. . . uh, if you say so. That is a whole can of worms in itself and I'm not going to comment further than saying I disagree.
Look, in very simple terms, I object to protective, selective taxes on any particular products that I may want to import. If I'm an aerospace manufacturer, it personally hurts me to have a 30% steel tariff. I do not want to support a domestic steel industry that is so outrageously inefficient that even the gargantuan American advantage in capital and technology cannot allow it to be competitive. The tariff arbitrarily increases my steel material costs by 30% than what I could otherwise get. All of the tax money raised is non-productive and most of it is wasted on illegitimate government programs.
An industry that requires a tariff is pathetic indeed. It's like a marathon runner asking for a headstart against a paraplegic. I don't care how cheap Mexicans work. Technology amplifies the productive potential of a skilled worker thousands of times. In order words, you can have a thousand or a million slave labor packing coal on their backs from place to place, but I couldn't care less, because I have a damn railroad, with an engineer, conductor, and mechanics. The skilled workers who aren't necessary to meet the profitable demand of a product are gainfully employed in the production of other, often new products.
This is why capitalism raises all boats and why the working poor of America live better than the nobility of Europe did 500 years. Capitalism allows, nay, demands the efficient and profitable deployment of technology and innovation. When people are economically free to trade and are protected by the Rule of Law, this we call capitalism and population numbers multiply until people just don't even care to have any more kids. When a select and powerful group of men have a monopoly on force and use it to control the economic liberty of people, this we call socialism, and populations shrink from famine and mass murder.
It is outright absurd that I am defending free markets on Free Republic! Back to your regularly scheduled program of tariffs illegitimately protecting favored workers.
America, through her history as a free and prosperous nation, has gained the lead, by an unbelievable margin, in capital accumulation and technological know-how. This know-how means the skill, education, and innovation to maximize the production of the individual American worker.
We have here an illiterate, uneducated, and unskilled foreigner who does not even speak English, and who works in a factory in a foreign country with a sub-standard infrastructure and legal system. If he is able to outproduce an American manufacturer, than that slothful manufacturer does not deserve to stay in business because he is not competitive -- wasteful and inefficient and worse, unproductive -- and he sure has hell does not deserve a subsidy in the form of a tax on my trade with his better competition. Hell no!
I for one recognize the gigantic advantage I gain simply by living in America and having access to enormous capital, knowledge, and the world's finest legal system. This is available to every single penniless American with nothing going for him but a sound mind and good health. If you're born into privilege of any sort you have that much more of a headstart. If you're so pathetic that you cannot use this to make something of yourself in America of all places than you merit no more or less than to be replaced by the foreigner who is productive despite his inferior circumstances. I view idleness as a sin and stupidity as a worse sin. I will strive with all of my might to succeed and the worst failure which is possible for me is to wind up with merely providing adequately for me and mine. You only impede my success by obstacles to free trade, and prolong your own failure.
As Americans, our rightful place is at the forefront of production, but only because we have earned it by being first and being most successful. As the rest of the world catches on, we continue improving. It's a race to the top, and we have a 200-year headstart that has made some folks complacent.
Gentlemen, this is the important point I want you to take away from all this: 50 and 100 years ago, American factory workers sure as hell did not have the opportunity for massage therapy. Today they do, because they are individually more productive. The marginal ones lobby for tariffs. The real wages of productive individuals (not a stagnant industry refusing to change) rise in proportion to their productivity. This is eminently obvious when you think of labor as a commodity in a market. They rise because each individual's labor is more valuable as he becomes more productive. The marginal workers, the ones who aren't as productive, are laid off and they persue other productive employment.
Angel Mills decided to persue massage therapy. Good on her. Shame on you for suggesting that instead the price of leather should increase 30% and the leather industry should stagnate until it's incompetent even at a 30% advantage.
But, but, what about national security? [chuckle]
It's not always a lack of productivity that causes a worker to be laid-off...sometimes it's just that they are in the wrong place, at the wrong time. No matter how productive they were, they now have nothing. The smart ones, energetic ones get into new jobs and careers, but at what cost? Looking at it in net terms, the worker with a new carrer will have to work a very, very long time... probably years, maybe a decade or two, before the recoop the cost of all that was lost during retraining, plus come back to a place where their wages equalled the amount they were being paid when they were laid-off. In terms of intangibles, like health care, those will probably never be as good for the worker. But in the meantime, inflation increases, prices increase, and the real buying power of our heroic worker DECREASES. Even if they can get back to their previous level of wages within five years, it's very likely prices have increased 10 to 15% in that time, still making for a net loss in purchasing power. Overall, decreasing wages are very, very unhealthy from an economic standpoint. We are seeing wages fall or stagnate all over the United States these past five years, which means that eventually the steam in our economic engine will be spent, and the economy will head south faster than Jesse Jackson to a television camera.
Angel Mills decided to persue massage therapy. Good on her. Shame on you for suggesting that instead the price of leather should increase 30% and the leather industry should stagnate until it's incompetent even at a 30% advantage.
I'm sorry, I did not suggest the price of leather should be increased, and it's not always a matter of the prices of goods or materials that's a factor, but rather the price of LABOR.
Labor prices are, for various reasons that I won't go into, very, very rigid. They go up easily, but not down. So when costs go up, or earnings go down, people are let go, rather than wages reduced. Right now we are in a situation as a nation where cheap labor is in vast supply overseas, and it's cheaper to do just about anything anywhere else than it is in the USA, with some exceptions. So companies are tripping over themselves moving production, engineering, information technology, and just about anything else not nailed down to overseas locations.
So, explain to me, if you could, how does this create a net benefit to the United States of America? Unless you own a company involved in import/export, where does one go to make a decent buck?
Other than healthcare, what field should I tell my children to get into so that they can enjoy at least a middle-class existance? What industry or career field is growing, looking for more people to fill it's ranks? Massage therapy?