Two Future Security Risks for the International Community

Growth Without Jobs

During the Cold War, poverty in the developing world was deemed to be a critical issue for the developed world because of the perceived (and likely very real link) between poverty and economic radicalism. However, in the wake of the demise of the Cold War, the goal of abolishing poverty seems to have abated. The divide between the haves and the have-nots has been exacerbated worldwide. Part of this is due to changes in regulatory structures which effectively cheapen the price of labor: "as part of economic restructuring and liberalization, there has been a fair amount of deregulation, particularly of financial and labour markets. Deregulation of labour markets is associated with the rise of informalization or 'flexible' labour markets. It should be noted that workers are caught between two contradictory trends: rapid flexibilization of the employment relationship (making it easy for employers to contract and expand their workforce as needed) and slow liberalization of labour mobility" (Chen 2007: 10). Globalization and outsourcing has expanded access to sources of labor in low-income countries such as India and created a downward pressure on the price of labor: even in America this phenomenon can be seen in Detroit, a city which has seen the decimation of high-wage blue-collar unionized jobs within the automotive industry.

The question is without jobs who will pay for the products being generated by this new unequal economy? This was, after all, one of the sources of the Great Depression of the 1930s: too many goods were being produced for the amount of dollars workers possessed. According to a recent report of the World Bank, "the global economy should grow by 3.2% this year, up from 2.4% in 2013" but the expected recovery will be extremely lopsided (Thompson 2014). The recovery has been called a 'race to the bottom' in terms of wages: "where jobs are being created, such as the U.S., U.K. Or even Spain, they're often poorly paid or offer only temporary employment, making it hard for people to save money, gain experience and build a career" (Thompson 2014). To some degree, governments and the wealthy are more insulated from the pressures of an unemployed workforce not only because of the informal, illegal economy but even by formal jobs which pay very low wages, are merely part-time, and provide no mobility or benefits but still allow people to eke out a living. A true world without jobs (in cities or otherwise) would indeed be bleak and troublesome but the current economic environment seems to have enough imperfect safety valves to quell dissent yet to leave many people disenfranchised from the economic recovery or hopes for social mobility.