The Global Auction The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs, and Incomes

For decades, the idea that more education will lead to greater individual and national prosperity has been a cornerstone of developed economies. Challenging this conventional wisdom, The Global Auction forces us to reconsider our deeply held and mistaken views about how the global economy really works and how to thrive in it. The authors show that the competition for good, middle class jobs is now a worldwide competition--an auction for cut-priced brainpower--fueled by an explosion of higher education across the world and a fundamental power shift in favor of corporate bosses and emerging economies such as China and India. These drivers of the new global high-skill, low-wage workforce threaten the livelihoods of millions of American workers and their families. Fighting for a dwindling supply of good jobs will compel Americans to devote more time, money and effort to set themselves apart in a bare-knuckle competition that will leave many disappointed. The Global Auction is a radical rethinking of the ideas that stand at the heart of the American Dream.

1. - Introduction
2. - The Promise
3. - The Education Explosion
4. - The Quality Revolution
5. - Intellectual Arbitrage
6. - Digital Taylorism
7. - War for Talent
8. - High Skills, Low Wages
9. - The Rat Race
10. - A New Opportunity

Phillip Brown is Distinguished Research Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. Hugh Lauder is Professor of Education and Political Economy at the University of Bath. David Ashton is Honorary Professor at the Cardiff University School of Social Sciences and Emeritus Professor at Leicester University