Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Male Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the CNBC Debate "The West Isn't Working." Please switch off your phones. We are ready to begin. This debate is being televised by CNBC, and your presence is considered your consent to be filmed. And now, please welcome your moderator, Maria Bartiromo. [Applause] Maria Bartiromo: Good morning everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. For the first time in a long time, if not ever, there is a conversation happening around the world that is questioning the sustainability of the super power status of the West. Why is the West not working? We are here today to talk about one of the most urgent problems of our time, unemployment. The global recession has resulted in a massive loss of jobs, creating what the head of the IMF has called "a wasteland of unemployment," and Dominique Strauss-Kahn is not the only one concerned. President Barack Obama: That world has changed, and for many, the change has been painful. I've seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories and the vacant storefronts on once busy Main Streets. I've heard it in the frustrations of Americans who've seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear -- proud men and women who feel like the rules have been changed in the middle of the game. They're right. The rules have changed. Maria Bartiromo: Without jobs, the economy cannot recover. We are here today to find solutions. Meet our panelists: Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post; Naveen Jindal, the head of Jindal Steel and Power; Laura Tyson, professor at the University of California Berkeley and an adviser to the Obama administration; and Philip Jennings, General Secretary of UNI Global Union. Ladies and gentlemen, our challengers. Today's debate is in two parts and in each of these, a motion will be argued by our advocates. They'll have 90 seconds to make their case. They'll then face questions from our challengers and from all of you, the audience. We are looking forward to your participation so get ready with your questions. Motion 1: For a dynamic workforce, go East. Most of the jobs lost since 2007 have disappeared from the West. Meanwhile, some emerging countries have barely felt the recession. In the battle of jobs, who is winning? Manuel Salazar: We recorded open unemployment going up by more than 30 million people. It becomes more and more difficult to get those millions of people out of the unemployment and into jobs. Ian Cheshire: Our key challenge in the West is to prepare for the next generation of jobs, the type of skills that will be needed, the type of industries that will be around in 20 years. Ben Jealous: We need vision for how we in the West continue to employ people who have fewer skills or whose skills can be found somewhere else for cheaper. David Arkless: In places like China, Vietnam, Indonesia, where the workforce is probably as dynamic as we've ever seen in the industrial era. President Barack Obama: When global firms were asked a few years back where they planned on building new research and development facilities, nearly 80 percent said either China or India. David Arkless: They should be scared about how efficient the Chinese economy is becoming because it will, if we allow it, dominate the world economy. The issue is can we compete? Can the West come back? Maria Bartiromo: Let me introduce our first advocates. Arguing for the motion that for a dynamic workforce, go East is Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, CEO of Biocon. And against the motion is Barry Silbert, CEO of SecondMarket. Kiran, please begin. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Thanks, Maria. Well, you know, in an interconnected world, it's just bound to happen that jobs will move from the stagnant mature markets of the Western Hemisphere to the very vibrant and high-growth markets in the East. And in an interconnected world, I think companies will be compelled to move money and jobs to make them more globally competitive to the East. So there is enough evidence to show that this is happening. I mean if you look at what's happening with companies in U.S. and Europe, they are on a hiring spree in Asia whilst they are shedding jobs back home. So the evidence is there. We have to accept that jobs will move to regions where there is high growth and higher returns. Manufacturing, conventional, traditional manufacturing is going to move East because that's where the lower label costs are. That's where better capital efficiencies are. So this is the shape of things to come and the West has to accept it. But having said that, I do believe that it's not all bad news because the Western consumer has benefited in a big way. Take for example mobile phones. If it wasn't for the huge economies of scale created by India and China, you couldn't get those bargain prices at Walmart or Best Buy. So the way I look at it is that times have changed and I think the West has to accept that fact that there has to be a different way of creating new jobs. Jobs being lost have to be replaced with different jobs. Maria Bartiromo: Kiran, thank you very much for that side of the argument. Now let's hear the other. Barry, over to you. Barry Sibert: When I was first approached about participating in this debate, I was hesitant to accept the invitation to defend the West. Aside from the fact that I have two very large Asian investors in my company, how can I overlook the success of incredible entrepreneurs like Ms. Shaw and the many startups in developing countries blazing paths oftentimes against significant odds? But it got me thinking given that small businesses are the largest job creators, what does it take to start a business? I quickly realized that contrary to the title of the debate, the West is working quite well. There are really kind of four key critical elements that are necessary to starting and growing a business. First, you need a skilled and educated workforce. Second, you need rule of law, including intellectual property protection. Third, you need a proper balance between government regulation and free markets. And lastly, you need access to capital. And it is this final element that I believe the West outshines the East in particular. The West I believe has the most developed capital formation process, from angel investing to venture in private equity funds to the markets both public and now private necessary to support innovative businesses, and it is these types of companies that create long-lasting sustainable jobs. So I offer to the audience that the West can in fact be the engine for future job creation, particularly if the government and business can work together to find easier access to risk capital for small businesses. Maria Bartiromo: Thank you very much. You both make terrific arguments. Challengers, these are the two arguments. Who is right? Naveen Jindal: Well, I think Kiran Shaw is completely right, that it is happening in the East. We are all the time looking for people. We are hiring, say, in our steel and power business, we are looking, we are hiring thousands of workers, skilled, semi-skilled, even unskilled people and giving them those skills which are necessary. In fact, we have a problem of not finding enough skilled people, and that's a very big responsibility. We almost need an additional 300 to 350 million trained people by 2020. And I completely disagree with what Barry said because if the