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To: gpowell who wrote (17085)	2/10/2004 3:15:59 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

I don't hear too much in the way of coherent facts from your posts either. You do what the government does- take figures such as GDP which are obviously wrong and make your case with that. Then you disregard other statistics which point in the wrong direction, such as the payroll figures. Income taxes have been declining in real terms since this recession ended. Forget what Labor's share of national income is, just look at the cold hard facts of how much money is coming in since the 00 peak. We're down about 30% if I recall correctly (between 20-30%) and we are declining every month. But corporate profits are rising!!! The problem is corporations contribute very little to the tax rolls. Not that I am for higher taxes mind you but given where we are, in absolute terms it is tough to make a case that the federal budget is BETTER off with outsourcing. Lets do this, wait until 05 and if trade policies are changed/stalled (as I suspect)- according to your theories the picture for the overall economy should decline. My position is the opposite. I think the high cost of labor in the 90s actually spurred growth through Capex expenditures which are necessary for a high priced US based workforce but completely unnecessary with dirt cheap 3rd world labor. The capex companies got rich in the 90s and then of course the workers were rich and everybody got rich. Not now, imho offshoring broke the system.

To: gpowell who wrote (17085)	2/11/2004 2:13:58 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

I am still waiting for you to present a coherent case for a lower capital efficiency producing a net gain to the US. No rational person could make this argument, it's an emotion argument not based on logic and reason. I don't think most understand the wide spread long term benefits of portions of the workforce continually being pushed out of jobs that we can no longer maintain a competitive advantage. History has proven this over and over for those who are willing to compare our relatively free market competitive system with those economies that have practiced some sort of protectionism and centralized planning. The very reason we now have a huge nation like China with such a much lower cost of labor has to do with their years of maintaining a largely closed system, which improvised 3 billion people while the countries with relatively free open competitive markets became wealthy. Yet we still get people thinking we can move in that direction, just a little, a hybrid of "free market" and managed. The problem with this suggestion is that any attempt to manage the displacement of workers means the government interferes with the one most important feed back mechanism which is price. Labor has a price like any other input and artificially supporting it results in misallocation of resources, not the least of which is human capital.