Paul Krugman's takedown of Trump's economic blatherings.

[Kinser79]

(05-18-2016, 05:44 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: There's more money in services than in manufacturing. The phone companies can practically give cell phones away so long as people subscribe to the service. $60 a month for two years is $1440. Is it any wonder that they can 'give' you a cell phone? Likewise the satellite dish.

I am surprised that the cable companies aren't 'giving' us televisions, ideally so set that they could receive only one cable service. Thus one would never be able to unhook from the cable and go to an antenna, dish, or the rival cable company.

Not quite true. Services consume wealth even if they are extremely profitable. One should not consume money or even profit as wealth. Wealth is an increase in total economy on the basis of commodities. As such a cell phone service does not produce wealth, while manufacturing a cell phone does. Of the two the service is more profitable because cell phones these days are small, fast to produce and largely use a tiny amount of expensive components.

In order to buy a 60 bucks a month phone service someone has to have job making things to be able to afford that 60 bucks a month service. Furthermore it is only in the West that cell phone service is purchased that way. There is nearly universal cell phone penetration these days and the fastest growing sector is for pay-as-you go type services, both here in the US and in the third world.

As for your television suggestion, the technology is not amenable to that--or they'd do it. Not that Tee-Vee is nearly as relevant as it used to be. Internet streaming will replace it eventually except perhaps for live events. In my house hold the television is practically just for my mother to watch--I wouldn't pay for it at all if I didn't also have a really cheap internet access from it.