by I'm not an economist, but I do try to work things out, so I was wondering how we could bring some of the industry back to the West, but then I could see there might be a problem with inflation unless we use more automaton.I bought some tee shirts the other day for two for £8, and I wondered about the low wages of the people that made them. Then I had a thought experiment: Imagine if Western companies found another country where all the clothing for the UK market could be made at a fraction of the price so that the cost of clothing came down by 50%?Now imagine that NGO's had campaigned to improve the wages of the workers in that country so that the following year the cost of all cloths shott up by 100%? Now imagine what the economists and the media would say: Inflation running at 100% in
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I bought some tee shirts the other day for two for £8, and I wondered about the low wages of the people that made them. Then I had a thought experiment: Imagine if Western companies found another country where all the clothing for the UK market could be made at a fraction of the price so that the cost of clothing came down by 50%?
Now imagine that NGO's had campaigned to improve the wages of the workers in that country so that the following year the cost of all cloths shott up by 100%? Now imagine what the economists and the media would say: Inflation running at 100% in clothing!, would scream the headlines. People would get worried about becoming poorer and how to make ends meet unless wages go up, which never seem to, and pensioners on fixed pensions would worry that their pensions might not be worth all that much in the future. And yet if the low cost producer had never been found no one would have concerned themselves over the price of clothes. I could then see how difficult it was to reverse globalisation, and also, how difficult it is for Britain to leave the EU.
Now imagine if globalisation had never occurred? Western factories would be more fully automated and there would be more skilled people, with stronger unions so wages would be higher? I wonder what our standard of living would be like. If we were poorer because we were not exploiting workers in the third world would we care as we wouldn't know any different? But there would be less immigration and houses would be far cheaper while the councils may still have been building housing estates reducing demand to buy a home, so we might have all be a lot better off. Even if it turned out we were poorer, the hourly week would have been reduced and work would have been less authoritarian. I think we would have been a lot happier.
KV.
“I have near zero optimism because I think it is going to be very messy,” warned one UK minister, speaking to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity. The prospects of getting an agreement are slim, the minister said. “If we crash out without a deal, it’s going to be a historic catastrophe."
