Posted on 09/05/2015 7:33:42 AM PDT by jimbo123
The point is you defended CFG with an argument that ultimately will happen regardless of the Republican candidate. My candidate is Cruz and I’d prefer CFG spend its money against Jeb or Hillary. The anti-Trump is a waste of time.
"Free Trade is not, in those words in the Constitution. It is, however, the way to real prosperity. The taxes and regulations that strangle our industry have somewhat the same effect as high tariffs would have. We cannot and could not compete in the world. American industry is the most efficient in the world and in a free trade regime will produce at the cheapest price because Americans are the most entrepreneurial and inventive people on earth. Hem in American industry with regulations and taxes and you make it no longer cheaper than that industry that employes dollar-an-hour less able workers in Indonesia. Ring the country about with high tariffs and the rest of the world reciprocates and, as with the high taxes and regulations, American business to be competitive in the world market must move off shore. Tariffs also render Americans poorer because they have to pay higher prices for imports and for domestic products because American industry does not have to compete with foreign industry and with American industry that has moved offshore.All liberals and most conservatives cannot conceive of something happening unless the government does it or controls it or adjusts it. Protectionists cannot believe that American industry can possibly compete with foreigners unless the benevolent Government designs and maintains the market."
Well I just got through saying I didn't argue the merits of either and you launch into a defense of "free trade" and disparage as "protectionist" anything that puts America first.
My immediate gripe is this weasel phrase: Free Trade is not, in those words in the Constitution. It is, however, the way to real prosperity. That is exactly the Internationalist free trader argument. First of all, economics is not in the Constitution, period. Couldn't you just say that? Secondly, "free trade" is not "American" or any other nationality by definition. It is more accurately the lack of nationality and lack of national interest. Can you admit that the term economic conservative is nothing more than a deception or not? It clearly is! It is designed to drag in political and Constitutional conservatives because they consider themselves "Conservatives" in the first place.
When 'free trade' and 'free markets' and 'open borders' and most importantly the lack of patriotic nationalism are combined you certainly get something. You get high-tech companies born here that gradually hire abroad and layoff at home and finally you wake up one day without any industry whatsoever. The free market certainly won that one ( as did the stockholders and board of directors ) but I ask you who lost? What is the justification du jour for that American loss?
Free traders like to blame regulation and taxes for American companies going under and not being able to compete with 3rd world hell holes. But a simple metal experiment solves that: if you imagine a USA company with a theoretically absolutely free market - no regulation, not even minimum wage and no taxes and no OSHA and no rules whatsoever, can *they* even compete with China or India ( let alone Vietnam, Bangladesh or Zimbabwe ) ? You know the answer. And this would still be true even if China/India/whoever had the identical lack of rules and regulations for their company. Now tell me how we get the USA company to stay?
The truth of the matter is that both "protectionist" Tariffs and government regulation have the same effect of being a burden, but you are ignoring a constant in the equation, and that is that the two opposing countries do not start from the same level, and they never will. Furthermore, if someday a million years from now that they were at the exact same level, they still would not buy our exports because they could and would do it themselves. Trade only exists when one side has something the other does not, or when one side does it cheaper. Otherwise it is merely a temporary exercise in equalization, like water finding its level.
Furthermore, the only possible way to even entertain "free markets" is in the context of anti-Nationalism, i.e., we don't have the right to look after our self-interests as Americans. It is not our Constitutional or any other duty to drag up the lifestyle of the rest of the world. We are not here to be pilfered and picked clean by the free trade buzzards and internationalist cabal of socialists. That's not why Washington crossed the Delaware and that's not why the Founders convened in Philadelphia.
Are we allowed to expect any loyalty from our companies at all? Should we allow Acme Hydrogen Bomb Inc to market their latest greatest city buster to the enemy? Personally I can't imagine what you are even discussing this for. You have had it your way for about three decades now - political correctness that lumps American Nationalism as some kind of jingoistic disease leading to no national loyalty so the companies have no problem going overseas, and the booming Reagan economy has been exported everywhere but here. You want more of the same?
You are a big government man. Bush is your guy if you think about it.
"You are a big government man. Bush is your guy if you think about it."
Oh really?
I'm pro-American. Now what's that make you?
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