Posted on 07/28/2012 4:02:37 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are currently fighting over who is the more patriotic. Obama slams Romney for having outsourced jobs to China during his Bain Capital days. Romney punches back by labeling Obama “Outsourcer in Chief.” The latest is that both John Boehner and Harry Reid are voicing outrage over America’s made-in-China Olympic uniforms. “Burn them!” thunders Reid.
Republicans and Democrats strangely agree that outsourcing is unpatriotic, and that the moral and patriotic thing to do is to “Hire American” and “Buy American.”
Well, no. Not in a thousand years. The fear of outsourcing and international trade is economic nonsense and moral blindness. More than that: this anti-profit attitude is un-American.
Despite the ongoing Europeanization of America, America still symbolizes the land of freedom, entrepreneurship, profit-making, above all, individualism.
But collectivism is the premise of “Hire/Buy American”: we are to view ourselves and others not as individuals, but as units of a nation. Businesses are urged to pay more in labor costs, simply to hire workers who are American; consumers are urged to forgo Walmart’s low prices, pay more, simply because the pricier goods were made by “our guys.” This is not rational patriotism, it is not Americanism, it's primitive tribalism.
American individualism means making buying decisions on the basis of economic merit, giving no regard to the nationality or race of the seller. Let’s not hide behind patriotic-sounding slogans. Let’s name things straight for a change: giving preference to American sellers over foreign sellers is the same mindless injustice as giving preference to sellers who are white over those who are black.
Economic nationalism is as morally outrageous as racism. Buying on the basis of nationality or race is the same collectivist evil: judging men and their products by the group from which they come, not by merit.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing and defense. …
I would recommend this fool take a look at what has happened to two nations in the last twenty years.
China
The United States
Perhaps if he thinks about it long enough, he’ll be able to figure out which nation got the best of the Free Trade deal.
One nation is growing like gang-busters.
One nation is slipping over the edge toward third world status.
Right now were poised to slice and dice our military. China is building it’s military as fast as it can.
Anyone at this point, that can’t see the hand-writing on the wall as it relates to manufacturing at home and abroad, is a damned fool or an out and out traitor.
This author does make a point. I don’t agree with all of it but he does have a point.
And although the words have been misused by others I think that Business be it a Corporation or a mom and pop Sole proprietorship need to think about where there customer base is coming from. Some call this Corporate-Citizenship I call it smart business sense.
If the customer base you are developing is Local, State or at the National level then you do more for your bottom line in the long term in providing your potential customers with work/jobs that provide them an income to buy your products that you produce here.
If you are international in scope both for your customer base as well as your suppliers then out-sourcing may make more sense.
Let’s face it... Unless your customers can afford your products you won’t make any sales.
The possession of these is necessary to the perfection of the body politic, to the safety as well as to the welfare of the society; the want of either is the want of an important organ of political life and Motion; and in the various crises which await a state, it must severely feel the effects of any such deficiency. The extreme embarrassments of the United States during the late War, from an incapacity of supplying themselves, are still matter of keen recollection: A future war might be expected again to exemplify the mischiefs and dangers of a situation to which that incapacity is still in too great a degree applicable, unless changed by timely and vigorous exertion. To effect this change as fast as shall be prudent merits all the attention and all the Zeal of our Public Councils; 'tis the next great work to be accomplished. …I advise reading the rest of this instead of globalist ramblings on Forbes. Anyone who expects Red China or the European Union to be friendly to us in terms of supplying our defense needs is putting trust in the wrong place.
This is the worst article I’ve seen in a long time, maybe all year.
“Man did not rise from the cave to the skyscraper by stealing his neighbor’s roots and berries.”
I guess we got it by kumbaya? He forgets about the whole history of warfare and conflict. And the USA isn’t exactly in the skyscraper building business much anymore. That’s off to the arabs and Chinese thanks to this guy’s pushed agenda.
. . . and the more people you put out of work, the fewer products they will buy at any price. It’s already happening.
