Quarter Sales Numbers

So the fraud Ken Lay has taken over from the felon Ollie North as the "hero"
of the far right?

 

Heh heh,
I'm on my way over to Miramar to have Ollie sign my copy of his new book!!
I'll tell him you said he was a felon. And if you run into my good friend
Jason Fisk (freshman) on campus, you better be nice to him and not punish
him if his views are to the right of yours (not hard to do). I told him to
thank you for voting for Reagan back in the 80's.

 

What your ignoring is that there's 2 sides to the equation. You have to
have jobs
for the consumers to get money so they can go save money on the cheaper
foreign
goods to begin with. If your economic policy isn't creating jobs, then your
just
creating a society full of poor people who can't buy anything, topped by an
upper
crust that is ridiculously wealthy. That's already happened in a large
number of
countries in the world.

While it can be argued that the farmers are getting oversubsidized, I
noticed that
the steel companies are getting subsidized as well and the people bitching
about the
farm subsidizes aren't saying boo about steel.

And your also conveniently ignoring the fact that some industries simply
cannot go
overseas - like medical. It's impractical to move every patients overseas
for treatment.
As a result that consumers have been mostly barred by default from seeking
cheaper
overseas medical care. According to your logic and the logic of a lot of
economists, this
should be costing the economy trillions of dollars in wasted medical
expenses. Yet,
the health care industry is being touted as one of the major industries that
is powering
the economic recovery and is producing huge numbers of jobs.

People like you who resort to labels like "Jingoism" are just pulling the
old scam of
your all pro free trade when YOU benefit, but if you see your own ox being
gored by
the free trade, your just as projectionist as anyone else. Both the major
political parties
in the United States take this exact same stance as well - they are
pro-projectionist
for their constituents industries, and pro-free-trade for their opponent's
constituents
industries. Neither is pro free trade for everything. (Thank God for that,
or there wouldn't
be any jobs at all left)

Ted

 

See below.

DAS
--
---
NB: To reply directly replace "nospam" with "schmetterling"
---

I agree with you that one needs an economic policy that helps create jobs,
but the question is which jobs. And which jobs do we aim to keep in
industries that are dying or are unviable?

To give an extremely good example, take the
'jobs' that existed in the old Communist countries. They always claimed to
have full employment whilst we 'capitalist roaders' always had lots of
unemployed. In fact, in the communist world there were lots of people paid
to do practically nothing, so they were, in effect, unemployed. For this
and other reasons their economies eventually collapsed.
Other prominent examples are the Luddites, who were against new machinery
because they feared for their livelihood, coalmine and steel workers in
developed countries etc.

The existence of an extremely wealthy upper crust is nothing new. It was
only through the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s that things began
to change, when wealth started trickling down to the masses. Essentially,
for the first time it became possible for an individual to produce more than
the daily-required bread, produce a surplus and trade that in for something
else (via money, the univeral store of value).

Who says steel subsidies are not an issue? In Europe at least it's a big
issue, what with mergers and closures. Are you telling me that Bethlehem
Steel et al are still as big as they used to be? European coal mines have
closed in vast numbers as they are unable to compete with cheaper coal from
elsewhere (and changing patterns of energy use) and governments have finally
bitten the bullet, realised that coal is not 'strategic', and have reduced
the amount of taxpayers' (my) money being thrown at these enterprises.
Same with steel. Post-WW2, in a fit of socialist fervour, the British
government nationalised all manner of industries, declaring them to be
strategic, essential etc, and which had no business being in private hands,
perhaps even making (whisper it, "a profit"). The folly of this was exposed
later of course.

I don't think so (ignoring that one cannot go overseas). Costs include
getting the product or service at home. I can save, say, three dollars by
buying my CD in the USA vs UK, but it takes me an effort, postal charges
and, possibly, customs duty and VAT, to acquire this CD from the US, so the
real cost of getting it from the US is probably greater than buying in the
UK. Same applies to computers, cameras and the like.

Concrete, personal example: About three years ago, when in New York City, I
decided to buy a portable printer for my laptop, as I had an urgent need.
So I popped down to a local store (CompUSA?) and found something suitable
that was also significantly cheaper than in the UK. However, by the time I
added in the USD 99 for an international warranty I was more than evens with
the UK.

Not being able to go to India for an operation because it's cheaper is,
thus, irrelevant.


Yet,

I think you mean the pharmaceutical industry. Not same as medical
treatment. Also, you will find that Candian suppliers, such as online
pharmacies, are raking in the custom from US consumers because of the lower
pharmaceutical prices in Canada. You may not know it, but it's a big issue
for the American pharma companies and US pharmacies.
Similarly, we have parallel imports of pharmaceuticals within the European
Union from lower-cost countries into higher-cost ones. Another personal
example: At my local pharmacy I can buy a cream against Athlete's Foot made
by J&J. The same stuff, incl same-sized tube, is available at two prices.
One is officially supplied in the UK (I don't know where it's made) and the
other is sourced from Greece. The latter is cheaper (and legal!).

(Pharmaceutical pricing is a whole different subject. Here my point is that
custom goes where price is low.)

How do you know? What have I said that suggests this? (I think you mean
"protectionist".)


.. Both the major

Politicians' hypocrisy. What does that prove?


Neither is pro free trade for everything. (Thank God for that,

That brings us back full circle. Featherbedding destroys economies.

Free trade should be based on 'mutualism', i.e. it should go all ways and
one should be wary of one country exploiting another. I am not saying that
all government intervention in the economy is bad, but I am saying that
making policy purely on basis of unconsidered populism and jingoism is.

 

Well, Dori - for being such a great country, many Americans are not any
smarter than the communists - maybe even dumber because at least an
idiot can learn from observing the mistakes of others (i.e., collapse of
communist economies). There's a move afoot in the U.S. even as we write
these things, to pass a Consititutional amendment to guarantee every
American a job. An employer would have to pay someone a wage based on
the number of children they have. Of course subsidized by the gov't
(kind of like our old welfare system of rewarding irresponsible people
for having children they can't afford - all in the name of equality). I
guess to some people, equality doesn't mean giving opportunity to
everyone, but instead means that everyone is forced down to the same
level of misery. On top of that, even today, judges in CA ruled the
re-call of Gov. Davis illegal because of - you guessed it - the
chad-type ballots. Allow an entire state to go under to protect people
too dumb to vote. Recall delayed indefinitely. What you wanna bet the
CA legislature passes a tax increase under Gov. Davis in their next
session to try to fix their problems. Talk about a system collapsing
under its own weight! I guess the fact that CA has those awful punch
type ballots must be George Bush's, or Jeb Bush's, or some other
Republican's fault. Wonder why Davis didn't get rid of them - after all
- everyone knows how awful and unfair those ballots are. 8^)

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

You never know. Lots of times, these things are put out as feelers by
fringe groups to see if the public is ready to accept the "next logical
step" for the country - and you never know who is really behind the
feeler. I'm sure if resistance dropped enough, certain political
factions would push it as hard as they could. Has to fit with the
overall agenda.

Yeah - that's true, but unfortunately, that one state is something like
1/5th of our national economy - I think that's the figure I heard.
Definitely a scary state (in both senses of the word).

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

Yes, and it's in some very significant position in the global economy as
well, outranking most countries. Can't remember the figure but it's
remarkably low (i.e. high up the economic league table). If Bill Gates's
li'l business and that aeroplane maker were in it no doubt California would
be bigger than Britain and Italy put together...

DAS
--