Setanta wrote on Nov 8
th, 2013 at 11:05pm:
Vuk11 wrote on Nov 8
th, 2013 at 10:44pm:
First off when there is a skill shortage, the people with qualifications are being fought over and have large amounts of borrowing power.
What happens in a skill shortage is that we hand out 457s to artificially distort the employment market, thus keeping wages down for employers as they don't have to bid on rare resources as the market would dictate or spend the money training that they might have to otherwise. Capitalists, let the market sort it out unless it doesn't favour us, then manipulate it.
Real capitalists no, statists maybe. I'd still say let the market sort it out because the market isn't a real entity the market is every human being's actions adding together to create an equilibrium. By intervening you distort the market and upset the balance.
It's weird because there are benefit from free trade, but then people see consequences yet don't realize the consequences are still from a lack of free trade. I'll give an example see if you agree.
The peoples republic of capitalism:
In this video there is an example where a company outsourced the manufacture of it's motors to china for cheaper labor, thus providing cheaper motors for people all around the world. (benefit) Except people that were working in the US had their jobs outsourced. (consequence). But this is where the distortion comes in.
If it was a free market these employees would be free to float where there is actual demand, so if china has cheap manufacturing and the US has cheap services they could float into services and fulfill demand there. (just for arguments sake)However in the us there's regulations etc here that distort that and keep these people out of jobs they would otherwise have. Maybe they don't have the relevant licensing for other jobs, maybe they can't get unskilled worked due to some reasons.
But if you opened up the whole world with free trade everyone benefits and an equilibrium can be found. Here you have China promoting free trade, benefiting with jobs and benefiting people it exports too with cheaper goods, yet the US isn't opening up and deregulating which distorts the US.
In china people can just go from poverty in the rural areas to manual labour in the cities, yes they don't earn much compared to us here, but they come out of poverty and opportunity opens up. But look here in AUS, because of safety regulations etc you need licensing, auditing, blue cards etc (all well intentioned) that stifle peoples ability to obtain employment. It distorts the equilibrium.
"There are no solutions only trade offs" - Thomas Sowell