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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (197188)	8/14/2006 3:46:26 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"Oh, if that's your point, you're spot on. Basically, you mean petro states just create a local population accustomed to welfare. The local population doesn't value a hard day's work; rather, they value having someone else do a hard day's work and taking the profit." No, that's not my point at all. You're putting the issue into morality terms as if economics were a parable about ants and grasshoppers. ???? What in my sentence above has anything to do with morality? I think I'm discussing economics, not morals. But I get your point - there are few industries that are more attractive than oil in the petro states. If a local in a petro state wants to start a business, he should do something involving oil production, or just resale of luxury goods to the oil millionaires, he won't grow dates. That's basically it, right? The reason the locals cannot possibly make cars (or chips or anything else) is because their wages (as computed in the exchange rates) are too high to be competitive. What they actually do is import labor from India, Pakistan, Philippines, China at world market rates ($300/month), and develop local business with imported cheap labor. My point was that the local population doesn't value hard work themselves (an economic point, nothing to do with morality); rather they import cheap labor, have them do the "hard work" and take the resultant profits. So although the cost of labor in petro states is not as low as China (perhaps $100 per month), it is plenty low enough to attract lots of labor intensive business (tourism, retail, transportation, etc.), but the workers are not the local populations, they are imported from places like China, because $300 per month in a petro state is a lot better than $100 month in China for those Chinese that are able to find the petro state job.