Posted on 03/02/2016 12:29:52 PM PST by central_va
You are asking me to consider the human cost of job losses. You forgot the children.
The price will drop! Because competition!
I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that the biggest economic illiterates are the ones pushing hardest for more government interference.
“Because they are willing to work for a few bucks a day.”
People could earn a decent middle class income working in manufacturing in the USA before 1990 when the tariff reductions associated with the free trade agreements began. It took a few years for capital investment to shift from US manufacturing to other countries, and to build the capacity, but by 2005 the US industrial infrastructure was crumbling and the middle class jobs in the US were being converted to low wage jobs in China, Mexico, Vietnam, and Central America. If the tariffs had not been reduced, the investment in infrastructure overseas would not have been made and the US jobs would have been saved, not to mention the domestic supply chains. Even with higher US wages, labor content in most manufacturing products is a small percentage. Leaving tariffs of 20-30% in place would have been enough to make it profitable to employ Americans at middle class wages instead of foreigners at slave wages (i.e. the $1.00 per day many Chinese workers earned in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s).
Now we bear the social costs of this migration of manufacturing out of the US. I’d rather pay 10% more for domestic products employing US citizens than pay the same amount or more in extra taxes to the federal government in order to provide welfare to formerly employed US workers.
I would also pay more products in order for this nation to have a diverse and independent manufacturing base in times of war. Heaven help us if the US ever goes to war with China and the Asian supply chains are cut. Unlike WWII where US manufacturing converted from civilian to war use and allowed the free world to win a two front war, today the capacity does not exist to produce many of the components of our modern weapons and vehicles. We don’t even have the textile and apparel capacity to provide clothing for the armed forces, much less the American people in the event the ships full of apparel stop coming from Asia.
If you believe the “free trade” agreements made over the last 25 years truly resulted in free trade, ask yourself why all of those agreements are thousands of pages long. A true free trade agreement should require only a few sentences. Anything agreement that requires thousands of pages is not defining arms length free market transactions between independent parties. Long documents are all about special preferences giving advantages to some parties and erecting barriers to others.
Money is kinda’ tight, here. Can you pick up my 10%?
I would, too.
But it should be a matter of consumer choice, not government diktat.
If a majority of Americans shared your view, those companies employing American workers would be there already. You need to convince consumers, not pass more laws.
You’re totally incorrigible.
Love it.
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