Posted on 09/27/2004 4:16:06 PM PDT by Destro
It is amazing, in light of how inherently unworkable free trade must be, that countries such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, and others are able to conquer a huge part of the world's economy (and without any native resources) though minimal (if any) trade tariffs.
I guess free trade is dead. Long live protectionism--NOT!!
Just remember, ladies and gentlemen, that All Good Whigs oppose the Confederacy and support the Central Bank!
This is some LaRouchie thing, isn't it.
I hope not.
"Free Trade" is not a practical and pragmatic part of a conservative viewpoint, but an ideology.
Carried to its logical conclusion, free trade cares not a whit about America as a going concern. Free trade would prefer it if there were a single global currency, a single global government with a common worldwide set of taxes and regulations. Then businesses would flourish or die solely on business practices and economic considerations.
It's OK for libertarians to be free trade ideologues because that's just one more pie-in-the-sky fantasy that they need to add to the oil-tanker-load of fantasies that they lull themselves to sleep with every night.
Conservatives, however, for some irrational reason actually care about the specific nation, state, and city that they happen to be born in or are currently living in. For some silly reason we humans feel comfortable around our own kind and living in our own cultural milieu, unlike the hypothetical units-of-consumption-and-production that the economic textbooks describe.
Through a highly competitive risk-and-reward system (commonly referred to as reality) all nations have developed very sophisticated ways of limiting free trade with or without the need for tariffs. Sometimes the walls to theoretically free trade are higher and sometimes lower. The demands of self-preservation seem to keep us at a reasonable balancing point, only that currently our fixation on free trade ideology seems to be working at the U.S.'s disadvantage.
A little economic tweaking in our favor will not result in a new and worse Depression. It will more likely stave off for a few more years our ultimate assimiliation into a noxious globalist goo.
Minimal if any trade tariffs ? Are you delusional ? Try exporting rice to Japan. Good luck because somehow, someway the worthy Japanese inspectors will find it unfit for Japanese consumption, thereby protecting their own farm lobby.
The Asian economies borrowed the sage advice of Hamilton and McKinley and grew rich behind tariff walls.
When I was young a new car loan was three years. Then it became four years. Now it is five or six years.
What's wrong with this picture ?
Then I encourage you to spend the inflation-indexed wage rate to your current builders so they can buy more.
Why don't you stop complaining and vote your conscience with your own pocketbook? And allow the rest of us to vote how we want to as well.
I will choose what is best for me. This activity, by all of us (including your paying $50 an hour for help), helps everyone.
You can choose to give your charity through artificially high wages. I can choose give my charity in ways that further what I believe helps God.
What nonsense you talk !
For your information, the Ford Focus is 13.5k according to the Blue Book.
And car prices are fairly constant across time, adjusted for inflation. The Mustang was 5k when it first came out in the mid 60's. Multiplying it times 6 (adjusting the value across time) you get 30K which is fairly close to now. The comparable model to the present Ford Focus would be the old Volkswagen Beetle which was around 2k then. Multiply it times 6 and you have the present price of a Ford Focus. So when the term to pay the same purchase price has to be stretched double, even you can see the obvious implication.
And as for the Asian economies, their foundation has been mercantilism, never free trade, because real world results were more important than vague theory.
Thank you for your research on that.
It really helps me understand the nutty posts I've had to respond to on this thread.
This post is well-researched. It states for all of FReeperdom the choice at hand: the English System of free trade vs. the American System of protectionism (which includes tariffs to raise revenues for the U.S. Federal Government). Long live Hamilton, Lincoln, Carey and McKinley!
Mea culpa! I was looking for some historical quotes from our president and stumbled on to a crypto LaRouche publication. Please delete.
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