Countries such as these won't always be in such a state, as their economies grow the workers will demand more and more until the advantages for moving manufacturing in these places become less and less advantageous.
You're talking about billions of poor people in the third world. It could take 50 or 100 years until the quality of life they can afford to purchase rises to that of a first world country. That might be great 50 or 100 years from now, but most of us will be long-since dead at that point.
But at the same time you can't make the gap even larger because of unnecessary regulation and high taxes. You'll just acerbate the problem by doing so, the Democrats want higher taxes and more regulation.
Do you know what a tariff is? We could just ban products made in other nations, at least to the extent that it gets in the way of our having a zero-dollar trade deficit. Why not just be a self-sufficient country and produce our own goods and services? I don't have a problem with trade as long as its a trade of goods and services for goods and services as opposed to our exchanging capital assets (land, business ownership) and IOUs for ephemeral consumer goods.
I suppose I'm one of these "morons" that you're talking about. I think we can have a discussion without these sorts of comments. They don't help your argument, all it does is make your points harder to swallow.
Right now the free marketers are riding high on a sense of moral righteousness, but it's just a dogma held like a religious belief. Few have contemplated fundamental issues deeply.
So lets see if a company can produce a product cheaper elsewhere I think that company is incompetent not to do so.
I agree. I don't blame businesses for trying to make a profit. I blame politicians for enacting economic policies that merge the American labor force and standard of living with that of the third world.
A more profitable company helps investors but it does so at the cost of the workers, I agree. However we'll have to differentiate ourselves in other ways as a work force and companies that discover ways to take advantage of those differences will succeed and prosper.
What do you think we can do that the Indians and Chinese cannot do for less compensation? We don't have any sort of inherent racial advantage that makes us smarter or more productive. For a while people latched onto the notion that we need to "innovate" and that we'll magically "innovate" our way out of Global Labor Arbitrage. Sadly, the people in India and China want to work white collar knowledge-based jobs, too.
Well what is the alternative and why should the wealth not be held primarily by 5% of the population?
Because they didn't actually produce all of the wealth.
What percentage would you rather see the wealth distributed?
I'd like to see it more equitably distributed amongst the people who actually do the work and produce the wealth.
Implicit in your point is that if we simply abort more babies we can keep them from living in poverty. Let's take it another step and kill kids who are in poverty.
I don't see how I ever said that in this discussion. In other discussions I have advocated support for voluntary government-funded abortion, which will save the government money. I've never said, anywhere that actual children or anyone with a human consciousness and personality should be killed.
This is where more freedom and freer markets come into play. If a company is paying the wrong people too much money instead of the people actually deserve it then the people who deserve it will look for a company that compensates them accordingly.
This company, if it pays the people who deserve the money will eventually start drawing the most talent. As it stands, the job market sucks so this is less and less likely to happen. In a bad economy workers have less power while corporations have more. A thriving economy will help equalize some of these inefficiencies.
It definitely works better when you have a healthy economy without a large oversupply of labor. (Interestingly, as our economy has become increasingly exposed to the ravages of global labor arbitrage--a tremendous increase in the supply of labor--that has become decreasingly true.)
That sounds good in theory, but in practice you end up having corporate executives who receive far more compensation than their actual contribution to the act of wealth production. There are also people whose capital garners more wealth for them without their having actually done anything to contribute to the act of wealth production.[/quote]
We don't need magic what we need is patience to have more choices. The providers have all the power (providers=insurance companies and health care providers). There is less incentive for a hospital or doctors office to improve care, cut costs and be more efficient when a patients insurance company limits their choices. Obamacare will limit choices further as you can't even decide not to get insurance any longer without paying a fine.
They don't have that guarantee now. If insurance would cover only certain catastrophic medical visits there would be less wiggle room for the insurance companies to get out of making payment.
If the healthcare industry had to compete for patients like restaurants have to compete for diners health care would be cheaper. Whenever you are spending somebody else's money you have higher prices. Whenever consumers have less choice prices increase. I want people to have more choices and I want people to spend their own money instead of somebody else's. I don't see doctor office commercials on tv but I see tons of restaurant ads.
Part of the problem is that restaurants are not merely competing against other restaurants, but also diners' own cooking skills. There isn't anything equivalent to that in the health care field. If you need surgery, you need surgery and you can't do it on your own at home.
I wholeheartedly agree that Obamacare won't do much to improve the situation because it completely fails to address the problem--the mass inefficiency of free market health care. We need to eliminate the wasteful costs of the insurance industry and everything else associated with having free market health care--medical billing people, hospital intake employees, excess hospital accounts, insurance brokers, company benefits plan managers. A huge part of the problem is that too many people are being paid to do things that have nothing to do with actually providing health care. That's why were spending 17% of our GDP on health care while leaving tens of millions uninsured or under-insured.
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