how-to block ads
|
LegoPower77
Abecedarian
Premium
join:2002-08-03
Arlington, VA
3 edits | reply to Noodlin
Re: Those Damn Consumers
Your analysis breaks down because of fallacy of composition: outsourcing does not affect all workers. Sure the ones who have lost their jobs are worse off (for the time being) and many here will cry them a river. But there are two overarching benefits to allowing eeevil companies to buy labor from the cheapest source.
First, the net effect is that prices are lower for everybody; in fact, you can take the surplus from gains to trade and directly compensate those who have lost their job and still come out on top.
Second, the unemployed workers are freed up to do more "useful" work. If congress had passed a law banning the automobile, not only would we be worse of for not having convenient transportation, many other industries would have a hard time finding workers because they are all still making buggy whips and horse shoes.
America may be at a disadvantage in terms of sheer number of workers, but we are at an exceptional advantage because of our technology and capital that we have working with labor—that's why our per capita output (GDP) is c. $36k when the rest of the world is lucky to make $10k (India's is $2.6k). Unfortunately, we have many forces here that make us uncompetitive, viz. tort laws, regulations, employment laws, our corporate taxes are the highest in the industrialized world (40%! can you imagine risking all but only getting to keep a little over ½ of what you make?) , not to mention a weak education system that scores relatively low compared to other countries. If we were to address these issues, we should have no problem competing with more populated countries.
[edit]
Another Williams article right on point.
[/edit]
--
"Lunches don't get free just because you don't see the prices on the menu. And economists don't get popular by reminding people of that." --Thomas Sowell | |
sherpaboy
join:2001-07-06
Seattle, WA
| I was getting pretty frustrated reading the responses to these articles. It's nice to read some rational thoughts at last.
I agree with Dr. Walter Williams to a point, but I do not believe that government intervention will help. Matter of fact, government intervention usually makes things worse.
As you have pointed out, government regulations, employment laws, corporate taxes rates are killing us more than cheap Indian workers. It's always easier to blame the foreigner then to look at yourself in the mirror.
The weak STATE FUNDED education system is just another way our invasive government is damaging our ability to thrive. Get the government out of education and just watch us improve that system without their so called help.
The following from Dr. Walter Williams....
quote:
Then there's the consumer side of things. Years ago there were loads of corner grocery and hardware stores. Because of selfish consumers, motivated only by getting something cheap and not caring about what happens to small businessmen and their employees, these stores are mostly gone. They've been replaced by huge, impersonal supermarket chains and super hardware stores like Home Depot and Lowes. Had my proposed law been on the books small grocery and hardware stores would not have gone the way of the dinosaur.
I run a small ISP. We do T1, Frame Relay, DSL, dial up, and some Co-location and Consulting. We are a very good ISP. We focus on having top notch non out-sourced customer support and very reliable service. We have almost no downtime and try to answer every call with a human during normal business hours. After hours we we can be paged and we will respond in under 20 minutes. Our base rate for our low end DSL service is $40.00 a month, Qwest and Verizon will add $18.00 to $37.00 additional dollars for the loop charge. That brings my DSL to somewhere between $58.00 and $77.00 for low end DSL. We have a small but very loyal client base who are happy to pay for the excellent service we provide. We are very efficient with our dollars and employee 4 people. Even with all that, we barely make a livable wage.
In spite of all that, most of the calls from new folks looking for service tell me my prices are way out of line and they will shop elsewhere. They will choose MSN, VOL or some other big name low cost ISP.
What is the point of all this? Primarily that people are hypocrites. They scream when they have to pay for service even when they have no clue on the cost of deployment. Then they reward big companies for being cheap by purchasing their products and services. Then they scream when those companies try and do the same thing they just did and go out and buy the cheapest service.
Even with all this, I do not want a law that requires people to buy my services, or a law that requires other big name ISP's to raise prices so that I can more easily compete.
Consumers are driving big business over seas, pure and simple. Tell me how many adds you hear today that say, "unlimited" or "cheap fairs" or "FREE". Nobody says "High Quality" or "Reliable" or "Worth the Extra Money". Why? Because nobody wants to pay for it, they always think they are smarter if they get it cheaper. | |
LegoPower77
Abecedarian
Premium
join:2002-08-03
Arlington, VA
| said by sherpaboy  :
I agree with Dr. Walter Williams to a point, but I do not believe that government intervention will help.
Well, Williams is merely trying to illustrate how absurd it is to think that government can write a law to fixed all these perceived ills. He would never seriously advocate government intervention as a means of attaining "fairness." To wit: Congressional Miracles.
Your story of your ISP operation reminds me of my landlord who bought the cheapest heat pump/AC possible and then complains that his energy bill went up. This is also the same guy who calls tech support for his cell phone just to have someone to talk to, so people like him are another reason why there is outsourcing—he is wasting resources.
--
"Lunches don't get free just because you don't see the prices on the menu. And economists don't get popular by reminding people of that." --Thomas Sowell | |
|
