The poor get richer

[Ben Kenobi]

You've completely missed the point. Wages are not necessarily increasing for a particular job. In some cases wages for a particular job have decreased dramatically by being moved from one labor market to another.

Yes, that's what competition is all about. They can find people who are willing to do the job for less. Those people benefit because their standard of living goes up, and so do the people who are buying the product because their prices go down. The only people who have a temporary negative are the ones who lost their job, but there is nothing stopping them from finding another. You might as well complain that autos put buggy salesmen out of business and so progress is a bad thing.

30 years ago, the person who works at the textile factory which makes your shirt you wear may have owned a house and a car and sent their kids to college. Today the person doing the same job may be working insane hours for pennies a day, no health care of any sort, and live in a shack with no plumbing...

Now, that same person has had his standard of living double because this job is available to him, that wasn't before. You make it sound like there's no real sense in doing so, when there may in fact be sound economic jobs.

What you forget, is that 150 years ago the west was in the same situation. In order to get to the point where workers are making that much, they have to industrialize. The same workers that lost their jobs are doing better one where they are competitive.

You want to say it's all good because (likely) the person who used to work at the textile factory is now in a better career, while the person who currently works in the textile factory (likely) had no livelyhood at all before.

They have a livelihood, just they probably make about twice as much as they did previously. That is why the whole system works.

That's fine, and true to some extent. What isn't fine is pretending like the income gap (or consuming gap) has magically decreased when really all that's being done is the poor are being ignored now because they don't live between the same lines on a map as the rich.

I'm not pretending the income gap is decreasing. My thought experiment assumes that inequality is increasing even as wages are increasing. I'm not sure why you think I'm denying that inequality is increasing. However, I am arguing that it doesn't matter if inequality increases, I am saying it's actually a good thing. The more inequality, the more wealth overall. They are related to each other and proportionate. The converse is also true. The less inequality, the poorer people are in general.

Increasing standard of living is good. How you do it for a specific person is not necessarily good overall though. (And there of course can be better ways than others.)

Oh, so why is it bad for the new worker to have a factory job when none were available previously?

Having compensation drastically reduced for jobs to the point that workers live in abject poverty is not a good thing in my opinion. It signifies that necessary work is not being amply rewarded, especially damning in cases where before that same work was better rewarded (and economically feasible to do so). It's a regression in standard of living for workers as a whole in that industry/job.

What regression of standard of living? The standard of living of the worker in Africa drastically improved, while the other worker in the USA now has a different job, while retaining his benefits. Why is this a bad thing? It's a necessary step for them to industrialize to get these jobs.

Globalization and free trade are good. Exploitation of workers not so much, sorry.

150 years ago we were in the same spot. But there wasn't the bs about "globalization". It's a necessary step for industrialization that they get these jobs. Then we can talk about improvements in the workers work conditions, once they are sufficiently profitable.

I was quite specific. Standard of living of the person filling a specific job.

No, you weren't. For whom has the standard of living decreased? The American has a different job, and the African has a better one.

It's good business to make things for less. Undeniable. That's not the point.

That is the point. The savings are passed onto the customer. This is how competition works. There are sound economic reasons for doing so.

You want to take a job, move it someplace else, pay the worker less than what you were paying the worker you've displace to do it, and pretend you've lowered the income gap. It's a ludicrous evaluation regardless of the economic impact of the change.

Inequality is increasing, but everyone benefits. That's what you aren't getting economics isn't a zero sum game, it is possible for everyone who is involved to come out ahead. In fact, economics even says that if you prevent businesses from making these decisions, that you will suffer in the long run. What happens when your competitor is the one who decides that it's profitable to use labour abroad and your government says that is wrong? You lose out and you go bankrupt, and the jobs for both the management and the rest of the folks leave the country.

Who said anything about it being a bad thing if someone gets a pay increase? Get a grip on reality BK.

You are the one who's saying it is bad if Africans get a better job. I'm saying it's a good thing for everyone involved.

You're mentally handicapped or something, aren't you?

You get what you put out. You insult people, I give it right back. Come off on it.

I think everyone deserves to be paid as well as what the same job would pay in the US or other wealthy nation.

