Just 10% of labor pool in India and China, can absorb every US job... then what?

(please wake up America, vanity)

[flowerplough]

Can we do something, as conservatives and libertarians - as patriots - to stop America’s self destruction?

No, we can’t. We are too small, too few, and America is too big, to complacent, and too stupid. We can probably best invest our energy in “selfishly” attempting to prepare and provide for our own family and friends and set a common-sense example for others.

But stop America’s self destruction? Can’t be done. Like Bolivar said, might as well try to plow the sea.

In a speech entitled “Industrial Management in a Republic,” delivered in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria at New York during the 250th meeting of the National Conference Board on March 18, 1943, Henning Webb Prentis, Jr., President of the Armstrong Cork Company, had this to say:

“Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.”

[RachelFaith]

How many FReepers would you guess are going to vote for the next (so called conservative) Globalist candidate for President???

95%! They always have they always will.

[RachelFaith]

You get it. Good post.

[SonOfDarkSkies]

Thanks...here's a brief video (link) about how the price system operates in free markets around the world (in a very complex manner) to produce something as simple as a pencil...

Milton Friedman's short discussion on "The Pencil"

[Domestic Church]

Henning Webb Prentis wasn’t the first but his words are clear as a bell. Some Scot statesman back in the 1700’s said this same sort of circle of governing progress in his own vernacular related to government type -democracy to oligarchy to dictatorship to monarchy to democracy, with a democracy not lasting more than 200 years. I recall learning almost 50 years ago this was part of the reason the USA was set up as a democratic republic by our founding fathers - to extend beyond the 200 years.

[King Moonracer]

We will not get a second chance.

I fear the outside world will bask in the glow of schadenfreude, as we thrash around. This might explain why the 'Rats are getting more vicious, so they can abandon ship with bigger bags of loot.

[BenKenobi]

I’d personally be ashamed if I were unable to be more productive then the clown on the street.

Yeah, global competition is a reality. I don’t see why Americans cannot compete. You either buck up or get passed by. Walling everything off will merely speed things up.

[Joan Kerrey]

we will meet those needs and in doing so create new industries.

---

Card check will move those created industries over-seas...nothing gained. Nothing will improve until the communists are purged from our government.

[SonOfDarkSkies]

I must have been unclear.

Obama will destroy our future if he is not stopped.

[ottbmare]

....do you have any idea how much the goods sold in America would cost if they were all produced only by Americans using resources only reaped from American lands (you and I wouldn't be able to afford them).

OK, I hear this argument sometimes, and my next question is: how did we afford consumer goods back in the days before China manufactured everything, when we were producing our own goods?

[SonOfDarkSkies]

Watch this 2+ minute video (VIDEO LINK) and you will begin to understand how this dynamo called economics works.

It's not about national boundaries. This cross boundary movement of products and ideas is ancient. And without it we would all be living in the modern equivalent of the stone age.

Just watch this video and then let me know why you still wonder about our economy.

[SonOfDarkSkies]

BTW, economics is difficult even for economists to understand...look at the ridiculous advice Larry Summers and other Harvard economists have given Obama.

IMO the best economists are moms and dads who struggle to raise their children and keep a rood overhead...and pay for education.

Economics is best understood from the bottom up...not from the top down!

But even moms and dads need to take a deep breath and think very, very carefully about economic forces at work in their lives before drawing conclusions which might more easily agree with their old fashioned and conventional ideas.

Economics is both simple and miraculous! And very difficult (like a greased pig) to keep a handle on .

;-)

[only1percent]

how did we afford consumer goods back in the days before China manufactured everything, when we were producing our own goods?

This is a fair question.

The basic answer is "we could afford a lot less." Food was more expensive on a real basis. Clothes, shoes, toys and other basic consuemr goods were VASTLY more expensive -- walk around a Target with a 65-year old one day and ask him or her how many things are priced remarkably similar in nominal dollars to where they would have been in 1980 (1970 in real terms too, but not nominal given the 1970s hyperinflation).

The different nature of the workforce meant that many domestic and household services the middle class can afford now -- weekly heavy cleaning, a lawn mowing service, etc. -- were out of the question. Things that combined the cost of goods and services -- like eating out, going on vacation, etc. -- cost much more, and were accordingly consumed much less. A long distance telephone call could run you $20 or $30 in 2010 dollars.

Some goods and services that appear comparably priced or even cheaper back then -- cars, medical care, etc. -- look much more expensive when quality and results get taken into account. (The car quality measure being safety and reliability more than performance or luxury.)

And this is to say nothing of things that we enjoy now that didn't even exist then, or existed in far inferior form. A typical family might have had one 19" color television getting 3 channels. No computer, internet, cell phones, etc.

There were a couple of things that were much cheaper: housing and taxes at the state and local level. (Effective federal tax rates were higher.) The cheapness of housing was reflective of far less restriction upon supply (suburbs were still being built out in many parts of the country that have now long since been filled in) and the absence of the incremental demand supplied by working spouses. State and local taxes were lower simply because the amazing power of compounding (budgets & civil servant wage & benefits) had only done 20 years of damage since the post-war welfare society began its scale-up, not the 60 years of damage we have on hand now.

[JimWayne]

Flawed assumption.

Suppose Americans do not have sufficient income to purchase Chinese made products after the scenario you say sets in, what happens next? Will we sit on our hands doing nothing? The profit motive will make the entrepreneurial types create products. Even if they have no capital, they will do it using labor. That is the nature of the free-market.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

“”Suppose Americans do not have sufficient income to purchase Chinese made products after the scenario you say sets in, what happens next?”

-

For starters, our military will collapse.

Just ours, mind you.