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To: Jim Cane
I don't doubt many of these are good laws, but they are good because they prevent firms from externalizing their costs and they protect people. They can be good morally while compromising economics.

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.

146 posted on 12/19/2003 11:36:14 AM PST by Taliesan
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To: Taliesan
Fortunately, economic theory is converting economies all over the world to capitalism, protectionist walls to trade are falling all over the world

Except, it seems, in the countries we are sending our manufacturing, engineering, and IT jobs to, who seem to delight in protectionism and currency manipulation. But lets not confuse the free traitors with any real-world evidence that contradicts their pop-up book theories of economics or distracts them from their circle jerk over copies of "Atlas Shrugged".

167 posted on 12/19/2003 5:41:51 PM PST by RogueIsland
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To: Taliesan
Unfortunately, you are quite mistaken about what China and India are 'converting' into. They are statist, and remain statist. They may warp from communist to fascist, but either way, that doesn't make them less of a threat. Their populations are not going to be our pals. Quite the contrary. They would gladly war against the U.S. after the degree of nationalist hatred pointed our way by their...and 'our' media.
262 posted on 12/21/2003 6:00:50 AM PST by Paul Ross (Reform Islam Now! -- Nuke Mecca!)
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