I Want a President Who Can Teach Us to Accept Capitalism

American Thinker ^ | May 4, 2016 | Christopher Chantrill

[expat_panama]

In last week’s foreign policy speech Donald Trump had this to say about jobs:

NAFTA, as an example, has been a total disaster for the U.S. and has emptied our states of our manufacturing and our jobs. Never again. Only the reverse will happen. We will keep our jobs and bring in new ones. Their [sic] will be consequences for companies that leave the U.S. only to exploit it later.

Okay, I get it: you are running for president, Mr. Trump, and I get that you can’t say that, of course, NAFTA has hurt some people, because after all capitalism is creative destruction, but on balance NAFTA has benefited...

...Thomas Piketty... ...the stupid point that the return on capital is greater than the growth rate. Of course it is. You can make money on lending money to another guy so he can buy a diamond for his mistress, and it does nothing for growth.

Capitalism is not about accumulating gold coins in a sack by stealing bread from the poor...

...we have... ...popularizers, activists, and politicians that cruelly scratch the wounds of the afflicted. They marinate them in their tribal hatreds, trap them in dependency, tax and their wages and then play the Lady Bountiful giving it back years later, and teach them to hate the culture that has raised them, or will raise their children, out of Malthusian oblivion.

...what made America great was that for a season, the elite lacked the power to “keep our jobs” against some nobody with a crazy idea to demolish the status quo and surprise the world with an unlooked for invention, a trade-tested betterment, and the result was the Great Enrichment of the last 200 years.

And it really is about time that presidential candidates could dare to tell us that.

[central_va]

The tired Smoot-Hawley meme is a vapid attempt by the Cheap Labor Express Cabal at rewriting history.

Protectionism Didn't Cause the Great Depression

[DungeonMaster]

I want a president who is not ashamed of the Christians, white people, the USA, the founding fathers of the USA...>[?

I wanted to say “wealth” but that reminded me of “Double Think” from the book “1984”. Liberals have employed that in that they hate rich people, unless they are democrats, then it is OK.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"Globalist pricks can say what they want but radical and destructive “free trade” is being rejected by the electorate. Just in time too because if we let this disastrous situation go on much longer then a guy like Bernie will win one day. More tariffs and less income taxes."

Sir, your statement makes no sense. On one hand, you don't want free trade and on the other you don't want Bernie and his more tariffs. Free trade is about lowering trade barriers such as tariffs so countries can trade more freely. I agree that we need to have deals that are fair to America but that is what happened in the NAFTA deal and GATT before it. In so far as many things that Trump and Bernie have said they would be in agreement on trade. It's just that Trump speaks out of both sides of his mouth because he talks of making better deals but gives no specifics. It's one of the reasons I say he has bamboozled the republican electorate. He's the nominee so I will support him because he's better than Hillary but I'm still waiting to hear the specifics of his "better" deal....

[combat_boots]

Companies sold to foreign interests:
http://americawakeup.net/

[combat_boots]

An old prof of mine said, “You have to get them young.”

[central_va]

Old man you don’t make sense. We off shore manufacturing, wealth creation and as a result unemployment continues to rise.
This is hastening the Marxist revolution I assume we all want to avoid. Protectionism is the only way we can preserve our economy and hope to employee our idled millions. If you are too pig headed to understand this simple concept then then just watch and shut up for a while. You are really are a brainwashed gloBULList socialist dupe. A fool. Or a closet communist.

[Joe Boucher]

I remember how America had its tail between its legs at the end of Jimmy Carter.
Nothing was going well for us.
Then Ronald Reagan came in to office.
The mookabooking iranians released the hostages in about two minutes and we started feeling good again.
After 8 years of this narcissist a hole i hope good for Trump.

