--- Jan Coffey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > San Jose Paper. sais 1 in 6 jobs in the bay area are > now or will be > replaced by outsourcing.
Without even having seen the article I say, without fear of contradiction, that it did not. _At most_ it said that 1 in 6 jobs in San Jose were at risk from outsourcing. I don't believe that figure and would want to see the methodology. But there is no chance that it said that 1 in 6 jobs are nor or will be replaced by outsourcing. > Yea, doing what, for what % of their former wages? Wages adjusted for the lower cost of living? Higher, certainly. The _total welfare of the society will increase_. Now, it's an entirely appropriate use of government power to tax the "winners" in this sort of free market friction to compensate the "losers". That's one of the things that government is for. But preventing companies from increasing their efficiency _decreases_ the total welfare of society. So you guarantee that there will be losers. You convert a positive sum system (one in which everyone can win) into a negative sum system (one in which all "wins" for anyone in the system force others to lose _more_). > It is artificialy taking something away from the > environemnt that > fostered it. If the environemnt fosters a inovation > that is a > different concept. I don't understand what you mean by this. What is artificial about paying the most efficient people to do something? _Hindrances_ on that are artificial. > > If I were to sell a comodity so cheeply that it > devistated a market. > Say If I were to sell gold at a 1/6 the market > value, I would be in > legal trouble. If I were to make widgets and I had > more widgets than > I knew what to do with, and I sold them so cheeply > that it put all my > competitors out of buisness, then I would be in > legal trouble. If a > forign market produces steel and sells it in the US > for considerably > less than the us steel companies, we tax that steel. > When someone > brings electronics into the country they are taxed > becouse the > electronics cost more here, and we don't want to put > our retailers > out of buisness. When you bring in Wine, it is > taxed. The market value of something is _whatever people are willing to pay for it_. If you found a new gold mine that allowed you to mine gold cheaply for one-sixth of the current price, you would put a lot of gold miners out of work. This would not be illegal. Are you saying that it should be? If you invented a new way to smelt steel with less labor and thus less expensively, you would put a lot of steelworkers out of work. That is not illegal. We only tax the steel if foreign companies sell the steel _below the cost of production_, because that is dumping. But we don't tax it if they are selling at a profit. Are you saying that making steel more cheeply should be illegal? > > How is labor any differnt? If it is a comodity and > can be done by > anyone, anywhere, then why is not afforded the same > protections as > other comodities? My point, Jan, is precisely that it is _not_ different. Or, more accurately, it is different only in that labor "owners" (i.e., workers) who lose value through no fault of their own should be compensated by the government - meaning that I think it should receive more protection than I would give to other commodities. Other commodities don't get the protections that you are claiming that they do (and in the rare circumstances when they do, it's a very bad idea, the product of political pressures that do a great deal of harm to the United States as a whole). ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Search - Find what you�re looking for faster http://search.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
