[lbo-talk] Roach: Productivity in the New Economy

[Brad DeLong]

>michael wrote:
>
>>Suppose Nike pays some you girls $3 to make a pair of shoes and 
>>sells them for
>>$150,  what does that do to productivity?  Or course, if they hide proits for
>>tax purposes and pretend that the imported shoes were worth $125, then
>>outsourcing will not improve productivity.
>
>But there are also expensive inputs for distribution and marketing. 
>Nike's profits are not extraordinarily high.
>
>Doug

Aren't you supposed to be the one saying that *all* of Nike's 
marketing expenses and *most* of its distribution expenses are, from 
a social welfare point of view, a complete waste? That the sports 
stars in the commercials, the TV executives, the camera operators, 
the script writers, et cetera, should be doing something productive 
with their time like Serving the People rather than doing "marketing" 
for Nike?

Just because Nike's profits are healthy rather than enormous doesn't 
mean that the parasitic capitalist superstructure isn't robbing 
third-world workers and first-world consumers blind...


:-)
-- 

Yours,

Brad DeLong