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I don't know of that's the cause, but it could be an interesting theory to look into. But taking job offshoring, as an example. It could be fairly straightforw
by fransje26 3y ago
I don't know of that's the cause, but it could be an interesting theory to look into.
But taking job offshoring, as an example. It could be fairly straightforward to determine how much tax revenue a car produced in, say, Germany, contributes to the economy, vs the same car imported from abroad. But where it gets complicated is that, German unemployment being low, the worker that lost his or her job to offshoring didn't turn out jobless, and by his or her work is still contributing to tax incomes. So what is the loss?
A lot of money is lost to tax havens, but the hourly productivity has also increased drastically, meaning that governments might still get more income per worker, per working hour. Governments are loosing in absolute terms, but have they lost income in relative terms?
The general feeling I have, is that a lot more money is lost to greed. As an example, we could take healthcare. It is undeniable that the average quality of healthcare has increased (for instance, looking at cancer suitability), but the cost of basic healthcare items have also, in some cases, increased disproportionately. (For instance looking at the cost of insulin in the US, or a dose of COVID vaccine, etc). So the general impression is that we are paying a lot more than before for only a slight increase in health and well-being.
And how does that apply to other trades? Construction costs have exploded, but we are not getting much better houses for it.
And therefore the general question was more: which parts of society are profiteering from forms of greed and price-gouging, how can we quantify that, and what can be done about it so that we, as a society can continue to improve on the care and the services we offer to our citizens, as opposed to accepting regression as the inevitable way forward.
- Rinzler89 3y ago* >So what is the loss?* Less bargaining Power and less wages therefore less revenue for the state and spending power for the people. Decades ago a factory worker could support a family. That's not the case anymore. Offshoring doesn't automatically result in mass unemployment.
- fransje26 3y agoLess bargaining power, that's a fact. But I'm not certain about the lesser wages. I've been looking at the inflation + CPI index in Europe [0] over the 1990-2020 period. The result is that for an equivalent €100 in 1990, you would need to earn about €200 in 2023. According to [1], the wages in Germany have not increased enough (due to the well known wage stagnation of the 2000-2008 era). But the wages in France [2] (with data over the 2000-2023 period) have. Over the 2008-2019 period, the wages in both countries were increasing at the same rate. The inflation + CPI index is not perfect, but it gives an indication of the costs changes of a "representative" consumer basket. With our sample of 2, this means that those basic costs have not increased disproportionately w.r.t. wages over the 1990-2023 time period. The pill was a bit harder to swallow for the Germans, but they also started at a higher level. But what the inflation + CPI index totally fail to take into account is the explosion of other costs that now put single-income families in great difficulties w.r.t. a few decades ago. And the mechanism behind those costs increase is the one that would be interesting to understand and analyze. [0] https://www.inflationtool.com/euro https://www.inflationtool.com/euro [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/416207/average-annual-wages-germany-y-on-y-in-euros/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/416207/average-annual-wa... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/416204/average-annual-wages-france-y-on-y-in-euros/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/416204/average-annual-wa...