[...]... between the principles of merit, contribution, and rewards The problem this poses for governments of all persuasions is that the wealth of human capability nurtured within schools, colleges, and universities; the explosion of knowledge via new technologies and the Internet; and an exponential increase in the global supply of high-skill, low-wage workers challenge the legitimate foundations of how democratic... able to fill the knowledge jobs that will be created as we not only expand the global economy but connect all the knowledge pools in the world There may be a limit to the number of good factory jobs in the world, but there is no limit to the number of idea-generating jobs in the world.21 Similar views are expressed in of cial” policy Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister at the time of the financial... endorsed the idea of a welfare state to protect people from the chronic insecurities that characterize the boom -and- bust nature of capitalist development By the 1980s, neoliberal ideas had regained popularity Under Ronald Reagan in America and Margaret Thatcher in Britain, there was a return to preaching the virtues of free trade, self-interest, and the power of the market to deliver prosperity and justice... rejected the view of labor measured in number rather than quality.5 They advocated a broader concept of capital that included the skills, knowledge, and know-how of workers As Theodore Schultz, a leading proponent of human capital, asserted, 16 The Global Auction “Knowledge and skill are in great part the product of investment and, combined with other human investment, predominantly account for the productive... economies, the global job market also offered an unprecedented opportunity for America to become a magnet economy, attracting a disproportionate share of the global supply of high-skill, high-wage jobs.18 If there was a global job market, the numbers of managers, designers, engineers, lawyers, and consultants in the American workforce could be rapidly expanded because they could be employed to service the global. .. anywhere in the world not only cheaper but sometimes better But the move to low-cost brainwork is not the end of the story Third, although much of the focus has been on the development of new products and services that highlight the demand for creative people exploiting clever ideas, few seemed to notice that the forces of creative destruction are followed by the destruction of the creative The productive... from a low-skill to high-skill economy The growth of middle-class jobs was assumed to represent an ever-tighter relationship between human capital, jobs, and rewards, as it became more important to get the best minds working on the scientific and technological challenges of the age In his classic study The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, published in the early 1970s, Daniel Bell highlighted the link... was the first nation to win the cause for equality, he would no doubt be surprised by the fragility of the American Dream and amazed to find millions of Americans relying on food stamps He would also discover that middle-class families were far from happy and fearful for the future of their offspring He would also realize that these problems are deeply rooted The road to recovery in the aftermath of the. .. heirs, fated with the task of thinking for the rest of the world, reflected a legacy of empire and industrial heritage The industrial revolution began in Britain and was later driven by the United States, notwithstanding the role of Japan in the 1980s Unsurprisingly, Americans came to believe The False Promise 21 in their intellectual, technological, and commercial superiority But there was also an... the form of a defensive expenditure: Education is a necessary investment to have any chance of fighting for a decent standard of living But for the few, investments of effort, time, and money will continue to be handsomely rewarded 12 The Global Auction Opportunity, rather than being the glue that bonds the individual to society, has become the focus of intense social conflict, raising the question of . or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brown, Phillip, 1957– The global auction : the broken promises of education,. w0 h0" alt="" the global auction This page intentionally left blank phillip brown, hugh lauder, and david ashton THE GLOBAL AUCTION The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes 1 2011 3 Oxford. the rise of the Asian Tiger economies in the 1990s through to the more recent rise of China and India. While many intellectuals and media commentators have debated the relative merits of global