his Interim Report to Alberta regarding the necessity of acquiring "foreign exchange."
The reality is that today domestic labor is not being displaced by technology but
foreign labor forced to work for the equivalent of a dollar a day.
There is also the problem of immigrant labor willing--not really willing but forced due
to deplorable conditions in their homeland--to work for substandard wages. The
availability of immigrant subsistence wage labor is displacing technology.
Not too long ago I visited the warehouse of a huge regional potato distributor. The
warehouse had several sorting and bagging machines--a different machine for each
variety of potato. The older machines were American made. The newer were
German--the American manufacturers of such machines being no longer in business.
I asked why several machines were sitting idle. I was told that it was cheaper to
replace them with lines of workers sorting and bagging than repairing or replacing
the machines.
--
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Social Credit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [SOCIAL CREDIT] FROM DISCUSSION ON HM MURRAY:- SOCIAL CREDIT AND FOREIGN TRADE
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 11:33:29 EDT
(Wally Klinck wrote:-) "The critical advantage in foreign trade is held by the nation with the lowest price level...Obviously, if one nation implemented Social Credit, all others would be unable to compete with it in the international markets."
(Wally:-) "A social credit economy would not seek to export merely to receive credits to enable its consumers to consume what it can produce, since those credits could be created internally through the dividend and discount." (Bill Ryan replied:-) --this is true.
(Bill Ryan continues:-) Here's the thing--no matter how much you lower the domestic price level, the predatory foreign producer will always sell at a lower price, thereby progressively bankrupting domestic producers one by one as he augments his productive capacity. He can do this because he can recover most all his costs of production from his own captive workforce. He can drop the price of what he sells into your market to whatever low level it takes to capture your market. Since he has recovered most of his costs of production from his own workers, whatever low level he sells into your market is pure profit to him. So job number one for social credit to work there have to be controls limiting imports.
The problem that social credit faces is the problem facing every social reformer, as Curtiss Priest already informed us. If you force the domestic producer to clean up his smokestack, you drive production overseas where there are no such restrictions. If you force the domestic producer to maintain a safe working environment, you drive production overseas where producers have no such requirements. If you force the domestic producer to pay a decent wage, you drive production overseas where there is effectively slavery, and so on--if your market is open to the foreign producer.
Job number two for social credit to work there will have to be capital controls. At the very least you will have to limit the negotiability of the social credits so that they can only be used to purchase domestic production. But then you still face the dilemma that by doing so you free up the already existing credit to go overseas either for the purchase of consumer goods or investment, negating much of the beneficial effect of the social credits by draining purchasing power from the domestic economy. If you try to compensate for the capital flight by disbursing still more social credits, you have the recipe for inflation that will accelerate without limit.
Hello All,
Could anyone please tell me where, specifically, in his vast volume of writings, Douglas addressed the above 'two jobs'.
Joe Thomson
_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84IaC.bcVIgP.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^================================================================
