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To: Sam the Sham
"Blue collar workers never supported free trade out of basic socioeconomic self interest."

Nonsense. You don't even understand "free trade."

Here's Economics 101 for you: "free trade" is when two humans negotiate and *agree* to exchange something.

Free trade, at its most basic level, is precisely what the masses understand and embrace, contrary to the Marxist claptrap that gets tossed around with whatever buzzwords are in vogue today.

You have something of value. I have something of value. I want what you have. You want what I have. We negotiate. We haggle. We wheel. We deal. Finally we *agree* to exchange what we have for what we want. You end up getting what you want, and I end up getting what I want.

That's free trade, and Blue Collar workers have *always* supported it with their actions even during those times when they've been fooled into denouncing the very words "free trade."

Free trade gets people what they want. Go to areas that don't have free trade, such as Cuba and North Korea, and you'll find masses of people who *don't* get what they want.

Free trade gives out an incentive for you to obtain or produce something or some service that is valuable enough to let you trade it for those things and services that you want for yourself.

Take away free trade and you take away both the incentive to produce as well as the means to exchange and get what you want.

In short, free trade is the solution...not the problem...though it makes for a catchy-enough sound-bite that it is easily scapegoated as the problem even when it isn't.

In this case, i.e. offshore outsourcing, the problem isn't with free trade (e.g. we certainly have no NAFTA-style agreement with China or India), but rather with international currency manipulations. Both China and India are hoarding U.S. Dollars in order to prop up the foreign exchange value of the Dollar. That makes U.S. exports more expensive and less competitive, and it makes imports into the U.S. from China and India unnaturally cheaper than would happen in a free market.

212 posted on 04/10/2004 1:36:08 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack; Havoc; ARCADIA; clamper1797
In this case, i.e. offshore outsourcing, the problem isn't with free trade (e.g. we certainly have no NAFTA-style agreement with China or India), but rather with international currency manipulations.

Yes, you've been babbling about "Reduce the value of the dollar by nearly half and outsourcing will go away." Is that a way of saying "reduce the American standard of living by half and outsourcing will go away" ? Because that is the truth. But the American people are not going to support reducing their standard of living to third world levels to "compete". Not now. Never. Given a choice between protectionism and impoverishment, the American people will choose protectionism.

Reduce the value of the dollar by nearly half. Are you recommending hyperinflation ? You think you can sell that to the American people ? You think that is responsible and intelligent ?

215 posted on 04/10/2004 2:10:38 PM PDT by Sam the Sham
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