West was working well, now why would the unemployment rate be so alarming? And all those clippings you showed, why would there be such an alarm? Why would CNBC host a program called "The West is Not Working?" if it was working well? So CNBC can't be this wrong. Maria Bartiromo: A fair point. Philip J. Jennings: We need a message of hope from this event. The working people of the West are ready to save the West if they are given the chance. There was a rotten business model in the West which brought those economies to their knees. It was the people that paid the bill. They are angry. They are cornered. And if we have the argument, if I have to face a group of workers and I say, "The future is in the East," they will be more Jasmine Revolutions by the day. Maria Bartiromo: And we've seen protests. Philip J. Jennings: People have to wake up. People have to wake up. The G20, wake up. We've asked for a working party at the G20 on unemployment. We are still arguing. Sarkozy is here tomorrow. I hope he's got his jobs mojo with him. We have to -- there are things to address. The G20 has to wake up. We have to look at inequality. Henry Ford was right. You put money in workers' pockets and we'll make the wheels of the economy turn. It is not happening. The top 10ths of one percent in the States took 30 percent of all the income during the course of the last 20 years. Maria Bartiromo: So you agree with Kiran? Philip J. Jennings: We got to plan. Maria Bartiromo: You agree with Kiran? Philip J. Jennings: No, I don't agree with Kiran. Kiran, we need to grow in the East and the West. India, you have to create 270 million jobs in the next 20 years. You are going to need the help of the West to help you get there. You have 100 million people living in poverty today. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Well, you know, Philip, I do agree with you in a way that this is about creating a new kind of global job market. This is about creating complementary and equitable jobs in both hemispheres, and I think we have to create jobs that share risks and resources across the innovation and commercialization continuum. So I agree with you to that extent and I think the West will have to become more, depend on countries like India and China to be globally competitive. You cannot build vertically integrated job markets in the Western Hemisphere or in any hemisphere for that matter. Maria Bartiromo: Arianna. Arianna Huffington: What is missing in the West is what really was here in the introduction to the show, which is that sense of urgency. I think the introduction to this show should be played at the White House and on Capitol Hill and in parliaments around Europe everyday because that sense of urgency around jobs is really missing. I mean politicians, as the President said in the State of the Union, talk about jobs but they are not really doing anything about jobs and it's this dysfunctional political system in the West that's making it so difficult to produce anything but suboptimal solutions that's creating that danger because remember, when the West brought a sense of urgency to saving the financial system, they saved the financial system. We have enough tools in our toolbox. It's just that we never brought that same sense of urgency around jobs. And yet, it's not just the economic problems that ensue. It's the political instability that is growing. And I have two daughters in college and increasingly, we have college graduates who cannot get jobs. Just imagine that. That really disrupts the natural course of events. So as well as all the other problems we are facing, the problem of youth unemployment in the West is particularly large and so we cannot just, unfortunately, assume that things will get better by themselves. Laura Tyson: Can I say something here? I think actually Barry raised a very important point. I think we should realize that until the crisis, if we had a discussion here five years ago, we wouldn't have this discussion. Five years ago, and the evidence is very strong on this, it's not an either/or proposition. There was complementarity and jobs growing both in Asia and in the emerging markets and certainly in the United States. So we have here a very profound deep cyclical problem. It does not mean if we go forward, we cannot find a world with enough growth that we have jobs growing in both places. So I don't agree it's like a shift, oh my God, a job there is a job lost. It's just not true. Research establishments in emerging markets are complementary in many respects to research establishments in the U.S. or Europe. To Barry's point, I think Barry is making a very important point. Look at issues of ease of doing business. That list is dominated by many Western economies, including the United States. And with the right capital market conditions, with the right demand conditions, with the right physical and monetary policy, the U.S. has been and will be in the future a powerhouse of entrepreneurship. Most jobs that most people have in the world for now and the foreseeable future, even though they will be globally integrated, will be local jobs. They will be jobs that are service jobs for the people who live in their regions, their communities, their states, and their nations. And those jobs will depend upon two things: one is the amount of demand, how healthy the macro-economy is, and two is the strength of the educational system in those economies. And we can talk about that. That's going to be the second session here, but I think that's, for me, I believe the U.S. can get its macro house in order. I worry very much about the educational challenge. Maria Bartiromo: Education is a critical part of this and we are going to get there. Let's bring in our audience and our special invited guests will kick that off with the front row. Comments? Who is right? Adi B. Godrej: I think that what we should realize, as Laura mentioned, that the recent rise in unemployment in the Western world has little to do with job transfers to the East. It has to do with the slowdown of the economy post the financial crisis. The system worked very well just prior to that and we need to encourage that. Comparative advantage will create for productivity increases which will add to global growth and lead to employment creation in both parts of the world. I think we should also distinguish between unemployment and unemployability. Some of the unemployment may be because of economic factors. But a lot of it is because of unemployability created by lack of education, lack of training. I don't see why in the Western world where unemployment benefits are paid out in large numbers simultaneously insistence of those people going through training programs is not done. Maria Bartiromo: This is a very critical point and we will get to the skill sets that are required to get the jobs of tomorrow in the next segment. Zhu Min, you've spent a long time running the People's Bank of China and then moving over to the IMF. You have a special vantage point here in terms of what's happening in the world. Give it to us. Zhu Min: Well, thank you. We at the IMF in the past few years coupled with the labor unions particularly on these issues because these are absolutely important. If we are looking for the job, there are three trends underneath this apparent job situation. I think we really need to go further to see the whole thing. The first is, as Laura mentioned, is the cyclical cycle before the crisis which had hit the advanced economies so