RE: Midrange Jobs National Discussion

From: Mark Villa

Re: I agree with you - except for one key issue - the American cost of
living. How many monthly bills are going down?

I don't want to spend a ton of time on this discussion, because it HAS eben
beaten to death pretty well in this and other threads.  However, I would
like to point out one other thing.

An issue that gets lost during the discussion of "the global economy" is
population, and more specifically population density.  One of the primary
reasons the U.S. has such a fantastic standard of living is our relatively
low population; depending on how you measure it, we have a population
density of roughly 30 people per square mile.

Most other developed countries have higher population densities.  Europe
tends to average between 100 and 250 people per square mile (the
Scandinavian countries much lower).  Even at that slightly elevated level,
there are issues with unemployment and other social problems.  Note that I'm
not saying the US doesn't have these problems, but by most measures our
economy is doing relatively well compared to many others (otherwise why
would people want to work here in the first place?).

And some newly developing countries are much worse.  India, for example, has
a population density of nearly 1000 people per square mile.  To match that,
the US would need a population of TEN BILLION.  And obviously the standard
of living of the US would drop precipitously if that were the case; we're
already struggling with social and infrastructure problems from some 50
million illegal immigrants.  Try adding a few billion into the mix.

So to me, one of prerequisites of any country getting ready to play in the
global community is to get its own house in order regarding things like
population growth and standard of living.  Only then is it playing fair with
the rest of the world.  Wages for imported workers should be adjusted based
on the standard of living in their home economies, in much the same way that
we prevent dumping of cheap foreign goods.

To instead try to "level the playing field" by simply spreading the earned
capital of richer countries to the poorer ones without any safeguards is
sort of like telling all the rich people in America to basically pool their
money and give it to the poor.

And some people may think that's a good solution.  However, historically
socialism has never worked.

Just a thought.

Joe