In article ,
Dave wrote:

On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 11:12:42 +1000, Peter Wiley
said:

That'll work real well. They'll move their HO and stock exchange
listing to Singapore as well. Set up an importing subsidiary in the
USA. Then what?

Yes. We will be able to add to the environmental impact statements,
paperwork reduction act statements and all the other statements a domestic
employment impact statement. Then the unions can sue the company over
whether the employment impact statement was adequate, and ask the judge to
make the company do it again before it picks up and move out of statement
land permanently.

Shrug. They set up an o/s company, sell/transfer the assets and leave a
shell behind. Then they close down the shell. Been done here in
Australia a number of times. IT jobs are going to India, for example.

Look, I'm not claiming that this is a good thing to do, I'm saying it's
a very hard thing to stop. My rule of thumb is basically not to try
something unless there's a clear objective and a reasonable chance of
success. I've found that keeps me out of most serious screwups.
Politicians never seem to learn this basic lesson. Their std response
to something they don't want to hear is 'that will never happen,
therefore we don't need to consider how to deal with that'. Followed a
short time later by '****! Why didn't somebody think of that?'. The
examples are legion across the entire political spectrum.

Manufacturing will relocate to where the labour, raw materials,
infrastructure grouping is most favourable since transport costs are
such a small component these days. Intellectual property is even
easier. I had a big argument with a political advisor some years ago
about the application of GST to software, told him it'd never work as
people would just d/l it from the net. He didn't believe me. Now
broadband is making major inroads here and it happens all the time.

Bottom line IMO - you have to have a reason for people, companies etc
to do something like stay or move. You can't just threaten them with
consequences if there's no means of forcing them to comply. You can't
load o/s stuff with tariffs in compensation for domestic costs either
unless you want everyone to do the same thing.

Would have thought California had learnt something from the power
fiasco. Maybe not, tho. Lots of people still seem to think there must
be a free lunch somewhere because they're *entitled* to it, dammit!

PDW