From: Dehede011@aol.com
Date: Tue Jun 10 2003 - 15:07:35 MDT
In a message dated 6/10/2003 2:25:45 PM Central Standard Time,
rafal@smigrodzki.org writes: In the long term however, 50 or 500 years, you want to maximize
growth, even at the cost of reducing immediate consumption (obvious to anyone
who chooses between paying off a mortgage and buying a new car when the old
one still runs). Since globalization of the economy increases the effective
amount of resources available for enlarging our knowledge, allows uniform
increase in production capacity, and a uniform increase in demand across the whole
world, including long-term demand for American goods, globalization is the
long-term favorite over narrow, parochial approaches, like mercantilism, and
protectionism. This is why globalization is good for the American consumer, as well
as the European, African or Asian consumer
Rafal,
I won't say you are right or wrong. There are too many contradictory
facts flying around for me to evaluate at this date.
-- I was in manufacturing for almost 30 years and a consultant to
manufacturing management for a little over 20 years after that. My observation informs
me that the expense of American goods is more due to the incompetence of
American Manufacturing Managers than to the price of American Labor.
-- As we transition to automated equipment we actually go down the
productivity curve compared to the old manual labor. The logic is simple. We lay off
the more intelligent skilled labor that actually did a lot of the managing of
our systems and replace them with less intelligent workers. We are left with
untrained managers making the decisions.
-- Within the last week a von Mises institute article stated that the average
American family is spending about 10% of their savings, on balance, each
year. My memory could be faulty on that data. They may have said 10% of their
income. I am not sure.
That is but a small portion of what I am hearing.
Ron h.
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