In Dr. J’s excellent letter, I saw the following fragment, “The creeping doom began with wage controls during WWII…” and it got me thinking with regards to ongoing debates about immigration, unions and the global economy.

First, let’s dispell any belief that we are not in a global economy – we are in one.  Goods and services traverse borders as easy as the wind.  More and more we are seeing a move to an electronic-based (credit, in a sense) versus cash based.  The rub comes in – now that we have (more or less) freely flowing goods, services and capital – with the labor to create or deliver said goods or services for said capital.  As the global economy continues, buyers will seek the lowest reasonable cost for a particular good or service.  Laborers, organized into companies or corporations, will attempt to deliver towards that goal.  The balancing act being what discriminators – quality, capabilities, innovations, etc. – does one’s good or service provide at what cost in comparison with a competitor’s.  That is the job of the consumer.

Second, the wrench in the works is that some countries or cultures have different standards of living and care for its people.  There are cultures that exploit women and children to obtain low cost labor in order to compete in the global marketplace.  There are countries, like the United States, that provide a better standard of living, partially through the system of government and the benefits provided by American tax money.  This incentivizes immigration, both legal and illegal, to places like the United States.  Some believe that these workers fill the lower paying jobs that the current citizens view as “beneath” them (in pay and/or quality of work).  Without a “global minimum wage” that is defined by some measure of the basic needs of the individual that is enforced solidly world-wide, we aren’t going to get to the utopia that many liberals hope we’ll reach through Keysian economics and loose immigration policies.

Third, folks at AT Kearney have been doing research on globally interconnected countries (and cities) for years.  Their data shows it best – the United States remains largely economically removed from the rest of the world.  Likely through the tariffs and union protections that we have in place.  While we rank #7 overall in 2007 (the latest report published on the site) – that’s down 4 positions from 2006 and we rank 71st in global trade integration.  The major reason we’re still in the top 10 is due to our technology integration.  At some point in our future, we’re going to face the painful process of joining the rest of the world in the global economy.

I would argue that a major contributing factor that is often overlooked is generational one.  America, parts of Europe and other places, have large groups of people in the working age demographic that are lazy or lack motivation.  They have the need for instant gratification and are envious in nature.  Some cases in point: look at the Hurricane Katrina FEMA relief money expenses.  People were buying TVs, renting beachfront condos in Palm Springs, massages, diamong engagement rings.  This was taxpayer money aimed at providing relief to people who suffered a natural disaster.  One would have hoped that they’d use it for food, shelter, clothing, transportation and other basic needs.  This also brings up my point above where I stated that buyers will seek the lowest reasonable cost – that’s not always true.  Plenty of consumers in this country are too lazy or stupid to do some simple research to get that cost.  That’s fine because there’s someone in the market who is willing to take that money but it does illustrate the theory of laziness and instant gratification.

The creeping doom that started with the World War II wage controls is now the creeping doom of global economic woes.  Since I am a time-traveler, here’s a freebie for you: late this year the DOW will be down around 8,000.  If I’m wrong, blame it on Dat Ho because as I state above, hard workers are hard to find.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.