G'day Doug: Good point, this: >Remember that software sales account for a tiny share of GDP, so I'd be >careful about making too many grand conclusions from studying the industry. >Microsoft's annual sales are around $15 billion, which is pocket change in >an $8 trillion U.S. economy (and MSFT does plenty of business abroad, too). But what of the information economy in general? Y'know, the provision of data bases, electronic entertainment (from films to porn web sites to recorded music), the relatively sudden US-based control of a plethore of mint-your-own formerly public telcos (physical infrastructure, built with local labour, invariably discounted to obscene degreees for political purposes), the digitally enhanced concentration in the US of an elite of fund-managers-to-the-world, IT outsourcing by the world's governments to largely US-based companies, careering stock values based on the projected capacity to extract surplus indirectly from overseas, the digitally enhanced capacity to appropriate brain-power by way of foreign-based wage/contract workers, the great patent scandal, and the simple fact that fixed-cost information benefits entities according to their capacity to benefit (ie. their size, US companies generally being pretty big). And that's for starters! Is it appropriate to throw all this into the calculation? It does all seem to fall under the fix-your-prices-without-reference-to-inputs-and-domesticate-the-profits heading, doesn't it? And I bet it adds up handsomely. And to run a lousy current account in the context of advantages like that must take some doing. Yours in over-reaching speculation, Rob.
