You asked where the TVs were being made, a least some picture tubes are in Marion, IN.

I suspect we'll see more mfg go abroad as well. Interesting though, how things work, since RCA is (or was until this China deal) a French company (Thomson). Funny how this job shifting stuff works out.

It might have been sophistry had I relied on the direct French (to let do)translation for laissez-faire, but as we are discussing the economy, the definition is that a government has a role to setting the rules---a system of law establishing and defining contract and property rights, ensure for national defense, and provide certain goods the private sector can or would not provide. Immigration is not part of the equation of this.


Immigration is just that. Immigration. Either you are a citizen or you are not. It is because of the lack of immigration controls we ended up with 9/11. Certain rules and laws were set up specifically for this, and that certainly
does not reflect a laissez-faire economy to me as it creates government inteference when market forces should be in play, right? Would you not agree that these visa laws are contrary to market forces given it was government forces that brought them into play?

Now for your questions. Minimum wage? I believe it is the useless thing I have ever seen. If you favor the concept, there are so many ways around it, it boggles the mind.
Elimination or reduction of safety rules? Everything comes with a cost to it. If a foreign firm does not practice such, then the cost should be attached to their imported product. I do feel there are some rules are a bit over the top though, and are very costly. Moderation is needed.
The same applies for pollution controls. I have heard enough of junk science, but we do have a responsibility to protect our people. The same applies to foreign firms, if they do not practice it, the cost should be attached to their product, otherwise, we are hypocrites to permit other human beings suffer in their own countries for their leaders short-sightedness.

Do other foreign companies pay corporate income taxes? I have never been in favor of income taxes, rather consumption taxes. I shall never see that in our lifetime.

Government should work in concert with businesses, these days you are prohibited from doing things with your own property and that is not just with businesses, it is with personal property. Mineral rights for one thing. I could go on

It was an example about their education system, and the issue that because of numbers that makes a difference is an exercise in futility being that they have more than three times our population.
I have seen many of these workers in action, and that the companies generally hire three of four to replace every U. S. worker.
They are then trained by the displaced U.S. workers, and work many hours and I have seen production projects that they have worked on blow up in production and have to be pulled from production.
This has been my observation and I have seen these people in action in three different companies.
Now there are some people who have seen different results, but I have never seen it and many managers I know would not use them.
That does not mean that I have not met talented IT professionals from India, but they are far and few between, which is why they come in swarms.



That is true, and it is the people who are left behind who have to clean up their mess and scramble and work many hours to fix the problems. Of course, when you are an exempt employee, that could be many hours and that diminishes their productivity.
As you know, the cost of poor IT planning, lack thereof of products going out into the marketplace don't often hit until the lawsuits fly in and the company loses them because of neglience.
I never cared for either Outback or Ruth's Crisp, both were on the same level as far as I am concerned. Ruth's was overpriced for what they provide, and Outback is just another steak house.
It goes back to the old story you go to high class restaraunts to be insulted....



Sure it does. Laissez-faire economy does not cover immigration policies, so you extend the definition of the term. As for cutting benefits to U.S. citizens who are employed, many companies are already doing that.



A redistributive bias that would violate your lassiez-faire definition, right? Perhaps I am confused with your views on this topic, and you could explain this.
The problem is that no one is looking at the long run because of the view that in the long run we are all dead. We have a lot of short sighted folks that don't observe the trends, and as a country we shall pay for it as our economic power diminishes this century.

I honestly wasn't aware of that. (I was 13 in 1982, and not living in that region). Still it seems from the thrust of that one article, that what was done begrudgingly is now being done rather willingly. Also note that the article supports my points about innovation and design taking place in this country and how an workers in industries that have moved abroad (particularly textiles in this case) have moved on to new jobs, often at higher salaries than before.

Immigration/foreign worker policies are inherently economic policies. A true laissez-faire immigration policy would be to allow for companies to hire as many workers as they wanted from whatever country they wanted to hire them. The onlyr restrictions on enterying the country would be national security (in a narrow sense of terrorism, espionage, etc). Thus the existence of the H1-B, and L-1 visa programs are actually limits on immigration, and as such interfere with the marketplace. You apparently favor increasing those restrictions, thus I claim you aren't favoring laissez-faire in this case. Nothing wrong with being anti-lassez-faire in and of itself, I just want to know where you stand. By limiting access to foreign workers, the government is shrinking the available supply of labor, which has the effect of raising the price of labor, which would tend to have the effect of raising real prices and reducing output. Thus we have fewer goods available to the public, at a higher price. Thus the cost of the higher pay is spread out over the entire economy. We've effectively redistributed wealth from everybody else, to those who benefit from the lack of guest workers.



Minimum wage has been fairly useless in recent times, because it's really not high enough to induce many people to take jobs at that rate. Certainly during the late 90s, it wasn't much in play, since you could make more than that flipping burgers, and all those places were hiring. There is a tradeoff involved at the minimum wage, fewer jobs are created, but those that are, pay that minimum (and at 5.15 per hour, that's less than 11,000 per year). So long as the government provides assistence to those displaced by the minimum wage (and at that level to people living on it) I don't have much of a problem. I can't remember the exact papers, but there is evidence that the minimum wage works as a floor that helps prop all wages up.

Of course your anti-guest worker position, is effectively introducing a minimum wage for those in the affected sectors. A higher wage is obtained through restriction of the labor supply in either case.



Okay, this is the sort of thing I wanted to get to. It's what I figured your formulation of fair trade was, but I didn't want to assume facts not in evidence. In and of itself, it seems reasonable, and frankly to some extent I would go for this, but there are problems. 1. Determining the size of the penalty/tariff. How do we determine the cost of the lack of safety/pollution regulations? Markets are good for determining prices, but we've taken the market out of the equation. Set the target too low, and the foreign oligarchs will continue to abuse their populace, because the cost of the tariff is less than the cost of not doing the damage. Set the target too high, and you will cause the foreign nation will underproduce, and US firms will realize a windfall in the form of higher prices. 2. The justice of the issue, you are asking US consumers to pay the increased price of goods to protect foreign workers. 3. Under those policies we'd need to be ready to take a hit when Europe asks us to maintain its standards.

I honestly don't know what the tax policies of our many trading partners.

Consumptions taxes are a good idea provided they aren't regressive in nature. Americans on average spend almost all their income (the net savings rate is near zero), a consumption tax might help to stimulate savings (which would have a short term negative impact on GDP), but unless it was progressive in structure or was combined with some form of wealth tax (tax on assets, not income), it would lead to the rich (who do save) accumulating even more wealth.




So should the government be able to restrict who I hire to man my property in a production process?

Ultimately, I think this - A market based system, with its attendant characteristics and problems is the best way to create wealth. Because of that I think we should have as few distortions as possible to the workings of the market. But, I recognize that markets are imperfect. They naturally create winners and losers, and since the property rights and protections that allow the winners to win derive from society, then society has the responsibility to look out for the losers. Of course what makes markets so innovative is the innovation and efficiency that competition inspire, thus all attempts to lessen competion should be avoided.