Welcome back!
I present here a few paragraphs on wages and benefits, an excerpt from Human Action, a work by the famed Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who is the intellectual godfather of F.A. von Hayek, among other notables. I find it especially relevant because I have been working in Haiti for the past couple of weeks, my firm having won a contract to conduct a pre-feasibility study for an industrial park in the northern part of the country, which will accommodate garment manufacturers. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
benefits,
garment,
Haiti,
Hayek,
informal sector,
remuneration,
sweatshop,
textile,
von Mises,
wages
In Iceland, where I have spent the past week, it is illegal to name your son Dweezil or River or your daughter Moon Unit or Fifi Trixabelle. The Government has long maintained a list of legal first names, all of which come from the Norse (Thorgil, Gunnar, Guðrún) or Biblical (Jón, Margret, Kristjana) traditions. There is also a list of middle names, many of which refer to places. For most of Iceland’s history, people had only one name, sometimes with a nickname (Eirik Raud, or Erik the Red) or a patronymic (Leifur Eiriksson, meaning Leif, son of Eirik). [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Bhutan,
culture,
Gross National Happiness,
Iceland,
icelandic names,
language,
liberty,
McDonald's,
pursuit of happiness,
rotten shark,
Taco Bell,
whale meat,
whaling
The business elite and the political classes are overjoyed by President Obama’s program to double U.S. exports over the next five years. John Castellani, President of the Business Roundtable, says, “”Our member CEOs have long believed that to enhance economic growth and create more and better-paying U.S. jobs, business and government must work together to put domestic and international policies in place for workers and companies to compete in the global marketplace. The President is doing just that by mobilizing the government’s resources through the creation of his Export Promotion Cabinet and by promoting closer cooperation with the private sector through the new President’s Export Council, which will be led by two of our member CEOs, Jim McNerney, President and CEO of The Boeing Company, and Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox.” [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Boeing,
Business Roundtable,
China,
currency manipulation,
EU Trade Commissioner,
Evan Bayh,
export initiative,
Obama,
President's Export Council
I arrived Saturday afternoon in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, after a week on the West Bank and a 36-hour voyage that started in Ramallah, the West Bank city that serves as the administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority, and involved eight time zones, five airports, four flights, three airlines, and two bags, which missed my connection in Sydney but arrived two days later on the Monday Air New Guinea flight. The only bright spot was when Emirates Airlines upgraded me to first class on the nine-hour Bangkok to Sydney segment, which entitled me to a private suite nearly as big as my first apartment in New York, plus as much 2000 Dom Perignon as I cared to drink.
I was in Palestine to help the Palestinian Investment Promotion Agency (PIPA) develop a new strategy and corresponding organizational structure. I am not going to talk about “the Palestinian Question” here, I promise. It’s been making people crazy for at least 3,000 years (the Arabic word for Palestine is “Philistine”), and if people as smart as Tony Blair and George Mitchell can’t come up with anything intelligent to say about it I am not even going to try. It reminds me of the old question, beloved of preadolescent Catholic schoolboys: “Sister, Sister, if God is all-powerful can he make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?” We have our answer. With respect to Israel and Palestine, He has already done so. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
economy,
fund,
Investment,
opportunity,
palestine
There is more to Pakistan than just suicide bombs. Economic growth, and its distribution, is also important, and not just because economically marginalized people have a greater propensity to join up with the terrorists. Pakistan desperately needs foreign investment to overcome persistent budget and trade deficits, but flows have been hit hard by the triple threat of political instability, redoubled terrorist activity, and the world economic crisis. In the year to July 1, foreign direct investment (FDI) fell from $5.4 billion to $3.7 billion, and even the previous year’s figure is nothing to get excited about for a country with 175 million people. Nigeria, with around 150 million people and a lower per capita GDP than Pakistan, attracted $20 billion of FDI in 2008 – true, it does have oil, which Pakistan does not – and Egypt, a slightly richer country with just over 80 million people, took in $8 billion in the year to July 2009, down from $13 billion the previous year. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Egypt,
foreign direct investment,
hoarding,
Nigeria,
Pakistan,
price control,
shortage,
subsidies,
sugar crisis
