[Dat Mon]

YOU SAID...."Comparative advantage is an obsolete concept in a world where the factors of production can move across national borders."

Thanks for responding to my questions and engaging the topic.

Its an interesting question to me. It seems to me that if we are going to be moving post haste down an economic road, in accordance with a global or macro economic model, that we ought to understand just where we are going, and what metrics we will use along the way to measure our success.

Now these other two talk capitalism, but apparently don't have a clue beyond just reciting ideology they may have read in a novel.

Hey guys, if you don't know...just say so...its cool!

[TopQuark]

if you don't know...just say so...its cool!

I'll certainly do so if this is indeed the case. But what does your remark have to do with mine?

Nothing works better than capitalism in providing and distributing private goods. This does not mean that public goods -- such as national safety, culture, etc --- are to be provided by the markets. Markets are actually terrible in providing public goods, and government intervention is both warranted and unavoidable.

It follows that I am against data bases with our citizens' data being off-shored to India and other such things, including the recent attempt to monopolize our ports by a very unstable, if not untrustworthy, country. Now, job protection is something else altogether. When one argue for socialist measures such as that, one actually favors a small group of Americans over the rest. This is neither fair nor smart.

Even more specifically, H1 visas have nothing to do with the issues, and I wish people would stop whining about it. It allows universities, for instance, to hire the best people in the world to teach our kids. Yes, you can find some third-rate American with a Ph.D. from some third-rate school who would take that job, but why do that? why not let our kids be taught be the absolute best we can find?

Most people on this board, in contrast, whine about programming jobs. They want us, Americans, to continue paying them 150,000/year and up they were making in 1990s. Now, what is that you were saying about capitalism?

[indthkr]

"It seems to me that if we are going to be moving post haste down an economic road, in accordance with a global or macro economic model, that we ought to understand just where we are going, and what metrics we will use along the way to measure our success."

A very good question.

Unfortunately the folks who have their hands on the controls are either completely corrupt, or alternately, as far as informed decision making goes, not unlike a group of 3-year olds with a pack of matches in one hand, and a jar of napalm in the other.