Now, after its investigation, the Commerce Department has decided that handouts of shares should count as a labour cost.
It said the location was "logistically attractive" and offered "significant labour cost savings".
At the same time, it has a big agricultural potential as well as the availability of low-cost labour.
Weighing up the advantages of immigrant labour against the cost of supplying services to migrants is not easy.
Only capital has an unrestricted right to flee - towards lowest cost labour and tax havens in space or cyberspace.
The president of the RMT union, Alex Gordon, says Mr Balls's decision to back the public sector pay freeze will cost Labour votes.
Bangladesh has one of the largest garment industries in the world, providing cheap clothing for major Western retailers which benefit from widespread low-cost labour.
The group warned Tony Blair that calling an early vote on issue could cost Labour more than 100 seats at the next general election.
In February, the North American Radiological Society, a frequent visitor to McCormick Place, fired a warning shot when it voted to alternate its future conventions between Chicago and Orlando, explaining that labour and hotels cost less in Florida.
And at this level, China works if anything in the other direction, because thanks to its low-cost labour force it can pump out goods of all kinds a lot more cheaply than just about anyone else (intriguingly, it even has the market for sex aids sewn up).
When domestic labour processing medical-insurance claims, for instance is replaced by Caribbean or Indian labour at a fraction of the cost, the hours of domestic labour are written off but the hours of foreign labour are not added back.
Wages paid are simply not the same as cost of labour to the employer.
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The biggest cost councils can control is the cost of labour.
The wedge between an employer's cost of labour and a worker's net pay is a relatively modest 79% in America and 47% in Switzerland, compared with 200% in Italy.
These comparatively high rates have been assumed as necessary from the beginning, due to the fact that the project activities must compete with high opportunities cost for labour caused by the strong presence of the informal sector.
Most businessmen were at first strongly opposed to the measure, saying that it would put up the cost of labour by 11% to make up for the four hours lost each week, squeeze productivity, prompt lay-offs and spread poverty.
You can debate the cost of Labour's "five point plan for growth", but given that a good part of it is funded through higher taxes on banks, the net impact is unlikely to be more than 1% of GDP.
The very reasons why George Bush fared so badly at the polls in 1992 namely, that the expansion started at a modest gradual pace and that labour-saving (cost-reducing) investment was an early distinguishing feature are among the leading causes of the boom's longevity.
If income is declining, which it is both because vacancy rates are rising and also because local councils are cutting the amounts they are willing to pay for care, labour is a fixed cost, then obviously rent needs to be reduced to avoid bankruptcy.
He finds it hard to differentiate between the two countries, either in the quality or the cost of their labour.
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It should be able to prune vines at about half the cost of manual labour, says Derek Morikawa, the chief executive of Vision Robotics.
The way would have been at least semi-clear for the sweeping reform of taxation, welfare and the labour market that high-cost Germany, with its unemployment rate of over 10%, badly needs.
The relevant cost comparison in labour-intensive industries is no longer between the tigers and the West, but between China and everybody else and China, with average manufacturing wages of 60 cents per hour, usually wins hands down.
As the previous Labour government found to its cost as UK forces fought on two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan, amid front pages about overstretch and an army "running hot", defence can become an explosive political issue.
Suddenly the president is talking of the high cost of French labour as a major problem, of the 57% of GDP spent by the state as excessive and wasteful, and of of the loss of sovereignty caused by hyper-debt.
It takes six times as long to obtain construction permits in Russia as in Sweden and, despite cheaper labour and land, the cost of building a distribution centre is a third more expensive than in London, according to McKinsey.
Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors had called for a referendum which the Labour group rejected on grounds of cost.
Problems have included price controls, which prevent below-cost selling, rigid labour laws and tough zoning regulations, which make it extremely difficult to build big stores.
But the realisation that the cost of east German labour and production had priced itself out of the market quickened the spiral of joblessness and emigration.
Steel contractor Hollandia, was called in to replace CBUK, but no agreement was reached on the upper limit of the cost of steel and labour to Multiplex.
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