Randall Randall wrote:
>
> On Sun Dec 23 2001 - 18:38:00 MST, Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> >
> >Indeed. As a writer who sells more in the USA than at home, I gain this
> >terrific, and unfair, advantage myself. In effect, I make twice as much for
> >a given novel as an American would, and live better anyway. Yum.
>
> This seems like an odd way to view things. If you get twice as many
> Australian dollars, but the Australian dollars are only worth half as
> much as US Dollars (which must mean that you can only buy half
> as much with an Australian dollar as with a US Dollar, all else being
> equal), then you're making the same as you would in the US, right?
The exchange rate of the $A to $US may be roughly 2:1, but that doesn't
mean the purchasing power of an Australian dollar in Australia is any
different from the purchasing power of a US dollar in the US. A bizarre
state of affairs, really - you'd think everybody in the United States
would move to Australia, or all the goods in Australia would be exported
to the United States - but there it is, a testament to the unfinished
business of building an inertialess global economy.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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