up with PyGUI!

[Steve Holden]

Alex Martelli wrote:
[...]
> Basically, easily transportable/tradable goods and services tend to have
> more similar prices across different economies -- not considering
> absurdly high and punitive tariffs that distort things (generally
> raising the prices of clothing here, of cameras in India, etc), a shirt
> or a camera should cost the same here and there.  Goods and most
> particularly services that _aren't_ easily transportable and tradable
> are quite a different story; my barber charges me ten times as much as a
> Mumbai barber would, taking advantage of the cost and inconvenience it
> would be for me to have my head sent to Mumbai for hairstyling...:-).
> 
In actual fact what tends to happen is that manufacturers in the wealthy 
countries outsource their production to the developing economies and 
continue to charge inflated prices in international markets. This is 
why, for example, Nike are able to charge $125 in the US for a pair of 
trainers that cost them $6 to make under sweatshop conditions in 
Malaysia and similarly developing countries.

This is, of course, appreciated by the stockholders in the 
multinationals, who see huge profits with greatly-reduced obligations to 
support the people who provide the labor.

Microsoft have, if rumor is to be believed, even gone so far as to 
outsource their HR department, surely the ultimate irony.

Much of my information on this comes from "No Logo" by Naomi Klein (see 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312421435/102-9401572-5848961?v=glance), 
and I blogged about this in relation to software production in "How Much 
Profit is enough?" in 
(http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=5870

with a mixed reaction of responses.
[...]
> 
> Personally, I think there will be _some_ modest reduction of
> differences, and movements back and forth, if legal barriers can be
> lowered a bit (I don't consider that lowering a certainty), but, judging
> from these historical examples, I don't think it will reduce diffences
> by ALL that much...
> 
My own personal history involved growing up in the 1950's in a city with 
a large immigrant population, mostly from Pakistan and the West Indies, 
who had responded to advertising placed in their local papers by 
Bradford City employers: the economy was booming, and the indigenous 
population could earn far better money than was offered by the jobs the 
immigrants took, frequently working in mills or on the buses.

Of course twenty years later the booming textile economy had been 
overtaken by the globalization that was inevitable. As is currently 
happening in the USA, much of the foreign expansion of competitive 
economies was fueled by British capital migrating to countries with a 
lower cost of labor, resulting in higher return on capital employed.

Of course the response of (some of) the Bradford population was to 
complain along the lines of "they come here and take our jobs", quite 
happily ignoring that immigrants had been almost begged to take the 
lower-paid jobs that were going begging. Of course by the time the 
industry that provided those jobs had faded away the immigrants were in 
a much better position to compete across the board for employment, and 
were frequently better-motivated (being the sort of people who were 
prepared, like myself, to relocate across the globe) to compete for the 
remaining jobs.

The racist British National Party found this an ideal situation to 
attempt to exploit, with famous consequences in certain hotbeds of 
racism. Overall, I am happy to say, the British population seems to 
reject such racism as nonsensical.

The laughable thing is that, in general,  the American population is 
delighted to support outsourcing as long as it leads to a lower cost of 
capital acquisition. It's only when the inevitable consequences (chief 
among which is a less-globally-competitive American economy) that they 
start to whinge and moan.

I think it's to Bush's discredit that the pretends to support a 
globalized economy while still attempting to promote protectionism, and 
it's to Kerry's discredit that he promotes protectionism by suggesting 
tax incentives for companies that don't outsource.

People vote with their wallets, unfortunately without a sufficient 
appreciation for the long-term consequences. But then that's the way 
they reproduce too, so we shouldn't expect too much of a fundamentally 
flawed lifeform. In two hundred years we will have drowned in our own shit!

regards
  Steve