Didn’t tariffs cause the Great Depression?
If people prefer to buy Chinese goods at Walmart, why is that Rush’s fault?
Rush has been married four times. That alone makes him a hypocrite in the eyes of many conservatives.
Perhaps you undervalue the burdens placed on private corporations by countless government alphabet agencies.
What is the US Corporate Tax Rate? 35 or 40 %
Well there is free trade and free-for-all trade.
Free trade is what nations on roughly equal footing engage in because we both can mutually benefit from it.
What we have with China is the later. We buy everything from them, and they have all of our manufacturing capacity, so why would they need to buy anything from us?
Reeling that back too fast will wreck the U.S. economy completely, unfortunately.
I don’t think it’s hypocritical at all. In fact, the two issues you insinuate that make it hypocritical are remotely comparable.
Free Market Capitalism on a global scale that sees China’s economy outpace and grow bigger than ours? Fine. China is winning. Why? Because the American economy is in such a slump for so long. Why? Because of our over regulated and tax burdenning business environment. China is just the first to catch us. If the business climate in America were better and the economy at a normal rate of growth, the Chicoms would have never caught us.
There is truth the the fact that China’s boom is in part due to, or at least aided by, America’s business flight to more business friendly shores. But we owe President Obama the thanks for this.
China is surpassing us because we have hobbled our own industry with high taxes and regulations and more regulations so that they are uncompetitive in the world unless they change tax jurisdictions. Our own economy is stuck in a sputtering idle because of that. We could zoom past China at a rate they could not again catch just by eliminating the business taxes and the regulatory agencies and laws. All of them beyond simple truth-in-advertising, but that is actually a matter of “weights and measures” which is in the Constitution-Article 1, section 8, clause 5.
Because I have nothing intelligent to say but I do find intelligent comments here on this site all I can say is.......Ping.
I agree with you. Limbaugh in his early days drank GALLONS of the Bush/RINO/GOP-e Koolaide and vomited it all over his radio show.
Not accurate. We currently have the highest GDP per individual country. But, sure Rush is a NAFTA, GATT, etc supporter. Though part of those trade deals have caused even more illegal immigration problems and further wage arbitrage toward US wages and salaries.
I don’t think Rush is faulting the ChiComs for having a strong economy - that is only fair under capitalism (but please note the irony of China being a communist dictatorship with the fastest growing number of millionaires in the world - a fact that is hopefully making Marx spin in his grave at Highgate Cemetery in London.)
I believe Rush is lamenting that this do-nothing, know-nothing Administration has done nothing to stimulate our economy and everything to hamstring it, through the avalanche of regulations, massive federal spending on welfare programs and increased taxation schemes like Obamacare. China is eating our lunch because they become more capitalist as we become more socialist.
In addition, we must note that China has been ripping us off through industrial espionage, computer hacking and reverse engineering our technology with no respect for intellectual property rights - and Obama does nothing.
That’s why Rush is mad - he’s no hypocrite.
Reporting economic truth through facts has everything to do with economics. It has nothing to do with hypocrisy.
It has driven non-entrepreneurs and non-salesmen to the Public sector to earn a wage they can actually subsist on. Teaching pays more than most Science jobs nowadays. Blame the union all you want, but it's primarily that way because you can't outsource a classroom of children - yet.
The only thing stopping the outsourcing of American job was the kind of tariffs and levies the Founding Fathers always used to protect American interests. That's gone now, because the Chamber of Commerce types swear by Milton Friedman and despise Adam Smith. Economic Patriotism is “Socialism” if you ask them. “Start your own damn business or shut up,” is the attitude. Then try actually starting a new business when the Chamber businesses are gods to the Legislative bodies. Good luck.
Make no mistake about it. When we talk about the “Global Economy,” we talk about reaching new markets and new investments. The Free Traders are talking about ten-cent an hour labor in Third-World countries without consequence. Free Trade has widened the wealth gap and destroyed the market for the American worker.
Rush did not line up behind The Lil’ General to kill-off NAFTA when we had the chance, and he has some long-time listeners who will never forget that.
/johnny
Called it what you will, but what is happening between the US and China isn’t free trade. Nothing free about it.
Am I the only one that sees it this way?
The United State is supposed to be the great nation of the free so was Rush griping because the ChiComs were doing well or was he saying that the leader ship of the U.S were holding it back?
I would suggest it was the latter, but since there is no explanation how are we to know..
Off shoring is the result of the lack of free trade, so your premise is bogus, ergo your conclusion is flawed. If Trade is actually free and both parties are treated theby the same standard at both ends, then off shoring is not necessary.
“Am I the only one that sees it this way?”
Probably so...
14 years ago our economy by the same measure was 3X China’s.
Our country has been in decline for a number of decades. When you look to correlate other measures of growth with this decline, what you also find is a decline in the birth rates.
This is not specific to the US alone.
It is happening throughout all of the modern western liberal democracies.
This is why investors look to emerging markets now for growth.
Lastly, it has nothing to do with free trade. The trade aspect (imbalances) is a symptom and not the cause of the disease.
To simplify the problem to it’s basic understandable form, you can state it by saying that all the western democracies gave up growth in favor of bigger governments to support welfare states. They also, at the same time, and as a result of the welfare states they created, have been resting comfortably on the efforts made by generations now dead and gone, and have done nothing for themselves.
In other words, they are spending their inheritances like drunken sailors and will soon realize that they have awoken from their stupor in the gutter.
Again.....this has nothing to do with fair or free trade.