The miser is roundly condemned and blamed for unemployment, changes in the business cycle, and economic depressions and recessions. Far from being harmful to society, the miser is a benefactor, increasing our buying power each time he engages in hoarding.
Source: Defending the Miser | Mises Institute
How does this argument play out in a recession or other poor economic environment suffering from an excessive underutilization of labor?
Robert Reich connects the dots on the economy, in less than 2 minutes and 15 seconds. Who knew he could draw!?!
Building Apple’s iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies.
What remains unknown, however, is whether the United States will be able to leverage tomorrow’s innovations into millions of jobs.
In the last decade, technological leaps in solar and wind energy, semiconductor fabrication and display technologies have created thousands of jobs. But while many of those industries started in America, much of the employment has occurred abroad. Companies have closed major facilities in the United States to reopen in China. By way of explanation, executives say they are competing with Apple for shareholders. If they cannot rival Apple’s growth and profit margins, they won’t survive.
Source: Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class – The New York Times
Apple is under fire for its supply chain labor, but every tech item—and thing you own—goes through the same manufacturing paces.
Source: Apple’s supply chain flap: It’s really about us | ZDNet
Is this a self-reinforcing problem? Average Americans demand cheap products because their real wages do not rise and their real wages do not rise because corporations move jobs overseas in search of lower costs in order to provide the cheap products demanded by the American consumer?
I love free software and could not have built my site without it. But free web services are not like free software. If your free software project suddenly gets popular, you gain resources: testers, developers and people willing to pitch in. If your free website takes off, you lose resources. Your time is spent firefighting and your money all goes to the nice people at Linode.