Dennis R Redmond writes:
> But we're not paying
> those workers First World wages. Ergo, net demand has been diminishing,
If John Q. Public is paying $100 for a pair of sneakers, and $7 of that, the average, goes to some worker in Malaysia, that leaves $93 spent in the US. Somehow that doesn't look like vanishing net demand to me.
As with somebody else's money that took refuge in the stock market, Dennis wants to have one-sided dollars, that have spenders but no recipients. There ain't no such thing.
> and real wages in America have, for most folks, been falling since 1973.
Real wages per family unit fell for part of that period -- but number of family units grew, and their size dropped. Whether anyone actually got poorer is far from clear, a fact complicated by the fact that the "real" over that period is under the cloud of very dubious inflation accounting. Over the whole 1973-98 period, income for most people is up nicely, which is why Clinton is so popular.
> It's the same story, rich getting richer, poor getting screwed, only on a
> global scale.
Nope. Wishful thinking on the part of somebody who wants things to get worse. Seven bucks for putting a pair of sneakers together is a great leap forward for the workers of Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and so on. What is happening on a global scale is simply the industrial revolution.
-dlj.