Posted on 10/20/2004 2:40:59 PM PDT by Willie Green
I should amend this by saying that if GM or Ford introduced a car that had the same specs as a 1964 VW Beetle today, they wouldn't sell one--not one.
40 hp engine, no air conditioning, unsafe, etc., etc. The only reason people buy those things now is because people, strangely enough, are enamored with the past--as you seem to be. It wasn't always better, and the days weren't always good. Indeed, they are a helluva lot better now.
Nonsense. The Trade Deficit is a form of debt.
And the United States is the largest debtor nation in the world.
The trade deficit is a phony statistic, as most economists know. Seventy-five percent of our economy is made up of services, not goods
TRADE DEFICIT: Formally termed a balance of trade deficit, a condition in which a nation's imports are greater than exports. In other words, a country is buying more stuff for foreigners than foreigners are buying from domestic producers. A trade deficit is usually thought to be bad for a country. For this reason, some countries seek to reduce their trade deficit by--
- establishing trade barriers on imports,
- reducing the exchange rate (termed devaluation) such that exports are less expensive and imports more expensive, or
- invading foreign countries with sizable armies.
Wealth is created only by engaging in value-added activities. By the same token, Service sector activities do not create wealth, they merely transfer, redistribute and eventually dissipate wealth as consumption. Thus, as value-added activities move offshore and the U.S. labor force shifts to the Service Sector, wealth is dissipated, not created. And the U.S. standard of living declines as a result.WEALTH: The net ownership of material possessions and productive resources. In other words, the difference between physical and financial assets that you own and the liabilities that you owe. Wealth includes all of the tangible consumer stuff that you possess, like cars, houses, clothes, jewelry, etc.; any financial assets, like stocks, bonds, bank accounts, that you lay claim to; and your ownership of resources, including labor, capital, and natural resources. Of course, you must deduct any debts you owe.
VALUE ADDED: The increase in the value of a good at each stage of the production process. The value that's being increased is specifically the ability of a good to satisfy wants and needs either directly as a consumption good or indirectly as a capital good. A good that provides greater satisfaction has greater value. In essence, the whole purpose of production is to transform raw materials and natural resources that have relatively little value into goods and services that have greater value.
SERVICE: An activity that provides direct satisfaction of wants and needs without the production of a tangible product or good. Examples include information, entertainment, and education. This term good should be contrasted with the term good, which involves the satisfaction of wants and needs with tangible items. You're likely to see the plural combination of these two into a single phrase, "goods and services," to indicate the wide assortment of economic production from the economy's scarce resources.
Again, you are NOT paying more. Adjusted for inflation, you are NOT paying more. Adjusted for inflation, a Kia costs what a Volkswagen Beetle did.
Ok, you're paying a bigger percentage of your income in terms of real dollars. At the end of the day, then, no matter how you look at it, you're paying more.
It's just a different way of paying more. C'est la vie.
Could you give this guy the stats ?
This assumes, of course, that your statement about real income is correct. I'm not saying that it is, but for argument's sake...
Oh, so the purchase price is the same but the income to pay for it has dropped. Yes, it's called dropping real incomes.
But you get more. Again, one expects to pay more for more things.
Here is the source of your misunderstanding. You are equating the 1964 VW Beetle to the 2005 Kia (Rio, I guess?) as if they are the same thing. They are not. Once you realize that, then you begin to see why what you're saying doesn't make sense.
The technological difference between the cars is completely and totally beside the point. It's not as if the consumer has the choice of buying a 2005 car in 1964. He buys what is in front of him. He buys a car from a category, in this case, economy coupe. And the purchase price of the economy coupe has remained the same (and that probably goes across the board for all categories of cars. The first Mustang was about 5k. Multiply it by six and you get close to what a Mustang costs now.). Whether it is the same physical car is immaterial to the purchase price over time.
And whether the purchase price is a higher percentage of my income now than then does nothing to enrich GM. They are getting the same money. Saying they have raised prices by lowering my disposable income makes no sense.
Now if I am less able to purchase something for the same price today than I was forty years ago, it obviously means I don't have as much money to spend as I did then.
They cannot. They've tried.
That simply makes no sense. One cannot argue that real incomes are falling because contemporary cars are more "expensive" than "historical" cars, and when it's pointed-out that a contemporary car is dissimilar to a historical car, claim it's "immaterial."
Sorry, you're on your own.
My first car was a '66 Mustang...
and I won't be drawn into some silly debate as to whether a '64 VW or an '05 Kia is "better".
As far as I'm concerned, they're BOTH imported crap.
Or it means that you are unwilling to buy more car as you did previously.
I was talking about real income between then and now.
My point is that the entire issue of which car is better is meaningless. It is the purchase price that matters. And that has not changed while the ability of the average American to pay it has.
You distorted it completely.
The contemporary car costs the same that the historical car did. The price is the same. But apparently that price now takes twice as long to pay off.
We should be hearing from the homeless shortly.
That is the future for America.
Selling communist made crap at the local Mega Great Wall-Mart for below-poverty wages. Or maybe we will all be surfs of the few obscenely rich traitors that are raping the USA on a daily basis?
So-called "free trade" is killing the American Dream and the middle-class, one job at a time. The only way we can compete against communist slave labor is to become communist slaves ourselves.
I trust the majority of Americans will wake up to that fact soon and do something about it.
I just wonder how far the globalists will go to maintain their death grip on this country and its leaders, democrat and republican?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.