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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AK2004 who wrote (528365)	1/23/2004 4:47:12 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

I am trying to figure out what you are trying to say in your riposte: Fixed and Variable Costs -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Variable costs are costs that can be varied flexibly as conditions change. In the John Bates Clark model of the firm that we are studying, labor costs are the variable costs. Fixed costs are the costs of the investment goods used by the firm, on the idea that these reflect a long-term commitment that can be recovered only by wearing them out in the production of goods and services for sale. The idea here is that labor is a much more flexible resource than capital investment. People can change from one task to another flexibly (whether within the same firm or in a new job at another firm), while machinery tends to be designed for a very specific use. If it isn't used for that purpose, it can't produce anything at all. Thus, capital investment is much more of a commitment than hiring is. In the eighteen-hundreds, when John Bates Clark was writing, this was pretty clearly true. Over the past century, a) education and experience have become more important for labor, and have made labor more specialized, and b) increasing automatic control has made some machinery more flexible. So the differences between capital and labor are less than they once were, but all the same, it seems labor is still relatively more flexible than capital. It is this (relative) difference in flexibility that is expressed by the simplified distinction of long and short run. Of course, productivity and costs are inversely related, so the variable costs will change as the productivity of labor changes. william-king.www.drexel.edu It seems to me that at any given time, there is just whatever the product costs. Bulk buying is not the same as a tariff. In fact, it is not a protectionist measure at all, that I can see. Again, I am not quite following your point. The only situation, baring promotion, where you sell below price is when you have excess inventory, and it is better to unload it rather than obtain no compensation at all. Yes, if people are fitter, it would improve the results. But what about the obesity problem? I see no evidence of widespread fitness. Infant mortality is just a piece of the puzzle. Yes, it is a matter of technological development, but also of delivery systems, and also one of the things increasing the cost of care. I was not aware that the focus was flexibility of coverage, I thought it was whether we are getting improved care as costs go up. No, it is like saying that I paid the same for this 2.4 GHz, Pentium 4 computer, with 120 gigs of hard drive and 512 megs of RAM, as I did 5 years ago for a 400 MHZ, AMD computer with 11 gigs of hard drive and 128 megs of RAM. That is the meaning of bigger bang for the buck. Now, even if I pay more, I get so much more for each additional dollar that I would still come out ahead.