Not economically feasible. You have to understand that in these countries they have much lower standard of living, so that a job like this can be a real godsend. The only way to eliminate the differences is to take away wealth. I hope you realize that you can only acheive your goal by lowering wealth, not by increasing it. Increasing wealth is always associated with increased inequality.

I understand this won't happen, but still hold it as an ideal. Globalization is a good thing, but we're only half-assed globalizing. We're sending the jobs out, but not the compensation. While this may be better than not sending the jobs out at all, it still isn't as well as we could do.

No, it's better if specialization starts to occur. Each country has different things they do better, so when two nations do what they do best and then trade with each other, there is more produced then if each of them try to do everything. The same with labour. In case you haven't noticed we have a massive labour shortage here. It's imperitive that areas with a surplus would be able to get the business just because they have available workers.

As for the compensation that will come. It's already happening, and will continue to happen. As workers and standard of living increase, then so will the conditions of workers. The thing is on an absolute standard, their living conditions have already improved, and will continue doing so.

You are the one advocating the discrepancy in compensation that people are paid for the same job based on where they happen to live

Yes, I didn't know you were against COLA. I hope you are well aware that most jobs have to pay people differently depending on where they live. Otherwise they wouldn't get people doing them at all. People who work in NYC have to be paid more because living expenses are higher. There's nothing wrong with the former, and there's nothing wrong with shipping jobs overseas, unless you believe that they shouldn't get jobs in the first place and should stay poor.

(if not nationality/ethnicity). Remember: Ignore that "mote and beam" thing Jesus talked about. Just keep making up accusations and stay away from any introspective thought. That's what good Christians do, right?

You started it with the insult. I suggest you stop if you are uncomfortable with accusations of racism. It's true. Most folks who think like you also have a problem with immigration, and want to keep jobs "in america".

[Barnabas]

You can eliminate poverty without touching income distribution

Chile until 2 decades ago was a quite poor country, nowadays, after 2 decades of economic growth, only 17% of Chileans are poor.

Income distribution has not improved, what happened is that instead of giving the poor of bigger piece of the cake, they have made the cake bigger.


edit: BTW, poverty is relative.

I imagine many poor americans own their own house, have cable tv, internet and a car. Thats not poor in my book, maybe working class.

[Ben Kenobi]

Income distribution has not improved, what happened is that instead of giving the poor of bigger piece of the cake, they have made the cake bigger.

That's exactly what you have to do.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Barnabas
You can eliminate poverty without touching income distribution

Chile until 2 decades ago was a quite poor country, nowadays, after 2 decades of economic growth, only 17% of Chileans are poor.

Income distribution has not improved, what happened is that instead of giving the poor of bigger piece of the cake, they have made the cake bigger.


edit: BTW, poverty is relative.

I imagine many poor americans own their own house, have cable tv, internet and a car. Thats not poor in my book, maybe working class.

There is a big difference between Chile and the US. In the US many efforts have been made to enlarge the pie by giving advantages to the most well off. The result has largely been only to benefit those who are wealthy and not the poor. Except as has been mentioned that some lower income groups can afford some cheap model electronics now. Still there are plenty very poor who don't have any of those.

[CrONoS]

At least I made an effort to actually see throught stats if people where poorer than before. Arguing that the very poor are more poor than 20 years ago is actually pointless if people do not want to submit data or study.

Chegitz claimed that the cost of food and housing increased faster than the rise of wage. Which made me curious if it was true.

Since I didn't had the data for the income of the lowest 20% my data are inconclusive. At least we know that the price of food didn't grew faster than the average income after tax.

[CrONoS]

And I Ben resumed my thought very well about the subject.

[CrONoS]

House (Rented & Owned) Base year 1992 = 100

Again we see that the available income after tax have grown faster than the price housing. (Now, I'll take some time to look for the data for the lowest 20%)

[Jon Miller]

How has the population increased?

JM

[CrONoS]

.. I found the data, but they are in 2002 constant dollars, and my comparison would be correct if the price would not have be adjusted.

Edit: I would be able to import the data in Stata and transform the data to reflect the income in their nominal value. Would take too much time right now.

[CrONoS]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
How has the population increased?

JM

?????