[Just mythoughts]

One thing for certain, Trump will know immediately which donors are the benefactors of any legislation coming out of Congress. I do expect Trump to strip clean bare any legislation that straps upon ‘we the peoples’ backs, these political hacks campaign debts.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

Even your own article cites that the tariff wars started by this bill was overall bad for the economy and helped contribute to the depression, just not as bad as others believe. Point of fact, no serious article out there states that the rise of tariffs had a net benefit to the American economy. There are many other articles out there that state it had an even more deleterious effect than your article.

http://capitalism.org/free-trade/what-was-the-end-result-of-the-smoot-hawley-tariff-act/

https://fee.org/articles/the-smoot-hawley-tariff-and-the-great-depression/

http://www.economist.com/node/12798595

[expat_panama]

Companies sold to foreign interests:

So I create a corporation in the U.S. that manufactures 8-track tapes and Nehru jackets, I trade it to the Chinese for bars of gold and it'a trade deficit.   Pse hold off on telling me why this is bad because I'm busy swapping zero interest Treasuries for Mexican taco sauce ---that's going to make the trade deficit even bigger...

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"You are really are a brainwashed gloBULList socialist dupe. A fool. Or a closet communist."

Yes, the last refuge of the losing argument. Call someone names. Of course everyone who promotes free trade has to be a communist because that is exactly what a command controlled economy believes in, the free exchange of goods and ideas. I sense a common theme in your posts, you make no sense....

[central_va]

If you actually talked to people that lived thru the depression you would know that trade and trade policies were not the cause of the depression and to say so is laughable but in actuality it is not laughable but a real insult to those that lived thru it. Trade was only 4% of GDP in 1930 so Smoot-Hawley COULDN'T have the effect that the neo faux historians are trying to project.

If you read contemporary accounts of the Great Depression you would learn that it was caused by fiscal, banking and stock market crises and to espouse anything else is disingenuous bull sh!t rewrite of history.

Talk about red herrings...

[Jumper]

Trump does scare the daylights out of those who both contributed to the sorry state of the union that Trump ran against in the primaries, and because those same people empowered Obama’s EO’s making Trump if president powerful enough to overturn treaties with simple agreements....

[central_va]

We’ll someone as rigid in their thinking and espousing lies what can I say. These are the tactic of a Communist.

[RedWulf]

> If you are talking about NAFTA, you are incorrect. Looking at the deal, there is no question that Mexico, United States and Canada have all benefitted from the deal. Yes, I'm sure you can look at individual examples of people losing their jobs because of NAFTA and yes unfortunately that has happened. But overall NAFTA has benefitted us more than it has hurt us. One benefit is the free flow of exporting/importing oil between the three countries. There are many others.

NAFTA has been a major disaster. You know illegals who overran California? They were all small farmers in Mexico put out of work when NAFATA was passed so they flooded across the border and destroyed CA. Working class Americans have suffered the former industrial heart of America is now meth filled waste land. If we had to refight WW2 right now we'd lose because wouldn't produce the war materials needed.

[simpson96]

Unfortunately, pretty much the entire young generation needs to be taught what Capitalism is, and that it is not a bad thing!

[RedWulf]

>I don't even know where to begin with this statement. If you would like history, then I'll give you one. The Smoot/Hawley act. This was unbridled protectionism and is universally credited with taking America from a deep recession into a full blown depression that lasted for the next 12 years.

First off it was the new deal that kept the depression going for 12 years. Recessions/Depressions are deflationary periods from debt bubbles and due to the slow pace of the defaults it took forever to end in the US. Germany by contrast went full protectionism and hyper-inflated away their debts and got back to work in a few short years. Secondly thanks to our massive protectionism we had enough industrial capacity to arm the entire world against Hitler. Lots of people credit the Russians for beating the 3ed Reich, but it was American arms, American trucks, and American airplanes that the Russians won with. We've thrown all that industrial power away.

[expat_panama]

20 trillion in debt

minimum wages

open borders

Christians, white people

Not all that was caused by NAFTA, some of it we need to blame on TPP

[central_va]

The only winner in NAFTA was corporate profit margins.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"If you actually talked to people that lived thru the depression you would know that trade and trade policies were not the cause of the depression"

Yeah, my Dad and Mom for two of those people that lived through it. No one I ever talked to who told me about the Great Depression ever went into deep theoretical discussions about the causes of it. They talked about getting fresh fruit for Christmas presents and things like that. Makes me think you never talked to anyone who went through the great depression.