Workplace safety laws such as requiring fire escapes, fire suppression, etc. incurred costs to companies, but the savings in insurance and from lawsuits has more than made up for the initial pinch, not to mention creating entire new industries which put more people to work, resulting in more revenues, resulting in the very public infrastructure upon which those companies came to rely.
Morals and economics are a good mix. How many lives and dollars are saved because clean water laws and anti dumping laws prevent diptheria and cholera?
My argument is that it is patently bad economics to protect jobs. Obviously bad economics. Always has been, always will be.
Then why are American companies rushing to protect jobs in India and China, rather than investing in the new labor saving technology that would open new doors and create new industries to fill the demand domestically?
Now there may be other reasons to do it. National security is one, stemming from the fact that the lines around political entities (nations) do not coincide with the lines around economic ones (markets) and the market may need to be distorted to protect the nation. Nothing wrong with that argument.
When you underemploy a population, you lose tax revenue to fund the military. You then must either run a huge deficit or raise taxes in the short term. People with lowered wages paying more in taxes become restless and rebellious. Bad news for all the Mme Antionette's out there. Civil war is bad for national security.
But that is a political argument, not an economic one. My beef is with the people who argue that it is better ECONOMICS to protect jobs. This is like arguing the world is flat. It has long since been settled.
Rather it is the mercantilists that protect foreign jobs on the American taxpayor's dime, and then spout economic theory, wrongly and hypocritically, as "proof" to defend the indefensable.
On the other hand, neither you nor anyone else can prove they have resulted in "more" jobs or revenues than if they did not exist. That is just dimwittedness.
Morals and economics are a good mix. How many lives and dollars are saved because clean water laws and anti dumping laws prevent diptheria and cholera?
You simply don't understand my point. Morals and economics do not "mix" at all. They are simply two comonents of a good society. And of course lives are saved by these laws, and that is a moral end, and it is neither good economics nor bad to tell a firm it must pay the costs (including criminal costs) of its product. It's just economics, which, in these cases, is also moral.
American companies are indifferent to jobs in India and China. Some are rushing to employ people in those countries because they will work cheaper. They would employ Antartic penguins if they could get them for a loer hourly rate.
They will invest in new technology when the cost of that investment is less than the labor cost. When the labor is cheaper, they will spend the money on the labor. What they save by buying the labor will go to the shareholders, who will invest it in technolgy. But you might have to think deeper than the surface to follow that thread.
When you underemploy a population, you lose tax revenue to fund the military. You then must either run a huge deficit or raise taxes in the short term. People with lowered wages paying more in taxes become restless and rebellious. Bad news for all the Mme Antionette's out there. Civil war is bad for national security.
Fortunately, economic theory is converting economies all over the world to capitalism, protectionist walls to trade are falling all over the world, "foreign jobs" are becoming available to American corporations in greater and greater numbers, and all this generates more and more wealth for Americans.
Good luck with your civil war. Man the ramparts, and all that. Maybe you should invest in a pitchfork factory. Or, better yet, just buy pitchforks from China, and spend the savings on bullets.