The last couple of weeks have been quite interesting in the world of Friedman.  On October 24^th he wrote an insulting column where he exhorted Americans that “We’re in the age of “extra,” and everyone has to figure out what extra they can add to their work to justify being paid more than a computer, a Chinese worker or a day laborer.”

On Halloween, Friedman chastised French protesters who don’t want their government to renege on pension promises and raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.  “If those students understood the hypercompetitive and economically integrated world they were living in today, they would have taken to the streets to demand smaller classes, better teaching, more opportunities for entrepreneurship and more foreign private investment in France — so they could have the sorts of good private sector jobs that would enable them to finance retirement at age 62.”

Notice Friedman’s argument here.  Not only should the French protesters accept the rise in the retirement age, they should give up their pensions in exchange for tools that may or may not let them finance their own retirements at the higher age.  It’s akin to saying, “don’t just cut my benefits, take them away entirely!”

Friedman is interesting to me because he speaks to and for the managerial class – people who control either capital, assets or the lives, schedules and expectations of others.  But because Friedman is a columnist and nobody really works for him, he can be a little blunt.  In these two columns he’s flat out telling Americans and Western Europeans that they aren’t working hard enough.  This is, for anyone who realizes that we each get one and only one life, quite an insult.

Says Friedman: “France already discovered that a 35-hour workweek was impossible in a world where Indian engineers were trying to work a 35-hour day — and so, too, are pension levels not sustained by a vibrant private sector.”

If Indian engineers are trying to cram 35 hours of work into a day, then I sincerely hope it’s because they’re in some sort of creative throes and that they genuinely love what they’re doing.  Otherwise, it’s a pointless activity.  For what it’s worth, I’ve been told by many people in the technology industry, including some who have worked with Indian colleagues in California and some who have gone to India to work that Indian workers are, like other humans, no more or less likely to put in a hard day at the office.  The notion of some sort of generalized superior work ethic, as usual, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny the same way that such generalizations about any ethnic group (whether meant to denigrate or to deliver condescending praise) tend to be wrong.

Friedman’s argument is that American and Western European workers have to work harder and expect less in order to compete with more driven, capable laborers in India and China.  This week he writes from New Delhi, where he finds Saurabh Srivastava, co-founder of the National Association of Software and Service Companies, who apparently speaks for all Indians.  Srivastava is worried that America is losing confidence and moral leadership.  We’re the ones who told India to open itself to meritocratic capitalism, he says.  We’re the ones who pushed open borders and free markets.  But now times are tough and we’re pulling back and he wants to know why.

Put so plainly and without nuance, I see the gentleman’s frustration.  There was a point where America did ask India to open up its economy, to let our companies do business there and to let our investors buy Indian companies.  But America and India are big places.  Who, exactly, asked for this to happen?  It certainly wasn’t the people that Friedman says now have to work harder for less as a result.  The average American or European worker didn’t ask India to open up so that we could have a decade of stagnant wages.  The average American consumer isn’t exactly happy that their customer service calls get routed halfway across the globe to some entirely unaccountable customer service contractor with little authority or inclination to help.  If American and European workers had been given real choices with and the consequences had been laid out for them honestly I think they would have supported some trade but not the kind of complete liberalization that would erode their own jobs, wages and pensions.

We know who made these decisions.  They’re Friedman’s chosen audience.  The Chamber of Commerce gets a seat at the table.  Working people don’t.  Friedman wants France’s pensioners to spend more of their lives working for others.  He wants to cut Social Security benefits.  He wants you to go to work today and put in some extra special effort, not because there’s a raise in it for you, or some extra vacation time, or a paid sabbatical so you have some time to do what you really want to do before you die, but so that you can prove to your boss that you’re worth more than a worker in an emerging economy.

Who benefits from this competition, exactly?  It’s not the guy doing his job in Missoula and it’s not the worker in Mumbai.  The real beneficiaries are Thomas Friedman’s intended audience – the people who have made a lot of money over two decades of pitting average people against each other all over the world.

Unrelated P.S.: Sorry I missed the big Genghis event Saturday.  Me and little Destor stopped by but were told the place was too wall-to-wall packed for the little one.  We’ll try for the December Barnes and Noble signing.