keannu
VIP Member
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2010
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Korean
- Home Country
- South Korea
- Current Location
- South Korea
Source : EBS English Reading Practice, 133p
Trade deregulation has brought down barriers to the movement of capital and jobs, but it has not freed up movement of people in pursuit of a better livelihood. " The result is that work is allowed to circulate around the globe with impunity, but workers themselves are not — in fact, many are criminalized if they cross borders. The higher up the skills curve, the less strictly this rule applies, if only because it has not proven so easy to separate skills from employees. Nonetheless, corporate strategies loosely known as “knowledge transfer” have been devised to migrate brainpower from the heads of well-paid employees to a cheaper labor pool offshore. Increasingly sophisticated work-flow technologies can now slice up the contents of a job into work tasks, assign them to different parts of the globe, and reassemble the results into a meaningful whole. Most recently, trade liberalization, in India and China in particular, has enabled large amounts of skilled, professional work to be performed in discount offshore locations. As more and more countries strive to enter the upper reaches of industry and services, the competition to attract high-tech investment has intensified, and so these skill-intensive sectors are now seen as key to the game of catch-up.
1. In the bold sentence, is "curve" used as a verb or a noun here?
"The higher up the skills curve"
2. In the bold sentence, what does the "this rule" mean? Does it mean the previous sentence like this?
The result is that work is allowed to circulate around the globe with impunity, but workers themselves are not — in fact, many are criminalized if they cross borders.
Trade deregulation has brought down barriers to the movement of capital and jobs, but it has not freed up movement of people in pursuit of a better livelihood. " The result is that work is allowed to circulate around the globe with impunity, but workers themselves are not — in fact, many are criminalized if they cross borders. The higher up the skills curve, the less strictly this rule applies, if only because it has not proven so easy to separate skills from employees. Nonetheless, corporate strategies loosely known as “knowledge transfer” have been devised to migrate brainpower from the heads of well-paid employees to a cheaper labor pool offshore. Increasingly sophisticated work-flow technologies can now slice up the contents of a job into work tasks, assign them to different parts of the globe, and reassemble the results into a meaningful whole. Most recently, trade liberalization, in India and China in particular, has enabled large amounts of skilled, professional work to be performed in discount offshore locations. As more and more countries strive to enter the upper reaches of industry and services, the competition to attract high-tech investment has intensified, and so these skill-intensive sectors are now seen as key to the game of catch-up.
1. In the bold sentence, is "curve" used as a verb or a noun here?
"The higher up the skills curve"
2. In the bold sentence, what does the "this rule" mean? Does it mean the previous sentence like this?
The result is that work is allowed to circulate around the globe with impunity, but workers themselves are not — in fact, many are criminalized if they cross borders.
