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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: kodiak_bull who wrote (22566)12/6/2004 10:32:28 PM
From: bull_derrick  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 23153
 
Kodiak, I thought your comment about the Swiss was funny. Near as I can figure, they all live off of the unclaimed bank accounts. They just about ran out of Hitler's accounts when Saddam got captured and now they've got some of Arafat's too. LOL.

On the WalMart example, let's say a very simplistic example that WMT only stocks one item and they can buy it from China for a buck and sell it for five bucks.

A consumer comes in and buys one and leaves the store. Assume WMT with its gee-whiz technology wires the $1 payment to the Chinese vendor on the same day.

Before the transaction, there was 5 bucks. After the transaction, WMT holds 4 bucks and the Chinese manufacturer holds 1 buck. From Sam Walton's perspective, he's got four more bucks than the day before and wealthier. From a total society's perspective, there were 5 bucks of wealth before the transaction and 5 bucks of wealth after the transaction.

Going back to the Chinese factory, say it took 10 cents of labor, 20 cents of material and 20 cents of overhead (50 cents total) to make the item in question. Product costs 50 cents but the finished good was worth 1 buck. Thus, the factory produced an extra 50 cents in extra wealth for China. The Chinese economy contributes 50 cents in wealth but receives a dollar in cash to circulate among its economy.

You raise a good point about logistics firms. I'm going to think about that.