bad. The second also is the structure issue because the manufacturing moved to the East because labor is much cheaper and education is pretty okay so we also saw that. But the third issue also, we have to understand, that the whole job situation is changing, for example, in the next 10, 20 years. For example, you mentioned in next 20 years, India will provide 250 million fresh labor into the market. Also, South Africa will provide 450 million fresh labor in the world market. And almost all advancing economies will probably have an active fresh labor supply for the world. So today, we talk about unemployment rate is very serious in the advancing economies, but in the tomorrow, the future can be very, very different, so we have to anticipate the whole thing change. I think that's the first important issue. So we need to have a whole picture. But the certain issues I will say in these situations, we have to, for the most advanced economies, this is the issue we are today, really, the whole thing I will say advanced economies, the growth strategy because you have to think about it given the income level. You have to create a job. With the job is what kind of job? What job can create a value which is high enough to pay $20 to $30 per hour which would be paid in emerging markets with $2 to $3 per hour? You have to have a very high value-added margin to support as a whole sector. You need a whole growth strategy to create a confident new industry to balance the global growth. I think this is the most important issue rather than say get manufacturing back to the advancing economy. I think that probably will not work. I will stop here. Thank you. Maria Bartiromo: Thank you, Zhu Min. Duncan Niederauer. Duncan Niederauer: Sure. If I can just add a couple of perspectives from our vantage point. I like where Phil started. This is an opportunity for all of us. It's not a threat. It's an opportunity. And I think if we think about the focus on job creation, the impact that has on creating demand that some of you talked about, then guess what, the pie gets bigger for all of us and it's good for everybody. And I think from our vantage point at the Exchange, what we focus on is good news. The job creation engine you'd want to fill, it's about incentives for companies who are positioned to be able to do an IPO and it's about some of the things Barry was talking about for companies who may be too small to contemplate an IPO, and that's about getting them capital and getting them access to revenues and investments like Steve's firm has, et cetera. At the IPO level, even more great news: $270 billion of issuance globally last year, 2011 set up to be a great year. Just keep creating incentives for those companies to go public. It's a great job creation engine. And we also know, as Barry said, most of the jobs come from SMEs. Get them the capital. Worldwide, they will create the jobs and we can get people back to work. It's an opportunity. Philip J. Jennings: That's a good point but why is capital on strike? Duncan Niederauer: Yes. Philip J. Jennings: At $1.6 trillion sitting in back accounts in corporate America? America has to be rebuilt. Without a new infrastructure, Laura, you're not going to bring those local jobs to local communities. Isn't it time, and Barry's getting an easy ride here, Barry, how are you going to put that $1.6 trillion to work to help those local communities. to build the schools, to train the workers, and to pay them decent wages? Barry Silbert: Well, I think you have to separate kind of where this capital is. And so I think you are referring to the capital that's on the balance sheets of large companies, right? Is that what you were referring to? Maria Bartiromo: Two trillion dollars on balance sheets. Laura Tyson: Yes. He is referring to the large companies. Barry Silbert: Right. So yes, it will be great to see them deploy the capital in the United States. But I think the point here is, and everybody's talking about it, this is not an East versus West. This is collaborative. And at the end of the day, the jobs that are being outsources, they are for manufacturing jobs. They are manufacturing products that are being designed, developed, innovated in the United States. So if you create the environment where small businesses can get formed, if you make it easier for whether it's the large corporations or individuals or private equity firms investing in these companies, whether it's tax incentives or otherwise, you will create the next Tesla car. You will create the next Google. You will create the next Facebook that ultimately will create jobs worldwide, I believe. Laura Tyson: Can I raise something that Zhu Min mentioned which is very, very important? Up to the crisis, there was virtually no evidence at all that outsourcing had caused a net loss of jobs in the United States. I've looked at this literature. I think it's a very interesting and important question. Didn't do it. What has happened in the United States is that we've had a restructuring of manufacturing. We have technologically very sophisticated manufacturing. We have a value chain which moved some of the employment to other low-cost labor areas where you use people. The problem with this is the nature of the jobs available to U.S. workers have changed and there has been a loss of jobs in the middle. I think we should distinguish here the structure of jobs. It's not when demand is corrected, the problem is not a lack of jobs. It's the lack of good jobs. And we have seen the polarization of employment both in the U.S. and in the rest of the Western economies. Growing jobs and wages, particularly wages at the top, with the skill levels that are complementary to the modern technology, the middle being essentially made redundant by the technology moving towards the bottom, this is a wage problem and an education problem because we need to educate more people, as Zhu Min is saying, so that they go with the growth strategy of the West to the high-end technologically sophisticated jobs. The U.S. was the first advanced industrial country, before we even used that term, to make high school education compulsory for all. We don't do it yet. We should make college education compulsory. That is it. Maria Bartiromo: The idea of spending money on education in an environment when you're talking about a $12 trillion deficit is another major issue. Laura Tyson: There is a difference between operational deficits and capital investment deficits. I agree we need investment in infrastructure, investment in education -- Arianna Huffington: But you know, Laura, you may be absolutely right, speaking as an economist, but when you come to the political reality, you see something completely different. Laura Tyson: We won't get that is what you're saying. Arianna Huffington: Yes, exactly. I mean in terms of our political reality at the moment, the will is not there to do what seems absolutely the right thing to do. You mentioned infrastructure. Even if we are at full employment, we would need to spend over $2 trillion according to the American Society of Civil Engineers to update our infrastructure. And yet, the will is not there to do something bold, like create a national infrastructure bank. So politicians including the President talk about it, but in practice, it's not happening. And you know, Lloyd George, the great British prime minister, said, "You cannot jump across a chasm in two leaps." And that's what we've been trying to do. Take small little leaps trying to