Posted on 10/19/2016 4:11:31 AM PDT by expat_panama
Lol, complete BS. In 20% of Amnerican families, no family member is employed. And in 20% of US families, the head of household is on one or more of the many means tested government poverty programs. We now spend more than a trillion per year on those means tested poverty programs.
That's where all those great 'savings' from imports from cheap labor nations can be found. We'd be many hundred billions better off with far more manufacturing jobs in the US and many beneficiaries of those poverty programs working in those jobs instead of receiving benefits.
Real employment is around 20% and we have no hope of balancing the budget until that figure is greatly reduced.
Yes. It is very interesting.
You want the government to force everyone to pay more than necessary for goods so we can fund more jobs.
Why not cut out the middleman,tax everyone and redistribute the money. It would be a lot more efficient than a big tariff scheme.
Taxpayers are already paying far more than is necessary for the $1 trillion plus in means test poverty programs annually. Well, both current and future tax payers since we now borrow about forty cents of every dollar the government spends.
You're just kidding yourself that there are any savings from imports made with cheap labor. It's being paid for a few times over in all those poverty programs for the 20% of working age Americans, who don't work, and who receive benefits from the poverty programs.
All those factors are connected, but most don't want to make the connections. How strange that, in the past forty or so years, the US has accumulated the massive debt while lowering or eliminating tariffs, exporting factories and jobs to cheap labor nations, and adding more and more poverty programs for the now 20% of adults who depend on them and mostly have no jobs.
Of course, all the people on those programs are not included in the unemployment rate. Being on welfare is considered employment, I suppose.
I absolutely agree that the issues are connected and there are ramifications to any approach. I just tend to favor free market principles.
If you're going to require businesses to pay more than necessary to produce a product so people can earn a living wage why not just increase the minimum wage or provide direct subsidies to workers?
It would be more transparent and cause less market distortion than tariffs or other trade barriers.
A rational policy would have been to have free trade with nations of comparable living standards and tariffs when trading with countries with low living standards, low wages and little or no regulation. Follow a rational policy and wages will find their proper level through the market.
Other than unique agricultural products and some raw materials, so-called developing nations had nothing to trade with the developed world other than cheap labor and lax regulation to attract factories and jobs. It was stupid and self-destructive for the US to ever enter into agreements that could have no result other than a movement of factories and jobs to cheap labor nations - AND massive transfers of US technology to many nations, some who do not mean the US well.
Like I've said, the 'savings' for those policies and agreements are in our almost $20 trillion national debt and perennial, large budget deficits.
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