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To: ScottM1968

More nonsense.

As trade barriers are dumped French and Germans are seeing their jobs outsourced to Eastern Europe. It's a very big issue there, especially when these self same Eastern Europeans come with their hands out for EU subsidies. If the EU constitution is rejected, that will be the primary reason why.

The British model of free trade worked while England was the primary industrial power in the world. When it wasn't after 1870 it should have shifted to protectionism. It didn't. Joseph Chamberlain and other far sighted Edwardian politicians tried to shake the complacency of free trade without any success. Result ? The proximate cause of the collapse of British power. That English industry could not equip mass conscript armies in two world wars.

And technological change is a constant but not a change in value. A family car in 2004 is better than a family car in 1970. But the family in 1970 bought the car that was available to them. And it cost the same, adjusted for inflation, as the car of 2004. To consider technological change a change in value would result in some truly silly things. Like saying a Walmart clerk with a DVD player and computer is richer than Vanderbilt or Rockefellor or Morgan because they did not have these things.


27 posted on 09/27/2004 7:27:31 PM PDT by Sam the Sham
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To: Sam the Sham
Mr. Sham, I fear you really can't tell the difference between "sense" and "nonsense".

It's a Sham when a "conservative" laments that artificially high wages (nearly state-dictated) can somehow continue to exist without realizing they will bring that entire country down economically over time as the world makes choices despite (and around) that country's stupidity.

It's a Sham when a "conservative" can't see that a change in utility value obviously matters over time. With such a mindset, a Shammer must think a bushel of corn then versus the same as a bushel of corn now is a near infinite regression in value.

It's a Sham when a "conservative" quotes the former leader of the "Liberal Unionists" of England (Joseph Chamberlain) as somehow prescient--a man who was a self-proclaimed Imperialist in his basic approach to economics.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRchamberlainJ.htm

It's a Sham when a "conservative" fails to realize that the simple luxuries of today such as vaccines buy today's "pauper" life that the Vanderbilt of yore couldn't purchase with his entire fortune.

It's a Sham when a Sham Shams, isn't it?
36 posted on 09/27/2004 8:19:58 PM PDT by ScottM1968
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