do it when [cross-talking] -- Maria Bartiromo: I want to share with you a fantastic poll from Facebook which you will want to hear about. A quick comment from Naveen. Naveen Jindal: Maria, I'd just like to elaborate on what Mr. Zhu said on the high wage rates, and I think high wage rates in the West is also not helping the situation because generally, I mean other things would follow market mechanisms of demand and supply. Whereas wage rates do not really follow demand and supply and continue to be high and continue to add to this problem. Maria Bartiromo: And of course, [cross-talking] -- Laura Tyson: They're falling. I want to say in real terms in the United States, median real wages are falling. Maria Bartiromo: Since unemployment affects all of us, we asked Facebook to partner on a poll for this debate. We asked, "Is the West in decline?" Look at these numbers. Forty-eight percent said yes. Twenty-seven percent said no. Twenty-five percent were not sure. Reaction from the front row? Amy Gutmann. Amy Gutmann: Let's look at just some numbers about unemployment to put the relationship between unemployment and education in perspective. At the height of the great recession, under five percent of college graduates were unemployed in the United States. Over double that of high school graduates and then another 50 percent more than that for those who didn't have a high school degree. So even when jobs are at their lowest ebb, college graduates do extraordinarily well in the West and that's true in the East as well, and a key to this driving innovation economy is going to be to have an educated workforce. Maria Bartiromo: We will get to education. We will move on. Thank you so much for your comments, everybody. CNBC of course is all about actionable solutions and that's what we want right now. Let's talk solutions. Arianna, most important solution, most important action to be taken now. Arianna Huffington: Well, the most important solution and the one that actually people can do something about is to recognize that democracy is not a spectator sport. So everybody can do something right now. And in fact, my source of optimism comes from the fact that if you go around the country, people are doing the right thing in their communities. People who cannot find jobs the conventional ways, for example, are going to xc.com and turning their hobbies or their passions into a way to earn a living. People who can't get jobs are coming together, as Seth Reams did in Portland, Oregon, creating sites like wevegottimetohelp.org and helping others in their communities. So there has been an outpouring of creativity and generosity all around the country, and those of us in the media need to actually put a spotlight on what is working in the country in order to help scale it up. I'm less optimistic about government finding the will to do the right things, including a payroll tax holiday, including massive infrastructure investment, including doing something about immigration. We need the kind of Visa Startup Act that would allow entrepreneurs with good ideas from all around the world to come and create jobs in the States and in Europe. Maria Bartiromo: So the people get together and working on immigration another major component. Naveen, solutions. Naveen Jindal: Well, solutions, I talk in the respect of in India. We need to firstly provide quality education to our youth and for which, we have just passed a Right to Education Act. And also, we need to increase our graduates coming out of colleges. Presently, only 15 percent of the graduates from school have a college education. We need to double that, and for that, we need to open many, many thousands of universities and colleges and also give people employable skills, like vocational training institutes, and again, to cater to almost 200 million new workforce because we have a large population of the youth and obviously, we can collaborate with the West. We would need help from the West also in educating our youth, in creating this capacity building in our country. Maria Bartiromo: Laura Tyson, solution. Laura Tyson: So I want do macro and then the third is structural. On the macro side, I think a number of people agree here a lot of the unemployment, probably almost all but a percentage point of the unemployment problem in the U.S. is a demand problem. It's a business cycle problem. It's very, very severe. I think what the President said last night on the importance of investing and research, the importance of investing in infrastructure, the importance of investing in education at the same time that we do something meaningful on the medium-term deficit is exactly the right policy. The politics, I leave it to Arianna. She thinks the political model is broken. Maybe it is. I think the economic solution is absolutely clear and I think economists from the left and the right in the United States agree on that basic solution. So that's on the macro side. On the structural side, I will just say we are going to talk about that in the next section, but think about the education issue from the U.S. point of view. It's not a great university problem. We have the best universities in the world. There are wonderful new ones developing in the rest of the world but people come from around the world. There is no issue with America's great universities. We have highly diverse set of community colleges and alternative technical training institutes. We have the for-profit institutions now which are training people. Our problem is a breakdown much, much earlier. Maria Bartiromo: K-12. Laura Tyson: In the United States, it is K-12. And my most negative thing I'm going to say here right now is the state and local government disaster in the United States, which is not being discussed enough perhaps here, is a disaster for education. So there we have the great universities not being able to tap in to the talent, the potential talent pool that's lost in fourth grade in the United States. Maria Bartiromo: And we will get to that. Philip Jennings on solutions. Philip J. Jennings: Change the rules of the game. A new political priority on job creation. The G20 has a Jobs Pact before it which was agreed by 150 nations. Make it work. We have to have a policy of inclusive growth. The crash was brought about by an economic model of exclusivity. We need an inclusive growth model. Working people have to be able to find their voice at work once again. Collective bargaining should be the place where standards are set. We want to see more fairness in the distribution of the wealth which we see to put the demand back into the economy, which Laura mentioned. We need active labor market policies. You can't leave this to the market. Those countries which survived this crisis best had active labor market policies focused on keeping people in work. Finally, we need a universal social protection platform. Eight out of 10 workers have no social protection whatsoever today. You build in that social, protection, you build in demand, you build in stability and you build in hope. Finally, stop this rush to the exit with these austerity programs that we are seeing from government. They are going to do more harm for jobs than good. What we are seeing in a number of countries is going to aggravate unemployment. Stop the rush to the exit. Maria Bartiromo: Stop the austerity programs. Very provocative statement and we will get to that and get some reaction from our audience. I want to get one reaction though from this very