送交者: skipper3 于 2005-6-06, 12:56:06:
No I'm not talking "垄断" vs. "竞争占优", but the commonality between the two: profit. In a perfect competition there is no profit for anyone, while in either "垄断" or "竞争占优" there is profit. And you know profit is where the money is.
What "labor is cheap" I meant the cost of labor is low: cost of food/clothing/shelter/medicare to keep labor productivity at an acceptable level, plus present value of the cost of education to get where you are, plus the present value of wage otherwise you would have earned if you didn't go to school. I think you should understand the difference between cost of labor and price of labor. If there is no "垄断" or "竞争占优", a worker will be paid exactly the amount to cover these costs, which you can imagine, to be very low(you can forget about typical middle class life style like "one house + two cars + paid vacation etc).
I have no doubt an employer will pass some of the profit to its workers in the form of inflated wages(such as to high salary + stock options for knowledge workers), but how this is happening I don't quite understand. May be it has something to do with the sub-optimal management of the company(And to the industry).
If I remember correctly, in classic economics theory they don't discuss "price of labor" becasue the theory assumes perfect competition therefore the price of labor equals to the cost of labor, in other words there is no profit to worker or employee.
So what a knowledge worker or scientist get paid is the cost plus the profit for himself, becasue there is no perfect competition. But for lowor no shill labors, the competition is quite close to be perfect so what they get paid should be close to teh costs for food/clothing/shelter. ANd becasue of the abundancy, employer can always replace a sick worker with younger and healthy one, he does not even have to cover the medicare cost.
That's why low/no skill chinese assembly workers will never have a way out no matter how much trade takes place in a competitive and globalized world, unless there is a magic way through which their employer(and a developing country's economy) could suddenly move into a economic sector where the competition is far from being perfect(such as economies for developed nations). But it's in the best interest of the developed countries' to use every and all means to prevent this from happening, some of these means can be viewed completely justified from their own perspective but somewhat unjustified from developing countrie's perspective, such as copyright and intellectual property etc...
So there is no right or wrong or principle, only interests and the power required to defend such interests. I say China is on the right track to develop its military capability, because sooner or later it will need it and need it dearly.