dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) (09/12/86)
In article <479@aurora.UUCP> al@aurora.UUCP (Al Globus) writes: >I don't know much about business but I do know one thing: buy low, sell high. >The US has just concluded a deal with the Japanese to insure that they >sell use memory chips at high prices, and another with the Russians to >insure that they buy our wheat at low prices. No wonder we're so much in >debt. If you're accurately reporting the nature of the agreement between the US and Japan, I'm appalled but not really surprised. It follows from the same kind of theory that leads to a policy of subsidizing exports. Subsidizing exports is intended to increase the amount of a country's exports, without a corresponding increase in imports. What this means is that the total amount of work the people of the country do increases but the total amount of goods and services they get doesn't. Ie. the people are working more but not getting more. Similarly, if the government manages to reduce imports without a corresponding decrease in exports, the people do the same amount of work and get less for it. When an individual has to work more for less this is considered a misfortune, but governments pursue trade policies that tend to have this result for the country as a whole, and almost nobody seems to see anything the least bit odd about the situation. Some may see an advantage to such policies in terms of the movements of pieces of green paper, but green paper is not what counts. How well you live, and how much you have to work to live that well are the issues that really matter. The green paper is just a distraction. -- David Canzi "If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?"