global-minded informed audience. Based on what we have heard, if you had to allocate money to any region in 2011, who would allocate money to Europe? Who would allocate money to the United States? Asia? And there of course is our majority. Reactions? Steve Pagliuca. Stephen Pagliuca: Well, I think in allocation of money, it really is more a microeconomic problem. I think there are great opportunities in Europe. There are great opportunities in the U.S. and in Asia as well. Obviously, there are trends. There is huge growth in India and Asia that's not going to stop, but the question is what is the price to that growth and how sustainable is it? The panel has talked about the fact that the United States and Europe have legal systems. They have systems for companies to grow. And the real issue that I fear and what Laura was talking about is that the structural unemployment is higher than what you're talking about here. And so we need the Manhattan Project on the structural unemployment problem because we are not going to solve it. We are not going to solve it with the current approaches. Arianna is absolutely right. The politicians talk about it but we don't solve it. There are solutions in front of us. We've invested our country's deficit in a lot of short-term programs that aren't having benefit for the long-term. So the money has got to go back into education, structural reform in education, which we're going to talk about next. But if that structural gap is as large, and I think it is, we have a real challenge on our hands and we're not going to fix unemployment until we fix that structural gap. Maria Bartiromo: Before we move on, Tulsi Tanti, quick comment. Tulsi Tanti: Yes. It's the solution point of view, I feel it's a very great opportunity in the Western part of the world is there. We have to revisit the industries… university sit together. Which segment of the industries can be allocated in those… and to make a market creation? Because the next generation of the industries are growing and those great opportunity for Western world is there because when we are going in India and China, it's not just for the cheaper manpower but we need a lot of 360 degrees infrastructure technologies, universities, low cost of the fund resources, and the export opportunity. I greatly see the renewable industry has a great opportunity to mitigate the climate at the same time to create a great manufacturing base in the America and Europe. It is possible because it's a high -- high-value product is there and high engineering value is there so that can be there. It's not going to be required to go to the India and China. It's not required. But the whole world needs this and that's that new mechanisms will be developed and new markets should be market created first in the home market. And if there is no home market and just we are dependent on Asian market, no job creation will be sustained. So that is the main focus area. The change in safety is required. The second is on a value chain. There is a sum pocket of this segment can be distributed in different geography, whether it is a technology, whether it is a manufacturing, whether it is a service, and to allocate like that, I think we can make a more balanced and inclusive growth of the whole world rather than just at West and East. Maria Bartiromo: Once again, we learn how connected we really are. Thank you very much. That is it for Part 1 of the debate. Many thanks to our advocates and their wonderful insights, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Barry Silbert. Thank you very much. Next up, where are the jobs? What are the skill sets required for those jobs? We tackle the skills gap. This was another problem addressed by President Obama last night. Let's hear what he had to say. President Barack Obama: Nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. So yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn't discourage us. Maria Bartiromo: Education is failing industry, motion two. Even with high unemployment, businesses say they cannot find the skilled workforce they need. David Arkless: We got the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Peter Loscher: We are urgently looking for highly qualified engineers which we can't find. Tristan Wilkinson: STEM subjects, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, have just become unfashionable. Ben Jealous: We are not training and we are not even really clear what jobs we should train them for. Ian Cheshire: But I don't think business could sit there and simply throw rocks at the educational establishment. We actually have to get involved and say, "This is what we need and this is how we can help make it happen." Sir David Bell: What we need is an education system that trains people to be flexible, responsive, and able to change what they are doing maybe several times in the course of their working life. John Studzinski: But the most successful companies are successful not just because they train people well but they retrain people well. Maria Bartiromo: On stage to argue for the motion that education is failing industry, Jeff Joerres, Manpower CEO. And against the motion, Amy Gutmann, the president of the University of Pennsylvania. [Applause] Maria Bartiromo: Jeff, your time starts now. Jeffrey Joerres: Thanks. Well-educated people create jobs. What creates those well-educated people are universities, and what we are finding is that universities are not producing the amount of people coming out or, for that matter, the quality in order for us to create this flow of jobs. Let me give you a few examples, a U.S. one. Sixty-seven percent of all high school students go on to college. Only half of those can finish their degrees in six years. Twenty-five percent of the low-income students can finish their degree, and 20 percent of the African-American community finish any kind of secondary and post-secondary degree. So what we see is not enough and not enough of the right kind. Why do I say not enough of the right kind? High unemployment and the highest level of job openings which is a massive conundrum, a skills gap of not having the right skills at the right time produced by university systems. Having said that, what is going on in STEM, the Science, the Technologies, Engineering, and Math, is outstanding and is absolutely needed. What is missing is all the way from K-4, all the way into university are things like intellectual curiosity, problem solving, empathy, and collaboration. It is those things that create the basis for education to move on to be lifelong learning. If we do not fix education system, technical schools as well as others, we will not be able to create enough people to satisfy what jobs are required. Maria Bartiromo: Jeff, thank you very much. Amy, the other side of that argument. Amy Gutmann: Thank you, Maria, and thank you, Jeff. We live in a global innovation economy, and universities are at the heart of it. We invest billions in innovative research and we educate young people who combine a breadth of skills with an in-depth knowledge of a subject, what an MIT professor aptly called a "T-shaped intellect." CEOs love to hire T-shaped individuals. They are creative and collaborative and they also have specialized skills. And those graduates from America's top universities drive the future economy that none of us can yet imagine. That is why the United States remains the single most sought after global destination for higher education. Last year alone, 700,000 foreign