The "issue" of out-sourcing is more important than the solution: remove Mordor from the economy.
Nice post.
We gifted China with fifty years or more of technology and patent information over the last twenty years. Who in their right mind could have found that to be in our nation’s best interest, particularly in light of the fact we will be military adversaries sooner rather than later.
“Loss of jobs? Quite the contrary. Outsourcing means better or better-paying jobs for Americans. When individuals are fired from one line of work, it’s to release capital to do other work–the law of comparative advantage again.”
I love this line too. If you get offshored and lose your job, be happy moron! It’s for your own good!
You guess right. Hamilton was wrong.
That’s correct, It’s a feedback loop if you can visualize that. Positive actions beget more positive actions, Negative actions do the same only negatively.
Are you an American? I must ask this. Americans that go against the Founding Fathers are not of the conservative type FWICS; and non-Americans find their tenets incomprehensible due to being immersed in Marxism too deeply.
Out of all the variables in an international economy, how can you be so sure that it is free trade that caused the problem? Does monetary inflation play no part? Do high corporate tax rates have a role? Does government regulation matter? Do taxes on capital mean anything?
Free trade does not exist in a vacuum, you know.
Are you excusing free trade with unfree markets, never mind enemy countries?
You've got that right. Perhaps Forbes should outsource this dummy's job to India. I'm sure there are writers in India who could put sentences together much cheaper than this guy can.
Are you implying that we should place a tariff on Indian writers, so that this writer gets to keep his job? [snort]
You overlook the primary reason for the difference....... the people, the Chicaps if you will.
In China, there is some new freedom to engage in business and the world is beating their doors down for the products produced there. China has been bound by oppressive government, their own and the colonials for at least a hundred years.
Some left and became the overseas Chinese. Where ever they were they prospered..... Taipei, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, San Francisco. They represent the repressed entrepreneurial desire present and now unleashed in China proper.
To be certain, there is still a socialist government and the economy still has very strong governmental ties but the economic and academic and other freedoms have been used by the population to bring about unprecedented growth.
To blame the prosperity solely on an imbalance in trade is to overlook the part of the ordinary Chinese people striving for a better life, the life they see in Japan and America and Europe.
When you observe people in Chinese street scenes, none wear the gray of communist rule. They wear what they consider to be colorful, modern, stylish and up to date. My favorite indicator of the tremendous change in process is a video clip of some young girls. They were wearing Daisey Mae’s..... blue jean shorts. One wonders where they got them and what provoked them to wear them...... Daisey Mae’s are quintessentially American.
I think the certainty on how the change in China will progress or if the excesses of exuberant business experiments will cause things to come crashing down is unknowable. The certainty is that he days of repression and Mao are over and change is in process.
Here in America we still have a fantastically strong manufacturing base. We still make lots and lots of highly technical products and the world comes here to buy them. Our exports support the economy. We do not make paint brushes or commodity refrigerator compressors like we once did because we have moved on. We subcontract the manufacturing to get the best price. Americans demand a good price and will not pay an excessively expensive price.
Part of the manufacturing by American companies is to gain markets in those areas. It is profitable to establish foreign plants for products sold in the foreign markets. It is not competitive to make the stuff here and ship it abroad.
But to sum it up, China is and not only that is going to become more is as the current trends continue. China is after all the most populous nation and that populations wants to improve the quality of life. It is only rational to assume that once the pent up power and desire to throw off poverty change will occur.
This author is delusional if he thinks that putting America first is collectivist. Promoting manufacturing in America is what made this country the economic titan it eventually became. “Free Trade” is one of the things that destroyed the British Empire and is one of the things that is now destroying us. There is no such thing as “Free Trade” among nations. The Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Indians, the Germans, etc. do not practice free trade. They do everything they can to promote their industries and gain economic advantage over their trading partners. We used to understand this ourselves, but for some reason all of our Ivy-League indoctrinated, free-trade utopian leaders can’t understand this simple principle. The Chinese and others view us as suckers just as we thought the British were suckers when we supplanted them 100 years ago.
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