On the Globalized Economy and Wealth

Today, the outstanding blog Carpe Diem points us to a cool online tool that tells you just where you rank on the planet in terms of wealth.

A single American living at the poverty level of $10,294 annual income (in 2006) would be in the top richest 13.25% people in the world.

An American worker earning the minimum wage of $6.55 (July 2008) would be in the top richest 12.64% people in the world.

The tool for doing these calculations is called the Global Rich List. Try it out. My annual income makes me a plutocrat in global terms.

Now that companies can move their operations to so many other places, places like China and India and now that those countries are moving away from socialist idiocies, we, dear reader, have to compete with those people for jobs. Those people to whom $12,000 a year represents a huge raise. That's why wages are stagnant. Wages won't rise in the developed world until India and China are close to parity with us.

If we institute the kinds of economic constraints suggested by the Global Warming crowd, I can't see how that is going to happen. Development takes consumption of resources. All this talk about cap and trade, if instituted globally, amounts to a clamp on development and therefore on wages. Wage differentials like this lead to a loss of jobs.

If we wait a little while, we may all end up living in the Ruins of Detroit.