So What Would It Mean to 'Beat China' on Trade?[FR]
Posted on 01/30/2016 9:39:11 PM PST by County Agent Hank Kimball
"Fair" Trade
Let us now turn to some of the leading protectionist arguments. Take, for example, the standard complaint that while the protectionist "welcomes competition," this competition must be "fair." Whenever someone starts talking about "fair competition" or indeed, about "fairness" in general, it is time to keep a sharp eye on your wallet, for it is about to be picked. For the genuinely "fair" is simply the voluntary terms of exchange, mutually agreed upon by buyer and seller. As most of the medieval scholastics were able to figure out, there is no "just" (or "fair") price outside of the market price.
So what could be "unfair" about the free-market price? One common protectionist charge is that it is "unfair" for an American firm to compete with, say, a Taiwanese firm which needs to pay only one-half the wages of the American competitor. The U.S. government is called upon to step in and "equalize" the wage rates by imposing an equivalent tariff upon the Taiwanese. But does this mean that consumers can never patronize low-cost firms because it is "unfair" for them to have lower costs than inefficient competitors? This is the same argument that would be used by a New York firm trying to cripple its North Carolina competitor.
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
Hank
Whose freakin prosperity?
We have over 40 million people out of work.
How prosperous is $0.00 every (what used to be) payday?
So What Would It Mean to 'Beat China' on Trade?[FR]
Are you advocating for the steady and almost complete decimation of our manufacturing base , and why ?
Oh don’t you worry , they have a solution for that as well .. more unlimited immigration on all levels, and more globalist trade deals ... that will fix it
Free = capitalism
Fair = socialism
And before complaining about outsourcing of American jobs,
be sure to address domestic over-regulation, and the fact
that US corporate taxes are among the highest in the world.
I didn’t buy this crap in 1995 when I started addressing it.
Everything I said would happen, did.
Oh yep, they were all economists and knew everything.
Evidently not as much as I did.
I thought Obama provided for your every need, you mean it isn’t so? What are the poor American people to do? /s
Would you like to super-size that?
Ok , what about the H1-B visas and the unlimited open-border ... is that “free trade” as well ?
I used to agrue the points you are arguing regarding the regulation and tax rates, but even if those issues were corrected , those corporations still wouldn’t come back due to the wage differential .
Mises is wrong, as proven by the fact that every country that has engaged in Libertarian “free trade” has resulted in the movement of our industry to foreign countries and the demolition of jobs. Why? Because labor will always shift to those countries where it is the cheapest.
I ran into a gaggle of weirdos on facebook at one point, apparently a debate forum between Theocrats and Libertarians. For some odd reason, both sides were convinced we need open borders and unlimited immigration.
I understood why the Libertarians wanted unlimited immigration (logical consequence of free trade), but couldn’t figure out where in the hell the theocrats found out that having borders is a sin.
Open borders aren’t trade policy. Apples and oranges.
Unlimited immigration in the welfare state era is economic suicide on its own.
No, Fair = Nationalist. Free = Utopian Libertarian economics which only benefits the globalists.
I can guarantee also they never heard of the WTO, for that matter, which launched in 1995.
If you're a free trader on philosophical grounds, why oppose the free movement of labor and standing in the way of businesses to hire whoever they want?
Are you saying that if it has to compete without subsidy of American consumers and taxpayers, the “manufacturing base” (a concept which I believe to be a nonsensical one, but which I’ll stipulate for the purpose of this discussion) will cease to exist?
If you are saying that, than by extension what you are advocating is an income redistribution that is:
A) Coercive; and
B) Beneficial only to those who are by definition inefficient market participants;
So consumers and competitive firms should be penalized so that we can have a “manufacturing base,” despite the fact that the resources devoted to that “manufacturing base” could be more profitably and efficiently used in other pursuits?
That’s immoral, illogical, impoverishing and unjust.
Hank
Lots of reasons. For one thing, the melting pot has broken down such that immigrants are no longer joining American societal norms, oftentimes perpetuating non-western civilization values that are antithetical to our way of life. The Muslim hordes threaten to make matters even worse.
You are right .. they have no clue about the WTO , NAFTA, and Gatt ... much less about TPP
These are not the lettuce pickers. These are the business and technical professionals who take the GOOD jobs in America. Sometimes called "STEM" jobs.
There are tens of thousands of unemployed or under-employed Americans qualified for these jobs---middle aged folks with decades of experience in the fields, and young college grads trained for the field. Most of the middle-aged professionals in these fields who worked for corporations have been "let go" or "made an offer they can't refuse" (usually a few weeks severance pay) to get them out of the way for the Indians.
These jobs would be, for example, computer programmer, engineer, business analyst.
These are the jobs you hear about where the corporation terminates the American worker doing the job, hires an Indian, then forces the American to TRAIN his replacement. If the American refuses, he loses his severance pay or even his pension.
The goal is to replace all STEM jobs with foreigners by increasing the number of H1-B visas. Silicon Valley, the banksters, and the globalists donate to their candidates, like Ted Cruz, knowing that one of the things they'll get in return for their donation is a massive increase in these visas.
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