John D. Giorgis said:
> At 10:55 PM 1/25/01 +0100, Jeroen wrote:
snip
> >Further, moving your production lines to
> >the Third World is anything but helping the non-share-holding working
class
> >Americans who loose their job because of that move.
> Oh, but it does. Let's say that a company sells X units of product at
> price Y in the US. After moving to another country, the sell the same
> product at lower price Z. Suddenly, all Americans have (Y-Z) * X more
> dollars to spend on other products. This creates increased demand for
> other goods, which boosts production AND JOBS in other sectors.
"Suddenly, all Americans..." ALL?
You have conveniently omitted the loss of the dollars of those who have lost
their jobs, the contractors providing services to the closed factory, the
decrease in local property taxes, the decrease in turnover of local
businesses and so on and so on and so on and so on.
snip
> ><sarcasm>
> >Yeah, sure. After all, we all know that owning rechargable batteries is
of
> >vital importance to poor Americans in order to survive... Who cares about
> >getting food on the table -- it's those rechargable batteries they need!
> ></sarcasm>
> This might surprise you, Jeroen, but some 95%+ of Americans receiving
> welfare payments from our government own televisions. They are almost
> certainly using batteries too, and will certainly benefit at least in part
> from having a better battery for the same part. (This is true for any
> number of products, batteries is just our current example.)
[Somehow the battery has become better. I think you mean cheaper? Perhaps
you could quantify the benefit by estimating the decrease in the price of
the battery and the number of batteries those suffering malnutrition buy in
a year.]
I'm not sure what your point is as Jeroen said food on the table.
You appear to be implying either:
(i) Television is nutritious(:>) or,
(ii) Puritanical compassionate conservatism. (You are not awarded compassion
for malnutrition unless you sell your television.)(:>) or,
(iii)There are no poor people because the definition of poor people does not
include those who own televisions. I don't know how many govt welfare
recipients there are, but there are at least 30 million poor according to
the CIA: "US Population below poverty line: 12.7% (1999 est.)" but less
according to Clinton's White House press releases which claim about 10%.
Snip "ethical example" (sic) which ignores America's actual unemployment
rate by referring to a "strong economy" and which also continues to ignore
the ethical questions of foreign worker safety and global pollution.
Try a web search for Nike + Vietnam. Learn about the totalitarian work
practices that require woman to urinate in their clothes because they are
allowed to visit the toilet only once a 12 hour working day and that require
direct exposure to the glues and solvents. Remember the stories about
workers burnt to death because the factory doors are locked during working
hours.
Consider the pollution of the world's largest open cast mine in Irian Jaya
owned by Freeport McMoRan where over 300 square kilometres of tribal land
has been covered in tailings displacing the local tribe(s) to the cities
where they join the queues for virtually slave labour jobs.
Bob.
