Hmm OT & all but what the hell.

Chuck you're only too happy to see the free market at work when your
local marina has to reduce prices in response to the new bloke down the
bay, so why the difference???

It's about loyalty and community.

Typical example:

Gould's widget company has produced high quality aluminum widgets in the US for
50 years. We employ 10,000 US workers, in 5 regional plants. The biggest market
for our product is in the US, and we are located here because the laws of the
United States favor and support organizing corporations. The physical,
political and economic infrastructure of the US has allowed us to prosper and
grow to be the 3rd biggest aluminum widget company in the world.

Profits are $100mm a year. As CEO, the board of directors pays me $35mm in
salary, and the remaining $65mm is distributed to shareholders as dividends.
(oh, btw, I'm the largest shareholder).

Unfortunately, the market has matured for widgets. The industry has peaked, and
analysts all conclude that the future market for aluminum widgets will be
smaller than the current.

We may have to cut prices in order to compete.

How do we accomplish this?
We certainly won't start with the CEO salary. Good grief, how's a guy supposed
to get by on much less than $3mm a month? We don't dare cut dividends, that
will reduce the stock price, and who's going to be the biggest loser in that
scenario? (The biggest stockholder, of course)

With payroll taxes and fringe benefits, the average cost for each of the 10,000
workers is $40,000 a year. (Rookies get far less, supervisors far more, but
that's the average). My largest annual expense? Payroll. $400mm.

In the midst of the economic quandry, an opportunity arises. We can move the
widget plants to Guatemala. The government of Guatemala will build us a
factory, for free. We will pay no taxes for
the first 10 years. The workforce is a problem; it is not as technically
sophisticated nor as educated as US workers. We will need to hire 15,000
Guatemaleans to produce the same output
we achieved with 10,000 Americans.

The Guatemalean workers will cost $7000 US apiece every year. Payroll shrinks
from
$400mm to $105mm. The workers laid off in the US become the taxpayers' problem
to support with unemployment benefits, welfare, vocational retraining, etc.
(Yes, I did pay a tiny portion of the total taxes used to alleviate the
distress of the unemployed workers)

The shrinking market for widgets forces us to reduce prices to a point where,
had we remained in the US, profits would have fallen from $100mm a year to only
$75mm.
However, by removing the manufacturing operation to Guatemala and saving $295mm
a year in payroll, profits actually increase to $370mm! The largest
stockholders (the folks on the board of directors) are ecstatic. They raise my
salary to $100mm, and dividends are several times what they had ever been in
the past. The stock price is whoring, er, I mean, soaring.

What am I going to do with all the extra money? I can't possibly begin to spend
it all, so maybe I'll do what the conservative economists predict and invest in
yet another industry.

(One thing for sure, I won't invest it in any industry in the US. I've already
learned that it's cheaper to pay a worker a few hundred a month than a few
thousand.)

It's about loyalty and community.

But I don't expect most people to agree.
In real life, (where I don't run a widget company), I have come to believe that
it isn't always all about money all the time.
You have to watch out for us crazy-assed liberals. :-)