Vamos brincar à caridadezinha

"O primeiro-ministro, José Sócrates, salientou na entrega de diplomas a dezenas de formandos do Centro de Formação Profissional do Seixal, no âmbito do Programa Novas Oportunidades, que a qualificação é a solução para defender o emprego.
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«Mais qualificações garantem mais emprego, mas garantem também a redução de desigualdades», sublinhou José Sócrates."
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"«Este programa Novas Oportunidades visa melhorar as qualificações dos portugueses, é o melhor contributo para o emprego mas também para reduzir as desigualdades», afirmou o primeiro-ministro."
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Que se aumentem as qualificações por todas as razões e mais uma OK.
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Agora, aumentar as qualificações para defender o emprego, não!
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Basta recordar o que recentemente esceveu James K. Galbraith "The Predator State - How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too" e que abordamos aqui: Ainda acerca da formação profissional
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"Job training is a canonical example of the well-brought-up liberal's (atenção à conotação americana para o termo) urge to make markets work. The policy follows from an argument about the nature of unemployment and low wages, and as with neraly all similar exercices, the argument begins by assuming the existence of a market. In this case, the market is known as the "labor market," and it supposedly matches demand for labor, which comes from businesses, to the supply offered by individuals. If individuals lack the minimal skills that business requires, they cannot compete for jobs. Unemployment must result. The purpose of job training therefore is to move individuals into a position from which they can effectively compete for available employment.
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In this analysis every detail is correct: there are businesses that require labor, and there are individuals who would like jobs but do not qualify for them. It is true that a job-training program can help. Yet the sum of these details falls far short of the claim made for them as a whole. It does not follow that job-training programs reduce unemployment or poverty. It is not even clear that they foster the creation of a single additional job.
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The problem is that poverty and unemployment are not much influenced by the qualities and qualifications of the workforce. They depend, rather, on the state of demand for labor. They depend on whether firms want to hire all the workers who may be available and at the pay rates that firms are willing, or required, to offer, especially to the lowest paid.
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Firms in the happy position of strongly expanding markets and bright profit prospects can almost always find the workers they need, either pulling directly from the pool of the unemployed or poaching qualified workers from other firms (or nations). For such firm, the costs of rudimentary job training for unskilled and semiskilled positions are secondary (como se prova facilmente com o exemplo dos portugueses que emigram para a Alemanha ou Suiça); if workers with appropriate training are not readilly available, they can be trained in-house. Conversely, firms facing stagnant demand and bleak prospects do not add workers simply because trained candidates happen to be available.
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Job traing in most offices is extremely specific to that office: its systems, its bosses, its routines. Generic training programs, the only kind government can provide, cannot duplicate this function.
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if companies are not hiring, job training is irrelevant.
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if you really want to reduce unemployment and poverty, it is obvious from recent history that job training has nothing to do with it." (a não ser na cosmética dos número do desemprego, já que quem frequenta a formação não contribui para os números do desemprego).
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Basta pensar naquela citação ali há direita sobre a realidade finlandesa "It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."Mas, e como isto é profundo:"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants." Por favor voltar a trás e reler esta última afirmação.
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Basta recordar o esbracejar de desepero do presidente da câmara de Guimarães: "Fábricas a encerrar, salários em atraso, jovens qualificados sem trabalho,"... "Mas penso que àqueles desempregados aos quais não é possível dar mais formação - porque a formação de base é tão baixa que não dá para dar um salto qualitativo mínimo para outro lado"... "Outro problema igualmente complexo é o dos jovens que têm formação e não encontram trabalho no mercado. Infelizmente, neste momento, não há na região trabalho qualificado para acolher essa mão-de-obra..."
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Enfim, é assim tão difícil de perceber o que diz Galbraith?
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"The problem is that poverty and unemployment are not much influenced by the qualities and qualifications of the workforce. They depend, rather, on the state of demand for labor."
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Ás vezes penso numa outra frase de Galbraith:
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"In a world where the winners are all connected, it is not only the prey (who by and large carry little political weight) who lose out. It is everyone who has not licked the appropriate boots. Predatory regimes are, more or less exactly, like protection rackets: powerful and feared but neither loved nor respected. They cannot reward everyone, and therefore they do not enjoy a broad political base. In addition, they are intrinsically unstable, something that does not trouble the predators but makes life for ordinary business enterprise exceptionally trying
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predators suck the capacity from government and deplete it of the ability to govern. In the short run, again, this looks like simple incompetence, but this is an illusion. Predators do not mind being thought incompetent: the accusation helps to obscure their actual agenda."