Free Lunch

Well I for one am relieved. There is no recession, well according to Pres. Bush there isnt. He is hopeful that consumer spending will drive new job creation. This, in spite of the fact that February saw the highest number of layoffs in America in 5 years. 63,000 Americans lost their jobs last month, not sure how they are going to recover those through consumer spending. While writing this article I was watching a news item on Medical Tourism, where a company is flying patients to India for medical treatment at a saving of 80% of the cost of having the treatment in the US. They compared a treatment costing $76,000 in the US and having the same treatment for $13,000 in India. Just how will this type of spending benefit US jobs ? It strikes me that the US economy is pricing itself into extinction. For years the US was seen as a place to come for bargains. Gradually as demand has increased, and as the sense of "right to" has increased, prices have risen. 5 years ago we were paying 89c per gallon, now we are approaching $3.50 per gallon. That has brought with it associated prices rises in everything that we consume. At the same time, companies are increasing margins by outsourcing jobs, not in an effort to pass on savings to consumers, but in an effort to offer more value to shareholders and to be in a position to compete for the workforce, who are demanding increasingly high salaries in order to keep up with a rising cost of living. This is not a rant against outsourcing. It is out of the box, you cannot put it back. We live with it, as certainly as we live with all of the other side-effects of driving greed. Lead in Toys, Hormones in Cattle, pesticides in crops. We blame the companies for "letting this happen" but continue to demand that we are provided with "bargains". Perhaps now we are seeing the truth of the adage that there is no such thing as a free lunch.