Re: The Limits To Growth

To: sustag-public@amani.ces.ncsu.edu
Subject: Re: The Limits To Growth
From: dlj@inforamp.net (David Lloyd-Jones)
Date: 16 Nov 1996 02:12:03 GMT
Organization: Only when necessary.
References: <JMC.96Nov13210117@Steam.stanford.edu>, <56f0mv$lk6@news.inforamp.net>, <56flsu$5omj@sat.ipp-garching.mpg.de>
Sender: london@sunsite.unc.edu

bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK ) wrote:

>David Lloyd-Jones (dlj@inforamp.net) wrote:

>: Which reminds me: if we've got a population surplus, howcome the price
>: of labour is going up _everywhere_?
>
>In the Thai toy industry, it is going down, due to competition from
>China.  At least that was the case at the end of 1994.  China has
>hundreds of millions of itinerant surplus laborers.

This word "everywhere" is a great troll for instructive exceptions,
innit?  Anyway, I stand corrected, though not on Thailand.  Toy
assemblers will just move over to the next expanding industry, and
Chinese peasants will start oving up pretty soon.

>Labor cost has also dropped significantly in both the US and UK, due to
>erosion of social protection.  At least that is true for people who
>produce things.  I don't know about the service industry, but the
>anecdotal bits I hear from the US are not inspiring of hope.

Here I stand corrected, and it's a fun example: America does not have
a population crisis in anybody's books.  The white working class,
whose incomes were dropping in real terms for the decade ending second
quarter '96, are not even breeding at replacement rates.

                                    -dlj.

References:

Re: The Limits To Growth

From: dlj@inforamp.net (David Lloyd-Jones)