students came to study in universities in the United States driven by a 30 percent increase in Chinese students. India and China are avidly competing with the American model of higher education. We welcome that competition. We can learn from them just as they have learned from us. We also should reverse the visa restrictions that deport foreign students who graduate from American universities with advanced degrees. We, the Land of Liberty, send them home even if they want to stay here. That's a mistake. Higher education prepares students. K-12 education is failing us. We must invest in infrastructure and in K-12 education. Thank you. Maria Bartiromo: Thank you very much, Amy. And you brought up the issue of immigration as part of the failure here in terms of education. We've heard both sides. Challengers, who is right? Arianna Huffington: Well, I think in many ways, Jeff is right that our education system is failing us, but it doesn't start at the college level. It starts at the K-12 level. And it starts at a way in which we are both educating our children and the way we are minimizing the key importance of teacher effectiveness. Teachers are the most important thing in our children's lives. And yet, what do we have here? We have an impossibility for firing bad teachers in the United States. If you are a doctor, one in every 57 doctors loses his or her medical license. If you are a lawyer, one in 97 lawyers. If you are a teacher, one in 2,500 teachers is ever fired for being a bad teacher. Now, that is not sustainable because if you are going to imbue children with a love of science or the love of math or the love of English, you have to have these great teachers in third and fourth grade. And one last thing, at the university level is the student loan problem. We now have $900 billion in student loans, more than our credit card debt. And you have students graduating with a student loan burden of over $20,000 and not being able to get jobs, and that's another huge crisis we are facing. Maria Bartiromo: Well, you are talking about students getting to the university level unprepared. Naveen. Naveen Jindal: I would say, I mean I do not really disagree with either Jeff or Amy. I just like to present a new point, and that is that we also observe that not many engineers or highly skilled people, they do not want to work in the field. They do not want to work in a steel plant or the power plant which are mostly in remote sites, remote areas, or building dams. They would much rather work for a software company or a consultancy company living in big cities. So I think that paradigm also needs to change because until these people are willing, and these are the areas where growth is happening, where opportunities are there in the job market. So good people have to be willing to and keen to work in these areas. Maria Bartiromo: We want to get to an audience question, but I wonder if, Philip Jennings, you would like to address an issue that Arianna brought up, given you are a leader of so many workers. We can't fire teachers, bad teachers? Philip J. Jennings: Arianna, you're heading in the wrong direction. This is not going to help the discussion about improving schooling, about improving universities if you put the finger of blame on teachers who you can't fire. Arianna Huffington: Well, it's not either/or. It's not either/or. Philip J. Jennings: Do me a favor. I know the teaching community, they are the angels of our societies, teachers. You get a good teacher and those people are dedicated -- Arianna Huffington: That's exactly what I said. I said precisely because teachers, it's very important to have this debate precisely because teachers are so important, we need to be able to fire bad teachers in order to reward good teachers. Philip J. Jennings: Arianna, please let me finish. Amy Gutmann: Arianna, Philip, could I -- Philip J. Jennings: Can I just finish? Amy Gutmann: Absolutely. Philip J. Jennings: I don't think it's right to put the finger of blame on the teaching community who are dedicated to their kids, dedicated to their students, and to have a slash and burn approach to the education profession I think is the wrong way. I think Jeff is getting a free pass in the sense that when I talk to my members, they say the skills that we have aren't being used. They also tell me the training budgets are being cut back. The governments, we talked about civil servants use, they say, "Philip, austerity packages mean that the education budget is getting cut." So please, I'm with Amy on this one. Jeffrey Joerres: But I don't want to get a free pass. Philip J. Jennings: Okay. Jeffrey Joerres: Because the fact is whether we like it or not, the world in business is moving very quickly. And if we can't have an iterative process instead of maybe an episodic training process, what will come out is antiquated skills or not as finely tuned. So I think it's the relationship between government, businesses, and educators to make it a more relevant output to get people to work faster. Philip J. Jennings: But Jeff, how strong are those short-term concerns on a business leader with the Wall Street community that wants to see a performance every quarter? Does that help? Jeffrey Joerres: There are hedge funds who want to see that, but you know what? The companies I talk to are thinking about five and 10 years. They are not thinking about quarters. They are looking at an educated workforce that has the ability to have lifelong learning that is taught in some areas. Philip J. Jennings: Are we ready for lifelong learning? Jeffrey Joerres: No. Maria Bartiromo: Amy? Amy Gutmann: Look at the facts about what drives the economy because I think otherwise, we are going to talk across purposes. First of all, creative and collaborative skills coupled with in-depth knowledge is what drives this economy, and those are the first kids to be hired. Secondly, we don't need to talk about the downside of teachers in K-12. Let's talk about the huge upside. Here is a concrete progressive proposal that could unite everybody. Let us reward successful teachers with a true career ladder so that there is high status in being a K-12 teacher. That would make a huge difference. There are millions of college students who would love to enter K-12 education. Many of them at Penn, Teach for America gets them. They leave after three years. There is no career ladder there. Let's do it. That will propel the innovative economy. Where training is for the jobs of today, education is for the jobs of today and tomorrow. And then when industry hires them, they won't fire them. Maria Bartiromo: Very smart insights. Arianna Huffington: Amy is absolutely right but let me just say one quick thing, which is that right now, getting a good education at the K-12 level, if you are a poor or middle class child in America, it has become a matter of chance, literally lotteries, in order to be able to escape dysfunctional schools and go to good charter schools, which is often where poor kids or even middle class kids now can get a decent education. And this is not acceptable because you cannot produce enough students with their requisite skills to go to college. Laura Tyson: I think I would actually go to the audience at this point because I am a little concerned that the conversation here is really too U.S.