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Building our widget in China reduces the cost to Americans to buy our product, while raising the economic status of China, that will eventually lead to their workers becoming as expensive as ours, and production will return here. In the end, everybody wins. We get stuff for less (a form of wealth in itself). The Chinese become wealthier and more dependent on trade with us and makes them less likely to go to war against us. Capitalism is a good thing, even across borders. Read some Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams on this issue. They're brighter than both of us put together about this.

Very nice summation of the issue at hand and I agree 100% (especially about Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams being very bright).

Whenever I see these types of threads, I get the impression that many of these alarmists and protectionists really want the U.S. to adopt economic policies that keep other countries (like China and India) down.

I do not think this is a wise move. If you analyze all the major wars during our civilization, it involves countries that have been kept down financially which opens the door for dictatorships and oppression to take root. Nazi Germany is a perfect example of this phenomenon. The Nazis were able to take over the country because of the very severe economic conditions imposed on them by the terms of the Armistice after World War I (which was supposedly the "war to end all wars.").

Note that the United States learned their lesson after WW2. Instead of forcing Germany and Japan to accept humiliating terms, instead, the United States decided to help them rebuild their economies which enabled them to quickly rejoin the world community as prosperous nations. The end result was that instead of Japan and Germany being embittered enemies that were looking to "even the score" with us at some later date, they ended up being among our strongest allies and trading partners. (Some may argue we did too good a job in that respect but I am not among them.)

I believe that once the world community embraces captitalism and basic American values, we will truly achieve the world peace that the liberals are always dreaming about.

I probably shouldn't even say American values because the United States is truly a melting pot of all nations. Despite all our "problems", we are still the nation that the world wants to emulate and emigrate to. We could solve our immigration woes by helping other countries be more like us in the first place. And we can do this by continuing to trade with them and in the process, we create a global web of customers in which to sell our goods and services to.