In article , Mike Coslo
writes:

The trick is to do that without creating more poor countries.

At the present time, I doubt that is a concern.

I meant that one of the poor countries would be the USA.

And the fundamental question is: Why are countries poor in the first place,
and how do countries get rich and stay rich without exploiting other
countries?

No substitute for the Econ 101 fundamentals that W3RV posted.

Examples are what has happened to Japan. Korea is the present hot
spot, but is slowing. China is ascendant now, but the inevitible will
happen
there. Mexico is now experiencing import concerns too.

Remember NAFTA and the "giant sucking sound"? Where's Ross now?

Ahh, there was some comic relief!

Except Ross Perot was exactly right.

Consider this, too: We got 8 years of Bill Clinton in large part because Perot
split his opposition. We got Shrub in 2000 because Ralkph Nader did the same
thing to *his* opposition. And now ol' Crazy Ralphie is poised to do it again.

What happens when the cycle is complete, and the last third world
nation is brought up to modern standards will be the interesting thing.

First you have to understand why it hasn't happened yet.

There are plenty of countries yet to bring up.

The reasons it hasn't happened are things like:

- Corrupt strongman governments
- Overpopulation for the country's resources
- Cultural factors that hinder development
- Different values of the people

In the short
run, US labor has their head in the sand if they think there's something
either party (Dems or Reps) can really do to stem the shift of
manufacturing jobs overseas. The same thing is going on in Europe.

OTOH, unemployed workers can't buy the goods anyway. So what good are
lower prices?

You see, the big trick is to have all this happen without ourselves
turning into a third world country. See below.

And that trick is?

As I see it, one of the first things to do is to stabilize the stock
market. Right now it is so short term, that it will do damage to the
companies involved, and to workers. The pressure to increase profits on
the short time scales now involved makes longterm actions difficult if
not impossible.

The market is slowly but surely recovering from the boom dot bust debacle of
2000.

I don't subscribe to the Japanese lifetime employment thing, but at the

base of it, there is a valid idea. Humans desire a little stability.
Remove that stability, and a whole host of problems erupt. Employer
loyalty goes away, and when that happens, things suffer. If I know my
employer will just as soon get rid of me for .001 percent rise in their
stock, I'm not going to be willing to stay in all night to make sure the
project goes out the door on time.

That and a whole lot more. In an environment where employees jump ship a lot,
the continuity of how and why things are done is often lost and the same
mistakes are made over and over.

Note the present legislative efforts to shift workers from overtime
eligible to salaried. From the supershort term view, this makes perfect
sense. Reduction of the employees salary by mandatory unpaid overtime.
This will make for a quick jump in profits. From a longer term
perspective, it makes for a "what do we do next quarter to increase
profits" issue, it makes the job less desireable, because now the
employees are taking a wage cut, and they have it reinforced that their
empoloyer would like nothing better than to get rid of them.

Yup - and that's just one effect. Another is that tax revenue and consumer
spending drop. Efficiency drops because more mistakes are made. The really good
workers migrate to jobs that still pay decently and the employers find they are
left with those who can't go anywhere else.

And then the organized labor movement is revitalized as more and more workers
realize their only strength is in unity. This costs companies even more in the
form of strikes and restrictive contracts.

73 de Jim, N2EY