Posted on 01/06/2008 1:03:48 PM PST by null and void
Gentlemen, have you not learned by now that we should insulate our poor, one-dimensional, talentless and imbecilic manufacturing-laborers from competition? So what if 350 million American consumers are hurt everytime we coddle some special-interest labor group. Those people are entitled to those jobs! Do you hear me?...entitled! Moreover, they are entitled to jobs that pay well above the actual market-value of their labor...with benefits too! How can this not be obvious!?!
And don’t even get me started about how this ties into national security. Why, our government has absolutely no clue that they are tipping off the Chinese (and everyone else for that matter) about our most intimate and secret weapons-technologies. Why, one day we’re going to wake up and find that we can’t even produce a missile without some foreign country taking control of it -in mid air- by a secret remote control device they’ve created. How can you not see?!?!
Ok, I’m sarcasmed out...gotta go.
I think the point you are missing is that the policies put in place by the US goverment are protectionist TO FOREIGN companies.
IOW, OUR laws protect THEIR industries NOT OUR OWN!
If that is the case, what is the current inflation rate and is it higher or lower than has historically been the case?
Competition is great, providing that it is fair, and providing that the products are apples for apples. Increasing the choices to consumers by financing the war machine of our enemies is as ludicrous as it comes.
With respect, what in the Hell are you talking about?
Inflation has pretty much been uniformly positive since the 1930s.
Using non-inflation adjusted dollars will ultimately put us all in the top tax bracket.
This is why I am confedent that I will get back every single penny I have put into Social “Security” in the past 4 decades.
Of course, by then a hamburger might cost $1999.99, still, I’ll get every penny...
Where do you draw the line?
Is there anything that’s not for sale to the least expensive supplier?
Marxism can never be “built into free trade”. Free trade involves private individuals (with property rights) selling their land and/or labor and/or capital...freely. Free trade will not REINFORCE communism. Quite the opposite. It will serve to tear it down. Marx had it backwards. Individual rights and free-markets will highlight the great internal contradictions of communism.
“The morally shameful I-don’t-care-about-you-because-I’ve-got-mine mentality exhibited by Congress and this administration is a national disgrace.”
True words. I’m sorry in advance for the beating you’re going to take.
Inflation has pretty much been uniformly positive since the 1930s.
Would it have been better if it was negative?
It's been surprisingly mild.
Are FReepers losing their touch?
So we need the government to step in and decide what's fair then?
No one is denying the real economic costs involved, nor is it entirely a matter of corporate greed, though that greed is certainly a factor, you must admit. Many things are done by our government that oppose our industries and stifle our businesses, which has been calamitous as well.
Take the taxation of inventory as an example- Business used to roll it's profits into inventory to escape being taxed at the end of the year. Since the capital was invested, but the return was not realized, inventory stock brought the money across into the new year, where it would then be sold to turn the part back into capital.
But the government caused inventory to be taxed starting in the late 70's in order to close the loophole. What came from that is a double taxation, as the part was taxed as inventory, and then taxed as profit when it was sold.
What evolved from that was an inevitable and drastic reduction of inventory, and the invention of an horrible system called JIT ("Just in Time") manufacturing, where the part was made when ordered.
This, in and of itself is bad enough, but when tied to planned obsolescence schemes, it forces profit where none was before, by ensuring the consumer would have to buy a whole new unit when a breakdown occurred, as there were no parts in stock, and the new product's parts no longer fit the old (often on purpose).
So you see, while the example began as a regulation on the part of the government, and can be directly attributed as such, business also became culpable and found an advantage by which it could infinitely redouble it's profit- much to the dismay of the consumer.
Realistically? It doesn't make a pinch of s#!+'s worth of difference what the inflation/deflation rate is, as long as one is active in the economy.
Prices go up, wages go up. Prices go down, wages go down.
Where it does make a difference is when some fixed dollar amount is used as the standard for judging economic success. A fixed poverty line, or arbitrary earnings level to be upper class end up having little to do with one's comfort level or purchasing power.
I think the definitions we use for poor, middle and upper class are fatally flawed in their underpinnings. We sort by "wealth" as if it can be measured by little bits of printed paper, or hordes of ones and zeros in a bank's computer.
There are really only two classes:
People who earn their living by the sweat of their brow, and
People who live on the labor of others.
Note that the last group includes the richest and the poorest among us. The poorest live on transfer payments, money seized from those who earned it and given to those who didn't. The richest, by organizing and paying others to do the labor, and taking their due from the a part of the value they add by enabling their employees (or the people they invested in) to make a better living.
No, we need the government that has decided that penalizing American manufacturers is fair to stop deciding what is fair!
Better our own than some UN or WTO tribunal.
You do know that such use of quotation marks is the punctuational equivalent of saying SO-CALLED free trade, don't you?
The richest, by organizing and paying others to do the labor, and taking their due from the a part of the value they add by enabling their employees (or the people they invested in) to make a better living.
Wow, Marx would be proud.
Because government control of the economy works so well doesn’t it? Screw freedom of choice, the government will know what’s best.
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