-centric, all right? We have -- no, listen. There are lots of different school systems throughout Europe that perform at the K-12 level better than the U.S. There are lots of countries in Europe, Germany, Denmark. I used to hear two years ago, three years ago, people were talking about Denmark as a successful economy that combined security with flexibility and high levels of training in the workforce. Germany, we know, has been able to survive this recession and basically rebuild its manufacturing strength with very high cost, technically trained workers. So let's not get too hung up -- yes, I agree with Amy completely. That's what the U.S. should do. We should definitely do. But I do think we need to talk about the structure of education in countries where it's working and how it has to change because the technology and globalization are changing the skill bases. So when you look for workers in Europe, what are you seeing? What needs to be done there? I'm a little too concerned we are doing too much U.S. stuff here. Maria Bartiromo: Well, I mean the extent of education is also a piece of the conversation. In the U.S., students are in school five days a week, seven hours a day. In China, six days a week, 10 hours a day. Question from the audience. Laura Tyson: What about Europe? Male Speaker: I'm from media. The work institution, what I look to is that the East and the West, we from the developing nations have totally a different approach. You are looking for graduates, high technologies. We don't need that. Where we are, 60 percent dependent on agriculture. We need basic education for our kids so that they can continue in agriculture. The investment ought to be that of based in, as he says, about rural agriculture employment so that the farmer can do his own agriculture, a part-time service, and then live happily in the village. But this high technology I mean which we are getting from West to the East, I think it's creating a lot of problems to our developing nations. I think there is a limit. I think you, most of you, look at what Mahatma Gandhi said. Go back to the villages and try to limit the needs and wants, including education, then there will be a solution, not this high tech… Maria Bartiromo: More questions from the audience. [Cross-talking] -- Naveen Jindal: -- Indian youth and they want the best of education, even in the villages. And they do not -- they see, watch the same TV. They even watch CNBC so they have very high expectations. And I think even there is a serious lack of accountability in a lot of teachers in India. We really need to improve the quality of education. That's a big challenge for every government, every state government, and the government is trying to pursue that. We really give now, with the Right to Education, also improving the quality of education and giving our youth employable skills is very, very important and we are working very seriously on that and involving private sector in a very big way. Government is giving many incentives to the private sector in India to involve in training of the youth for giving employable skills, and we can learn a lot, especially the community college concept of the U.S., and we are trying to bring that to India and that would help a lot in training of our youth. And our youth is very, very ambitious and they want the best [cross-talking] -- Laura Tyson: And you don't need an either/or. It seems to me that having higher value-added agriculture is the future. Having higher value-added services is the future. You want a technically trained, sophisticated group of workers whether they are doing agriculture in the countryside or information services in Bangalore. So I go back to my notion of the developed countries, college education for all, community college very, very important as economies develop from emerging market economies into [cross-talking] -- Arianna Huffington: But also, when we look at the system in China, which obviously, we tend to celebrate because of their incredible prioritization that's being put on education there, but it is so much rote memorization that is affecting the ability of students to be creative, to innovate, and to expand their own circles of concern and empathy, and all these things are just as critical when it comes to education. It's not just about skills. It's also about what kind of human being do you become. Laura Tyson: Arianna, I don't know if we are going to be able too long to say that somehow or other, the educated students of India or China are less innovative than American students. I really think that is something that these are very sophisticated -- the students going on to the best universities and colleges and India and China are extremely sophisticated and innovative. Maria Bartiromo: Question from the audience. Very quickly, Dennis Nally. Dennis M. Nally: Maria, I think this is really an interesting discussion. And at the risk of oversimplifying, I don't think this is about the East and the West. In a recent Global CEO Survey that we conducted, over 1,200 CEOs from all around the world participated in the survey and basically said 2/3 of them believe there is a real shortage wherever you are operating with skilled workers. And so I think you've got to take it back to individual countries and understand exactly what is driving that issue. And what business is saying, I believe, is it has to be a collaborative effort working with governments, working with the educational institutions to solve that problem in those respective countries. If you overgeneralize, I don't think you get anywhere with this discussion. Maria Bartiromo: We want solutions. The conversation is getting heated. Let's look for action. Solutions now, Philip Jennings. Philip J. Jennings: We know where the jobs of tomorrow are. We know that when you look at the progression of employment in Europe, in the U.S., and other parts of the world, there is a growing shift towards the services industry and knowledge intensive. The solution must be that we have to gear up our education, our training, and our employers that they can meet those needs not just to give them the basics but continually through one's working life. We have to have a strong commitment to lifelong learning. Learning and training at work should not stop at the age of 18, 25, or 30. We need a new social contract, a new social contract that every worker has access to relearning and to reeducation. Maria Bartiromo: Where does that relearning come from? The corporate sector? Government? Who is providing this retraining? Philip J. Jennings: Government has to do a much better job in looking at what labor and manpower trends are to identify where the problems are. Government has a role to provide infrastructure. The private sector has an enormous role to play as well in terms of the innovation requirements that they have. We can't have a -- you can't just discuss this with government without business and you can't discuss with business without labor. I would like to see a learning representative in every workplace on the planet that that simple worker could put his hand up and say, "I am being trained for three months." Maria Bartiromo: Solutions from the audience. Yes, sir? Male Speaker: Well, in looking at models that work, in response to Laura's question, I think it would be good to look at Finland. They have come out top of the list for the last 10 years virtually, per the OECD's PISA reports. And they do it by investing in education, also starting with child education at the very early stages. They have a system of social partnership. It's not based upon firing teachers or based on motivating teachers. I could make one suggestion from that