While I get your point, you again choose a terrible example! What most don't get is that labor is NOT the primary input into a big mac! There are marketing costs, the cost of the building and land, the overhead, the ingredient costs, etc, etc.

While the Big Mac would be more expensive, it would be proportionate to the input costs, not 7 times the current cost. Did land costs go up? Nope. Did it cost more to market? Probably not. Do franchise fees paid to McDonald's increase? Not by much. Only the labor inputs increase. So maybe it doubles. Maybe.

Meanwhile the customer base is making double the income, so it's a wash.

I'm not for anything like that. But some of you guys seem to relish the thought...

I am a fan of you Professor Willams, but you picked a bad example to use. In this case, low wages due to Samoa's isolated location and lack of demand for labor there meant that they saw an opportunity and were using inferior technology (highly labor intensive) instead of modernizing the operation. Moving to GA provided 200 higher paying jobs using higher tech equipment. This frees up 1800 people for a higher and better use (operating machines to do the work) at higher wages because they are MORE PRODUCTIVE. Only the isolation of Samoa causes them to remain unemployed.

It's long been shown that excess unskilled labor supply and low cost of labor causes us to fall behind in technology, as we use man-power rather than...