Related to the previous blog posted on the late 19th Century migration, it appears that

Australia

is one of the few countries that more or less maintain a model of migration consistent with those days. They allow a controlled amount of unskilled-labor immigration, and contrary to what could be expected by European policy setters, unemployment of the local population is lowered. I actually thing the

US

 accomplishes a similar feat via significant illegal unskilled labor immigration.

Paradigm to question: Countries should first find jobs for their locals before allowing immigration.

Another key problem seems to be that people skills do not match job skills. On the job training has to start playing a bigger role. On the job training and investment in people has played a much bigger role a few decades back, but it seems that the increased mobility of people and the focus on tradable skills have made the economics of investment in people poor in many cases. I’ll use a very brief economics term here, not critical, there appears to be a Nash Equilibrium in people investment. Since you cannot hold to your investment, it is better not to invest, at the end everybody ends up acting in the same way.

Singapore

’s approach to this problem is to make training mandatory.

Singapore

 taxes 1% on all payrolls and makes training mandatory. I think even on countries where this type of approach could not be met, it is still clear that mutual and coordinated investment in training by a majority of the market participants.

Crazy ideas:

Put a tax of 1% on payrolls for all employees in the world and invest most of the money in training and a small portion should go to the institution that trained and educated that person, in whatever country tha may be (this could solve some of the Brain –Drain problems of the Philippines and South Africa with their medical personnel etc. )

In the same way that Supply Chain theory has been coping with ever more fluctuating demand by trying to customize products the closest to the consumer, we should take a similar approach on innovation for Education and Training. We need a new set of basic skills that allows for later stage customization according to market needs.