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icebreak
1. To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. —Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.
Topic 1.Ramesh Ponnuru] Trump’s four rules for conducting a trade war
New tariffs on Chinese imports went into effect only on July 6, so it is too early to say how the trade war is going and which country, if any, will win it. Even the most die-hard free trader should admit that in theory it is possible that the threat of tariffs can induce other countries to make concessions that leave us (and possibly them) better off. Lose-lose scenarios are, however, also all too possible.
What we can say with certainty is that we are learning four rules for conducting a trade war, President Donald Trump-style.
First: Assume that you will win it effortlessly.
In March, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro predicted that no country would retaliate against our tariffs. His reasoning: We’re the biggest market in the world, so other countries have too much to lose. Refusing to cooperate with this theory, Canada, China, the European Union and Mexico have all imposed retaliatory tariffs.
President Trump himself has made the closely related argument that our trade deficit guarantees our success, because “when you’re already $500 Billion DOWN, you can’t lose!” It’s true that in theory we can cut off more imports from the rest of the world to us than the world can cut off in exports from us.
But lost exports are not the only form of pain that a trade conflict can cause, and raising barriers to exports is not the only way that countries can act to harm our economic interests. China is reportedly considering “holding up licenses for US firms, delaying approval of mergers and acquisitions involving US companies and ramping up inspections of American products at borders.”
The administration’s strategy will pay off if Navarro and Trump understand the interests of our trading partners better than those trading partners themselves do.
Second: Make sure your tariffs are designed to inflict maximum damage on your own country’s companies.
The administration’s tariffs on imported steel and aluminum harm companies that use those inputs to make their own products, and these companies employ more Americans than the steel and aluminum industries themselves.
The tariffs on China, too, will reduce the competitiveness of many American companies. Analysts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics have calculated that 95 percent of those tariffs are falling on capital goods and intermediate goods. China has taken a different approach in choosing its retaliatory tariffs, of which 38 percent target agricultural and food products and 35 percent intermediate and capital goods.
Third: Take on as many countries simultaneously as you can.
The Trump administration has many concerns when it comes to trade. It objects to bilateral trade deficits, to other countries’ trade barriers against our exporters, to currency manipulation, to intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer.
One way to address these concerns would be to pick the worst abuses, or the worst abusers, and tackle them first. One might, for example, attempt to build a coalition with other countries that share an interest in combating Chinese mercantilism even if we want some of those countries to change their trade policies, too.
US policymakers have rejected this thinking. Instead we have in quick succession moved against China’s practices and nearly all of the world’s steel and aluminum producers. An earlier round of trade action targeted imported solar panels and washing machines. We have shrugged off signs that our policies are moving other countries closer to China. At the same time we are pushing for the North American Free Trade Agreement to be changed.
Trump is betting that he can succeed without building a coalition or setting priorities.
Fourth: Don’t feel that you have to make your negotiating demands clear.
As Martin Wolf points out, our goals with respect to China are “obscure.” We may want China to reduce its trade surplus with us, or to end its “Made in China 2025” program, or to lower its trade barriers against us or some inscrutable combination of the above.
Trump administration officials do not seem eager to clear up any confusion. Kevin Brady, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, recently commented, with a hint of exasperation, that “today there are no serious trade discussions occurring between the US and China, no plans for trade negotiations anytime soon, and seemingly little action toward a solution.” Nor can anyone say with confidence which Trump aides reflect the administration’s position.
So Trump’s team either won’t clarify what it wants or genuinely does not know. Having an objective is often considered helpful in achieving it.
But this is an administration bent on breaking the rules, disrupting old templates and trying new tacks. Its conduct on trade is definitely in keeping with that spirit.
topic 2. Moving to digital economy
By Korea Herald
Published : Jul 11, 2018 - 17:42
Updated : Jul 11, 2018 - 17:42
When Amazon.com last month bought online pharmacy Pillpack for $1 billion, the stock market valuation of several large pharmacy retail chains fell by $14 billion. That is the power of clicks (online e-commerce companies) over bricks (and mortar retailers).
The once powerful GE being taken off the Dow Jones market index is an indication how old-style manufacturing and distribution companies are being marked down on a daily basis, whereas tech companies are valued in stratospheric terms.
