| Topic Name: |
Krakow, Poland |
| Message Name: |
absolute advantage |
| Date Posted: |
03/08/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
I guess I agreed with the other other poster insofar as comparative advantage helps all parties involved (generally speaking, of course). Sending jobs to India is not comparative advantage, even though it's mistakenly called that. Labor arbitrage comes from absolute advantage, which is what Hewitt and other major corporations participate in. I agree with you regarding the speed of transition. And, I also agree that tax law has been abused to encourage US employers to move jobs overseas. So has immigration law. It is a free-for-all right now, and the commom good is taking a back seat to quarterly earnings targets. |
| Message: |
Please tell me how India has an "absolute advantage" over the United States of America. Please. Do you know how silly that sounds? The economy isn't simply made up of call center and programming jobs. If we want to talk about those two things specifically, then maybe India does have an absolute advantage. You need to think much more broadly than that.
As long as you want to talk principles of economics, let's examine opportunity cost. If you get fired because an Indian took your job, that might be a blessing in disguise. How do you know you won't find something more productive and profitable than that call center job? While you were wasting away answering phones, you could have been a much more productive member of the American economy - that benefits you and all the rest of us.
Protectionism simply benefits the producers (read: owners of large corporations) that you self-imposed proletariat types abhor. Free trade benefits consumers like you and me.
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