If Olog-hai is wrong we have a strong vibrant economy and a huge manufacturing base and we remain at peace while "wasting" money on defense. However if you are wrong we will be conquered and sent to the dust bin of history so a few could make a quick buck under the guise of "free trade"..
I'll take my chances with the industrial base intact..
Funny an article about midway which proves that an industrial base is critical to freedom is being molested by a free trader. LOL.
“Funny an article about midway which proves that an industrial base is critical to freedom is being molested by a free trader. LOL.”
Wow, that’s quite a bold misrepresentation, even for the internet. Let me clue you in on how to follow an argument. Actually, I don’t know where to start. You have it that I’m molesting the article? Well, no, I’m molesting protectionist mumbo-jumbo. You may read pro-protectionism into the article, if you think protectionism is the best way to have an industrial capacity capable of rapid mobilization. It isn’t, as obviosuly free traders are the richest nations in history.
This all started because I responded first to someone who thought it ominous that those dirty liberals have cut back on defense spending since 1945. Well, I should hope so. We weren’t going to fight WWII forever. There’s always the next war, of course, but as I pointed out his point was inapt as we are now in a much better position to mobilize than we were during the Great Depression. I’ve been criticized for speaking too generally, but really nothing more needs be said that in 1941 we were a decade into the Great freaking Depression. If you can’t see we’re richer, more economically efficient, and have a larger industrial capacity now than in the midst of the Great Depression, I have nothing more to say.
Then I responded to a post about how free trade is wrong because if China builds all our stuff they could refuse to build bombs for us to bomb Chinamen. Free trade doesn’t do that, and contrarywise has only made us richer since 1945. We are because of it by all honest accounts in a better position to arm ourselves than in 1941. If the American victory in WWII proved how important was industrial capacity to fighting power, I fail to see how this somehow contradicts free trade. Obly those who have the preconceived notion that free trade shrinks a nation’s productive capacity buy that.
That isn’t at all true in general, and demonstrably has not been true for our nation. But allow me to point out, further, that one of the chief causes, or rather chief prolongers, of the Great Depression was the trade war. Remember Smoot-Hawley? Without it, no doubt, we would only have built things faster and better.
“we have a strong vibrant economy and a huge manufacturing base and we remain at peace while ‘wasting’ money on defense”
We have a stronger and more vibrant economy than in 1941, though not as strong as I’d like. Nevertheless, protectionism wouldn’t make it better. And, yes, defense spending wastes a lot of money. How supposed conservatives thoughtlessly assume waste in welfare programs but never can see it in defense is beyond me.