Posted on 08/13/2005 11:19:39 AM PDT by Willie Green
I have a sense of the absurd. You wouldn't blame a plastics company in china for the price of a subway sandwich in America
by any normal leap unless you knew the larger picture of how they play into the issue.. just wouldn't seem normal. Walmart
imports the vast majority of it's product from china - a market with which one cannot compete on a cost level and win unless your cost level is lower than theirs. Basic, simple economics. The fact that a walmart uses that method of competing local players out of their own market causes ripples in economics that aren't apparent on their surface or immediately unless you understand that offshoring and outsourcing begets the same. You also have to see that a company the size of Walmart sets precident and by competition forces competitors to do the same thing to try to stay in business themselves. And Car companies buy product from companies that normally are not considered "automotive manufacturers." Thus, Walmart could affect the issue by precident, by example, by force of competition that causes a supplier of the automaker to lose standing or close, etc.
The problem of your "absurd" example is that it isn't "absurd". Walmart dictates price to its suppliers. And if walmart doesn't like the price of a supplier, they can kill the supplier as with Rubbermaid. If Rubbermaid supplies another manufacturer, then ripples flow through the market.
Simple cause and effect. And alot of vendors that sell to walmart also deal with vendors that sell product and raw materials to auto manufacturers, aircraft manufacturers, etc. There are too many ways Walmart's vast influence could play into this closing. You dismiss it as impossible. I didn't say they had anything to do with it directly. I merely offer that their actions could as easily be in part responsible just as HP and IBM outsourcing forced other computer support, manufacturers and suppliers to outsource causing a larger footprint of impact across the marketplace than one might suspect immediately. If you have a small plastics company in Kokomo, Indiana that supplies planter pots to Walmart and computer case faceplates to a computer company, what happens to the computer company when Walmart puts that plastics company out of business? That's absurd, right. Afterall, what affect could a plastics company have on a computer manufacturer... How much cloth is in the interior of a car and who makes it? How much plastic? How much silica? How many computer components? How much wire?
How much carpet and who supplies that? ...
As afore mentioned, if walmart subverts the market and gets by with it, why shouldn't the auto maker.. I don't dismiss the possible impact. I also don't look at your lack of attentiveness to such fine points as some grand conspiracy and lack of sophistication.. maybe lack of common sense and or experience; but, nobody's perfect. On the other hand, I guess things you hadn't considered might make you look at an opponent as whacked till you start thinking. Or you may just use such a charge as a rhetorical device in absence of any substantive or qualitatively useful argument. Things that make you go "hmmmm".
has anyone ever gotten a job from federal retraining programs?
after 9-11 i had like a $3000 voucher to go take classes for "retraining" ,all the institutions were interested in was the getting their hands on the voucher.
I ended up not using it and making 60k per year
You are in Iraq, I understand?
I disagree with Willie Green's economic point of view; however I respect him as a FReeper and thought that FReeper MikeinIraq's posting of cartoons bordered on childish behavior.
Yep, he's the stinkin' socialist SOB who authored the first Federal Income Tax back in 1913.
Every American taxpayer should curse his name on April 15.
well my point was indeed free traders were in power in 1941
I also am interested in the notion of trade as a weapon. We can use the threat of tariffs as effectively as we can the threat of military reprisal to achieve much of the same objectives.
I am flattered that a FR celebrity would respond to my post personally....kinda like meeting tom cruise
There was a federal income tax during the Civil War for a short time.
Hasn't worked much in Cuba and the democrats have failed with sanctions more often than not. Now what?
Yes, and one is the natural byproduct of the other. When the government could no longer fund itself on tariffs - because tariffs were eliminated* - they had to take money from the American people in the form of income taxes. Bastards.
* of course, if the federal government were smaller to begin with, it would be even less of an issue...
""I also am interested in the notion of trade as a weapon. We can use the threat of tariffs as effectively as we can the threat of military reprisal to achieve much of the same objectives.""
trade can indeed be used as a weapon , though I doubt youd capture anything stategic with a tariff.
BTW tariffs are much more preferable than quotas, which only end up giving the exporting nation a defacto cartel.
No, but you can make it easier. One of the reasons Saddam was unable to offer much resistance was because of the trade sanctions. If he had had the ability to buy his military hardware on the open market, resistance would have been much more.
When was the last time Cuba was significant economically? They are broke, starving, falling apart and a laughingstock. Now, they ARE communist, but so is Red China, and look how much THEY (the Chinese) have benefitted from "free trade" at our expense.
iam not so certain, we would have blocked any trade with iraq.
i think yuoll find that over the past 50 years the wage gap between the US and the rest of the world has narrowed not gotten larger.
Also low wages alone do not explain movement of jobs, if they did Africa would have all the jobs
...one of the reasons of which was to keep him (Saddam) down economically...
The "serious education" was meant to be fascitious (sp?).
Oh, and people take me too seriously. Like yourself.
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