Posted on 01/25/2017 8:52:08 PM PST by TBP
Has Ian Fletcher figured-out how our national debt is generated, yet? As of early 2016, he was still hopeless.
Thanks. I hadn’t realized it was Wilson. Good point.
Fletcher is more right than wrong on our current trade situation. You are on the wrong side of this issue & your day is over.
I can safely say that I've been hearing the above since Reagan was in office.
>What do you think of their analysis?
I’ve studied a lot theories over the years but with experience I’ve learned to evaluate theories based on the results I can see with my own eyes. The wastelands that used to be the manufacturing heart of American shows the theory of free trade to be bunkum.
Freetraders are about as scientific as global warming alarmists thought not as well funded as the Global warming guys.
Trump’s not Reagan. How’s TTP doing. It’s dead:) NAFTA is next.
The Austrians economists I know advocate for the free, unrestricted flow of goods, services, *and* labor across national borders. That might work out in theory, but not in practice -- as Milton Freidman observed, open borders are incompatible with a welfare state.
Perhaps I should have written that history lesson after all. LOL
The thing is, sadly, most people ignore my factual history lessons here, though most are in great need of them. :-(
> I can safely say that I’ve been hearing the above since Reagan was in office.
Do the lives you and your free traitors have ruined bother you at all? What about the fact that we no longer have an industrial base large enough to fight a real war? No issue with destroying our national security?
We’ll see if Trump kills Reagan’s brainchild, or just modifies it. As far as the TPP goes, I didn’t bother to read it . . . no one else around here did. I just kept hearing about how the text was “secret.”
Do you have a specific national security concern? Let’s discuss it. We shouldn’t go down the road where something is needed “just because.” Think DHS.
Our trade policies need to be revamped for sure. I suspect Trump will not deep-six everything, but I suspect he will do some extensive modifications.
Fair trade is good. The trade between China, Mexico, Indonesia etc. is not good. They pay a fraction of the wages paid in the United States. Their workers are but chattel to their industrial machine. When they are no longer useful they are fired and have no benefits. It is totally impossible to compete against them.
In effect the low price of electronic goods and all goods from China is a function of their expendable work force.
I have absolutely no problem with competitors in developed nations that pay high wages to their workers. If we buy from them it is a function of a superior product and not a low wage scale for their workers.
Name one country other than the US, on this globe that is not 'protectionist' in its function. These so called 'free-traders' are on the hunt for no regulations and slave labor. AND the majority of our elected politicians only care about their reelection and are willing to sell 'we the people' to the highest 'free trader' slave hunter.
These so called 'free-trade' agreements are in theory suppose to counterbalance government setting a minimum wage. IF our elected officials really are about 'free-markets' they would start here in this nation and end the practice of them setting the minimum wage scale. But, no unions are big time contributors to the libs and the so called republicans will not challenge them on their base reelection support.
Generally, the countries around the globe with freer markets do better in most if not all measures than their more protectionist counterparts.
Here is another argument:
Every great manufacturing power rose to its heights with an effective tariff to assure the home market. That includes:
England
France
Germany
Sweden
The Soviet Union (not quite but they were closed to foreign products politically)
The US
Japan
China (do it now)
The UK, Russia, France and American have seen their manufacturing economies collapse when they opened up their markets.
Sweden was kind of free trade, but they have very heavy consumption/value added taxes which effectively functioned the same way as a tariff.
There is not a single example of a “free trade” state building up a impressive manufacturing sector except Singapore and Hong Kong, but these were city states, not nations. One could argue that the that in both cases was due to their location alone that allowed this. Every single major country that became a manufacturing giant did it with a tariff/value added tax system designed to protect their own industries.
I would put the Free Trade guys in with other utopians. They refer to Ricardo and Adam Smith as if their books from the late 18th and early 19th century are handed down from G-d, rather than the works of fallible men looking at similarly constrained small European states.
Their ideas sound great, they should work, but history shows us...they do not.
And that leaves out the idea of free trade implies free movement of capitol and people, which is a similarly a bad idea.
What if the potential international trading partner is, say, a country that uses slave labor to manufacture their products? Or a country that supports terrorism?
Should the United States not be "restricting trade" with such nations?
These are perhaps extreme examples of justification for "restricting trade", but they perfectly illustrate the principle that there can potentially be legitimate moral reasons for adopting restrictive trade policies towards a nation—cases where refusing to restrict such trade might very well result in nurturing Tyranny in the World, and ultimately endangering our own national security.
One might readily posit many situations where the notion of restricting trade with a given nation would make compelling sense.
Thus, dogmatically insisting that "Restricting Trade Is Calamitous Policy" in all cases is simply naive, and to blithely cling to such policy, for the Unites States, "Beacon of the World", is simply not realistic or advisable, IMHO. Similarly, there shouldn't be similar dogma regarding the opposite extreme: always trying to restrict trade.
Was it a Russian Marxist somewhere who once said that "capitalists will sell you the rope that you use to hang them with"?
Name a country... there is NO way this nation has been a 'protectionist' country. .ell we will not even control our borders. I go to War-Mart and it is like I left the US. And I am not just describing the hoards from our southern border.
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