Re: But it really is nothing that sinister, imo. Labor is a resource and a cost of production. The reason capital flows to certain markets is because they can produce goods at a price that will net them a profit. When the cost of that labour is increased arbitrarily and reduces their profit margin, without increased productivity to compensate, capital will flow elsewhere where profit margins can be restored.
I just read Tamas' paper once more and.... it gave me some help in criticizing your viewpoint. Ron, the above scrap of yours is a nice piece of theoretical gobbledygook: "Labor is a resource and a cost of production"..... "capital flows to certain markets".... "produce goods at a price that will net them a profit margin" Come on, Ron, remember what you were telling me a coupla posts ago: that real-life business was all about "attitude", "respect", and other, pseudo-rational criteria.... No, a blood-and-flesh worker is NOT just another abstract unit of manpower! It's an individual with a sex, a complexion, and a social background --and I'd even add, with a mother tongue. The latter being much more important over here than you might suspect. For instance, how many FRANCOPHONE workers, in your opinion, were employed by bankrupted Leernout&Hauspie N.V.? Let me answer it for you, Ron: None. The high-tech, Nasdaq-listed firm's been spinned as a 100%-Flemish success story from day one --that is, from the day when Flemish Minister-President Luc Van den Brande travelled to NYC to sell a "promising" upstart....
So, Ron, it seems to me that, so long as it serves your ideological persuasion, you blindly stick to the "capitalist book" and talk about capitalism using abstract notions like "labor", "production cost", "bottom line", and "profit margin".
Whereas, when speaking as a "construction employer", you shift to another rationale and refer to blurred concepts like "affirmative action", "unfair competition" (from minority-owned companies), and wrong "attitudes" altogether.
However, real-life capitalism has much more to deal with the latter framework than with the former, theoretical one. For instance, Europe is currently experiencing a demographic ebbtide, hence, as you rightfully put it, less and less job seekers are entering the labor market every year. YET, since more and more youngsters, especially in Europe's larger cities, come from immigrant (read North African) families, the bulk of the workforce is increasingly made up by immigrants, that is, by European citizens with a non-European background. Now, the problem is that European employers --even in the big cities-- still complain that they can't find enough proper, suitable workers to fill their shops.... Get the picture? How can you expect a city like Antwerp (Belgium's #2 city with 730,000 inhabitants) to provide jobs to its minorities when over 33% of its constituency voted for racist Vlaams Blok?? And, as you know, the percentage is always higher in the petite bourgeoisie, that is, with Antwerp's putative employers! That's the economic deadlock Europe's currently in: it can't fill the necessary jobs with its own, native populace --even within the glitzy, high-tech sector-- but, on the other hand, it recoils from tapping its domestic immigrant pool. Hence the idea --floated by Chancellor Schroeder and other EU leaders-- of aping the US in hiring qualified workers from India, China, etc. Raising the eligibility age for retirement benefit to 70 years is their other "solution" for solving their labor market shortage --for, that way, you're sure of keeping the jobs among native workers (most of the North African immigration started in the 1960s)....
Gus. |
