Wal-Mart names new head of online site

TalkBack 13 of 16:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

Thinking too small.

A job isn't something that HAS to provide enough to support anything. It is a trade. You get paid a certain amount based upon the value of the service you offer in return. The terms are agreed upon by all parties involved. You don't like it, you don't need to participate. From the way Walmart is doing, I think it is safe to say the trading they do is "fair".

On another point, the idea of "minimum wage" always sounded weird and illogical to me.

But anyway, economists aren't just referring to the jobs that Walmart directly creates. On that point, there is actually a pretty big loss. They are referring to the after effects. Because Walmart charges less, there is more spending money available in the economy that could be used to fund other trades. Some of those are new job positions that offset the lost jobs.

Economists actually say on the short run we do get hurt (sometimes very badly, and there is a valid argument for gov intervention to stop such drastic shocks to the economy), but on the long run everyone is better off. This is true of any change. There are many minority sectors that get wiped out, but new ones spring up because of the increase in opportunies created as an after effect by the increase in efficiency.

How many cascade effect jobs do you think were created to setup and maintain the global network? The increase in shipping and land transportation? The increase in demand for packaging of goods and so on?

Basically, think of the whole economy as a multitude of processes that work together whether they want to or not to complete a task. When you tweak a process(es) to increase the efficiency, you release some resources. Those resources could be redirected to better other processes or used to create new ones. The net effect is to increase the overall efficiency of the task. Everyone wins.

Last I checked (2003?) we are still doing good. The US was the world's leading producer of manufactured goods. Yes the diversity has reduced much since world trade picked up, but overall we been better off and are more productive. The trade we do with Canade, EU, and Mexico have increased our rate of growth.

On to China. How do you know the money we send over goes to the military? Most US companies hire independent contractors, not the Chinese gov. And what exactly is that military going to do? Attack us? The very people who are funding them and whom they invested heavily in? That is like killing off a cash cow.

Japan's value system is utterly different from the US. So is Germany's, Italy's, UK's and even Canada! Yet we are perfectly happly with trading with them. Little do we realise we viewed them similar to China today.

Posted by: doe_z   Posted on: 06/17/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More? A Few Small Changes May Dramatically Increase Your Efficiency VMware Companies have rapidly adopted server virtualization over the past few ... Download Now
• The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
• Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Infrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now