The old economy is facing massive creative destruction in the shift to the new economy of the internet of things (digitization and then retailing of everything).
Every line of business, including the business of government and social services, is being disrupted. Every individual, company or nation faces marginalization if you don’t have a good digital transformation story.
The conventional wisdom is that digitization is good for the consumer (consumer surplus), but bad for jobs (job deficits or losses). When I am told that artificial intelligence can already tell from a picture of a human iris whether the person is male or female, and human ophthalmologists can’t, I know almost all jobs are now under threat. Job insecurity across all fields explains the populist votes for change and sentiments against immigrants, foreigners and globalization.
Governments are having a hard time coming up with the right policies to confront this massive job change, even within governments, where digitization can cut hugely bloated bureaucracies.
In practice, all jobs need to be reviewed under the new digital world. And the biggest change is not about things or people, but mindsets.
Coping with the digital revolution is really about how you should transform your business and organizing production of both goods and services. Jack Ma of Alibaba and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) are thriving because they understand this change and are making it happen.
The current Industry 3.0 is essentially linear and stability-oriented. When Henry Ford invented the assembly line for making cars, he basically made workers produce linearly in production and assembly, which is more efficient than craftsmen who have to build everything from scratch.
The linear assembly line quickly evolved into supply chains, whereby Toyota has a whole chain of subcontractors and component suppliers to enable Toyota to deliver cars. Apple doesn’t even manufacture phones, but designs and markets them, leaving Foxconn and others to do much of the research and development of how to manufacture what Apple designers want to suit the consumer.
Amazon and Alibaba (the pioneers of Industry 4.0) are the architects of their own digital ecosystems, orchestrating the manufacturing, distribution and retailing through digital channels, running on cloud computing that they own and operate. In short, they moved beyond linear production to dynamic multitasking of everything.
The common complaint by all employers is that the current education system is not producing the graduates that can be used straight away in jobs. All new and old economy employers have to spend considerable resources retraining and reskilling their new and present employees.
This is simply because the education system is still based on the linear assembly line process, whereby a young person goes through 15-20 years of sequential formal education from primary to university level, using curricula that are obsolete by the time they graduate. Current universities are producing balance sheet employees, assuming that their graduates remain on the books of a company for life. As more and more companies move to flexible production, subcontracting jobs out and cutting their full-time employees, that university education model is obsolete. In the internet world, all fixed costs are becoming variable. Fixed jobs are disappearing fast. And you don’t stay in the same company for too long.
To paraphrase Lord Acton, there are no permanent friends, permanent enemies, nor permanent jobs, only permanent interests.
Schools and universities also face the challenge of MOOC (massive open online curriculum) courses that are being offered by the top universities and teachers, often for free. Who needs second- or third-tier universities staffed by professors teaching outdated content, when you can access knowledge and branding (from top universities) cheaper and faster’
This is why there is a growing market for short-term specialized courses run by market-based professionals that help companies reskill their employees. Employers also use AI to cut down their hiring, because the leading companies need fewer and smarter employees who can be reskilled faster in real work experience.
The solution to the skilling and reskilling dilemma is internship. The education system should be regeared toward becoming an ecosystem for continuous upgrading of skills, working together with all employers -- government, business or civil organizations. Taxation and education-spending policies should be geared towards universities as pools of cheap labor for employers, who provide interns the real-life job skills in exchange for the employers’ opportunity to select and retain talent. In other words, university degrees should allocate up to half the students’ time for internship. The tax and education subsidy system should be tailored to allow universities, employers and students to be mutually interdependent to produce better employees for the Industry 4.0 age.
To some extent, this is already happening, as many interns in Silicon Valley and elsewhere drop out of university and join their employers in startup ventures, preferring on-the-job challenges, rather than learning more theory from textbooks. Teachers themselves would benefit from internship with companies, just as highly skilled workers would benefit from interchange of jobs to become professors of practice.
In the Digital Age, it is not the knowledge that is the problem, but how to acquire and apply the right knowledge that matters.
But the first step to conquer the digital divide is to change not just one’s own mindset, but all decision-makers at all levels. As the saying goes, those who know can’t decide, and those who decide don’t know.
And if you don’t decide and then move on, you become margin
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