generally, because someone managed to massage the
statistics to convince this particular quant man.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. If we start with the
necessity to open up cash flows, Mish has already lost
the battle.
Why, you ask?
Well, because it's like closing the gate
after the horse has bolted.
25 trillion dollars is the last
count for how much money is
being hidden in tax havens.
Governments like the UK
are speeding up the process
whereby British companies can register overseas
(in a tax haven)
and thus stop paying Corporation Tax
in the UK, even on their sales in the UK.
Boots (the pharmacy chain) is the latest.
Nick Shaxson showed how Boots just
took the boots to Osborne's bottom line
by being run from a post box in Switzerland.
Miniaturisation, anyone?
But, I always knew globalisation was a con job, when it was
introduced in Canada.I was only a kid. not even in high school.
introduced in Canada.I was only a kid. not even in high school.
They said we'd get better quality jobs. Now Canada is
as hollowed out as theempty factories dominating every major city.
Deal with that if you're a politician. The chickens have come home to roost.
All the politicians can answer with is lies.
as hollowed out as theempty factories dominating every major city.
Deal with that if you're a politician. The chickens have come home to roost.
All the politicians can answer with is lies.
and then they tell us "austerity" when they
know that banks robbed us
banks do not fund manufacturing as easily
jobs are gone to China
businesses that are making money can hide their profits
and IT'S ALL OUR FAULT.
why else would we get the bill, if it wasn't our fault.
It is actually our fault. We don't demand anything better
from democracy.
Mish shoots himself in the foot by mentioning Korea as a country which
has benefitted.
has benefitted.
Samsung is indeed ready to topple Apple, despite short-term losses.
HOWEVER, my friend, Koreans are ethnically very determined to
support their own companies, and so is the Korean government.
The Korean government protected all the now massive Korean
companies, to protect them from ....what? globalisation.
Koreans buy their products first, no matter what's in their best interest.
So, if you live in a nationalistic, ethnically "pure" country with good
home-boy politicians, then go for globalisation. Otherwise,
blow that sh*t up before it destroys your country and you have to
go back to pre-industrial financial models.
Read your Ha Joon Chang - 23 things they don't tell you about capitalism
and others of his books. They're all good, but he's not a quant. He is
another fine Korean export.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-They-About-Capitalism-ebook/dp/B0040QDMBE?oo=312
check it:
Mish's MushFair Trade is Unfair; In Praise of Cheap Labor; Are Bad Jobs at Bad Wages are Better than No Jobs at All? Are Paul Krugman and Mitt Romney On the Same Page?
Are bad jobs at bad wages better than no jobs at all? Should the US demand third world economies pay "living wages"? If so, and if countries don't oblige, should the US impose tariffs so the US does not lose jobs to such countries.
Moral Outrage Over Free Trade
This is what I think....
Moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization--of the transfer of technology and capital from high-wage to low-wage countries and the resulting growth of labor-intensive Third World exports. These critics take it as a given that anyone with a good word for this process is naive or corrupt and, in either case, a de facto agent of global capital in its oppression of workers here and abroad.
But matters are not that simple, and the moral lines are not that clear. In fact, let me make a counter-accusation: The lofty moral tone of the opponents of globalization is possible only because they have chosen not to think their position through. While fat-cat capitalists might benefit from globalization, the biggest beneficiaries are, yes, Third World workers.
Workers in those shirt and sneaker factories are, inevitably, paid very little and expected to endure terrible working conditions. I say "inevitably" because their employers are not in business for their (or their workers') health; they pay as little as possible, and that minimum is determined by the other opportunities available to workers. And these are still extremely poor countries, where living on a garbage heap is attractive compared with the alternatives.
And yet, wherever the new export industries have grown, there has been measurable improvement in the lives of ordinary people. Partly this is because a growing industry must offer a somewhat higher wage than workers could get elsewhere in order to get them to move. More importantly, however, the growth of manufacturing--and of the penumbra of other jobs that the new export sector creates--has a ripple effect throughout the economy. The pressure on the land becomes less intense, so rural wages rise; the pool of unemployed urban dwellers always anxious for work shrinks, so factories start to compete with each other for workers, and urban wages also begin to rise. Where the process has gone on long enough--say, in South Korea or Taiwan--average wages start to approach what an American teen-ager can earn at McDonald's. And eventually people are no longer eager to live on garbage dumps.