to the U.S. In 2006, you paid 25 hedge fund managers the same as you paid all of the teachers at New York City for two years. So would those people in the audience who are hedge fund managers think about giving some of that money or accepting taxation, which will put it back into teachers' pocket and get incentives going the right way. Maria Bartiromo: Good comment. Onto Carrefour. Lars, do you have a solution? You are the largest employer in Europe. Lars Olofsson: Thank you. Well, listen, first of all, when we are talking about demand, what is all about demand? It's about growth. Now, when we talk about growth, it's sure that if we divide us up into West and East that East, they have a let's call it a demographic advantage, so in terms of quantitative growth, I don't think that the West can do anything. However, it's all about value. Now, when we talk about value growth, and I think that's the way forward in Europe, what are the levers? Well, long term, I think it has been addressed. It's all about education. It is about the research and development. It is about giving, helping the small and medium-sized enterprises. Now, short term, that is the problem in Europe. How can we get back in growth? Because without growth, we will not be able to absorb the unemployment, okay? So the question is what do we do short term? Today, we are all talking about rigor. Well, we need to increase the taxes. We need to get our costs down, et cetera. That is not going to generate growth. So my question is how can we have a rigorous growth? That's what it's all about because that's what we have to do. And here, we have to think about how can we create value? Every good cannot be transferred from West to the East. This is rather an opportunity. Now, so my question is actually how do we help? How do we help Europe in short and medium term? Because without a rigorous growth, I'm sorry, I will be -- a tendency to be pretty pessimistic about the future of Europe. Maria Bartiromo: First, we've got to see growth before we can address the issue of education is what you're saying. Lars Olofsson: Yes. Maria Bartiromo: John Studzinski, solutions. John Studzinski: The reason why, and Laura… Germany, the reason why Germany works so well is that at the supervisory board, you have 50 percent of the supervisory board management, 50 percent labor, and they have to live with each other as strange bedfellows and therefore, they take several years to work through issues and problems strategically. And I think if we had more of this locked-on collaboration around the world where labor -- and even in the United States, labor is not enough at the table when it comes to long-term planning. Put it very simply, we have to change in ethos. We have to take labor away from being an expense item on the P&L and we have to make it a long-term capital asset. If we can do that and make it a long-term capital asset, which implies the points that were made about education, the worker will retain their own dignity, which I think is the most important. Philip J. Jennings: I think the worker has to have that voice and has to have that opportunity. I'm please to say with Carrefour, as a UNI Global unit, we have a social dialogue at the global level with the company. We also have the same conversation with Manpower and 40 other companies covering something like 10 million workers. This affords you the opportunity to get away from the daily skirmish but into much more strategic thinking about what the employment projections are. And those people actually have a genuineness, an authenticity about them. They know what's going on. They know where management is not performing. That worker's voice needs to be heard, and I'm pleased to see that there is a strong plug for the… an involvement of working people in these kinds of decisions. Maria Bartiromo: That's the person on the ground. Philip J. Jennings: It does work. The person on the ground needs to find his voice. Maria Bartiromo: Zhu Min with a solution. Arianna Huffington: One very simple thing. One very simple thing at the K-12 level is to increase parental involvement because right now, parents very often in schools are seen as the intruders. And if parents are not involved in their children's education, it's going to get really hard. And at the government level, we need to see the opportunity cost of where the resources go compared to where they should be going if we are going to do some nation building here at home. Right now in America, we are spending $2.8 billion a week fighting a non-winnable war in Afghanistan. That money could come back home and rebuild some of those collapsing infrastructures when it comes to our schools. Maria Bartiromo: Education begins at home. Zhu Min, solutions. Zhu Min: Laura has a very important point, which is a mandatory higher education. I think it is absolutely important because if you think about job, what kind of job? It's the competitiveness. If you want to get competitiveness for the advancing economies, they have to move into upper... You want the move in upper… and not into the small section but in the massive scale sense. Barry mentioned you have a Facebook or Google here and more. You have iPod. You have Louis Vuitton. But even iPod is made in China, right? I mean those are not enough to create job for the advancing economies today. So when we talk about education system today, it's not only to fix the problem in today but looking for the future. You really need a massive educational reform, create the hope high education system so that you would be able to bring the people able to work in high-end industry. I'll give you a number. China produces six million college graduate students every year. Among them, one million are engineers. In China, …they are not enough for the growth of a Chinese economy in the future. What happened in the advance economies? Laura Tyson: And as the President often points out, the U.S. has actually had declined in this respect. We used to be number one in terms of college completion rates and college enrollment rates for the college-age population. We are number 14, number 16, number 17. We are not -- we are falling behind the need to, for the next 10 years, take students and give them the education they need and the technology that they need [cross-talking] -- Maria Bartiromo: Well, Tom Friedman had a great quote that we showed earlier. When was the last time you saw a 12-year-old say, "I really want to be an engineer?" Laura Tyson: So there has been a race. The demand for skills has gotten way out of line with [cross-talking] -- skills. Maria Bartiromo: Exactly. Solution. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Yes. I just wanted to comment that when we talk about the skill deficit, it's again an employability debate and I think there, I really want to subscribe to an internship-based training program within corporates because I think that's very, very powerful and that addresses both the training deficit and the kind of employability issue. Maria Bartiromo: This is a great idea. We've heard some great insights. Thank you very much. We are out of time. Thank you so much to all of our contributors and our great ideas from the audience, including of course our panelists and our advocates. Please go to cnbc.com to find out when the program will air on CNBC globally. I'm Maria Bartiromo from CNBC's Davos Debate at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. [Applause]
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