this stuff get paid "rice wages", we will inexorably be led to deflation and social/political unrest. It seems to me inevitable." I remember the days when the IMF/WB technocrats were running around these parts urging nations to adopt policies of "wage restraint" to ensure competitiveness in export markets. The local oligarchs were only too happy to oblige, which resulted in a serious decline in real wages. Problem was, the technocrats were making the same prescription in a dozen other countries, effectively pitting them against each other to see who could most effectively reduce their populace to beggary. Authoritarian governments were of course necessary to accomplish the "tough medicine" of wage restraint. I wonder how much these policies contributed to the maintenance of crony capitalism, which flourishes so well in authoritarian environments, and to the failure of many countries to develop viable domestic markets. Steve