Posted on 10/04/2007 7:07:18 AM PDT by SJackson
I've seen a lot of opinion polling, but my jaw dropped when I saw this result from our special NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll of Republicans in advance of next week's presidential candidate debate sponsored by CNBC, MSNBC and the WSJ. By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president.
Six in 10 Republicans in the poll agreed with a statement that free trade has been bad for the U.S. and said they would agree with a Republican candidate who favored tougher regulations to limit foreign imports. That represents a challenge for Republican candidates who generally echo Mr. Bush’s calls for continued trade expansion, and reflects a substantial shift in sentiment from eight years ago.
"It’s a lot harder to sell the free-trade message to Republicans," said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with Democratic counterpart Peter Hart.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Government can ensure they have employment?
Their desire for 'assurance' will cause them to vote in a Democrat-Socialist landslide once the imports or lack of employment threatens their world.
Because democrats have such a strong track record with respect to matters of the economy? Republicans, and their free(r) trade message, will have controlled the White House for 20 out of the past 28 years in 2008.
Just human nature.
It's human nature to make our country more like France?
We'll see what happens in Nov-08. Humans are a mass of wants, needs and even contradictions. The Republicans have done well in keeping the White House as their message of "If-you-vote-for-them-Democrats-they're-gonna-make-you-abort-all-your-babies". But as liberal Rockefeller type "R" politicians move into the main stream of "R" politics, that bugaboo is loosing it's appeal. I can't see a dime's worth of difference between Guliani and Hilary, yet he's not doing too bad in the polls
But if you think Joe Sixpack voter is in love with free trade theories, well, we'll see during the next down turn.
The free trade crowd has been fortunate that the largest single beneficiary of our trade policy has been a Communist dictatorship, something the Democrats admire. Hence, they made common cause with the globalist corporations.
While I'm first and for most a capitalist, it has to be watched like a hawk flying over a hen house.
Do a bit of research and see who built factories, suitable for military goods production in nations diametrically opposed to our way of life during the run up to WWII. (Hint: He had his HQ in Michigan)
Good ol Joesixpack will vote his perceived economic interest every time. We have been in 'boom times', but no one can guarantee that will be the case.
To lower costs, a remake of the industry is necessary. I am not sure how the industry could be remade without a champion and lots of capitol to overcome barriers to entry. The existing industry is opposed to lowering costs and remaking itself.
My solution does not involve outsourcing. It involves commoditizing the product and unbundling services. The outsourcing model will not work in higher education because the industry is not competitive and has no interest in being competitive. The solution must come from outside the existing industry with a new approach and focus on lowering costs with improved quality.
Did you make the same currency bet four years ago as Warren Buffet? A simple yes or no will suffice
I bought foreign currency stocks and funds.
The budget deficit does have something to do with the trade deficit in that when a nation such as China, with whom we have a large and growing trade deficit, is using our budget deficit (in the form of debt sold to finance that budget deficit) to thwart attempts to change trade policies that might reduce our trade deficit, eg, their monetary peg to the dollar.
Here’s another little axiom you should add to your “laws” about economics:
There is no free trade unless there is a free market in currencies among trading partners, or all trading partners are using the same currency base standard (eg, gold, or some universal external base).
There can exist (but doesn’t have to exist) free trade among nations with freely traded currencies. Absent floating and freely traded currencies, there is no such thing as “free trade” — and I don’t care how many pages are in the trade agreements.
With China's currency peg, for all intents and purposes we are using the same currency. Does that mean you just disproved your own point?
Then you favor policies that ruin the US dollar and boost your foreign stock portfolio. No wonder you love trade deficits.
Then you favor policies that ruin the US dollar and boost your foreign stock portfolio. No wonder you love trade deficits.
“What specifically would you like me to prove? That we’re richer today than we were 30 years ago? I can do that but all you need to do is look around you for the evidence.”
Again, you sanctimoniously demand proof while providing none yourself. If you don’t know that top earners in the US have seen their earnings increase faster than lower wage earners, then you shouldn’t be in this discussion. It’s been shown in gov’t stats for a number of years.
Everyone knows we’re richer now than 30 or more years ago and it has little to do with trade policy. It’s women in the workforce, more and new products and services that generate economic activity, a doubled population (depending on where you start), improved productivity due to technological advances, more citizens with advanced education. Not much to do with free trade.
This discussion is about free trade, not about total economic growth.
And, class warfare can be waged from the top or bottom of income earners. The top wants to influence government policies to benefit them (and they have), and the lower earners want to influence policies to benefit them.
I try to stick to reality and ignore those spreading doom and gloom, if that's what you mean.
I have seen infrastructure decay. I have seen signs of lack of personal wealth on a fairly large scale.
Really? Have you? If you haven't been to Ecuador or Africa or another third-world country, you have no concept of "lack of personal wealth". Even unemployed or underemployed Americans are still far better off than the truly poor of the world.
Too many consider such things as having to drive a used car (or two), or their kids having to share a bedroom, or not being able to afford health insurance or to eat out very often as a hardship. I hope that's not the kind of supposed individual suffering you're talking about, or you have zero sympathy from me.
I've been unemployed. I've been laid off, more than once. I'm not some upper-management, silver spoon dweeb who's out of touch. I know something about the subject.
But I didn't expect the government to fix my problems for me. I didn't cry out to the heavens and demand that this great injustice be avenged. I took the best paying job I could find, which happened to be construction. Then I went to work for a tire shop, for a little more money. I went back to college and took some more classes. I did the best I could for a while. After a couple of years, I got a break and got my current job. All that without any change to government trade policies.
The point is, there are all kinds of reasons people can lose jobs. Outsourcing is only the latest in a long line of threats. Mechanization, automation and computerization have all reduced payrolls. Technologies come along that entirely eliminate big swaths of industries. Cell phones decimated parts of the 2-way radio business, for example.
None of those influences are bad things, in the big picture. On an individual scale, every one of them has caused layoffs, business failures and all the accompanying pain. Does that make those advances bad? No. The fact that a large-scale shift causes some people to lose their jobs does not necessarily make that shift a Bad Thing.
When an industry isn’t unionized, you don’t lose whole segments, you lose individual members. But you knew that.
You can lose whole sectors or individual members either way. My point in adding the union exception is that unionization is a strong influence all by itself that can push employment decisions entirely independent of other economic policies. Unionized industries have lost lots of jobs, not because of normal market changes or government policies, but because the unions themselves make further employment unsustainable in many cases.
You are exteremely disingenuous with your posts.
No, you are extremely presumptuous to say that I meant something else by what I wrote.
You point to employment numbers as if it were absolute evidence. But you must know that someone who once was a design engineer who’s now working at Lowe’s is considered employed.
No, I point to unemployment numbers because they tell the story of the economy as a whole. You, on the other hand, want to judge a national trade policy based on the individual experiences of a relatively few people. Who is being skewed here?
To judge the national trade policy, we should see how it affects the whole nation's economy and employment picture, not just your neighbors.
Underemployment isn’t a statistic.
On a national level, it is. That's what a discussion of national free-trade policies has to address. A national policy can't be custom tailored to make every single person's situation work out for the best.
I happen to be employed, and I’ll survive the Hillary! presidency. But unlike what I see of your posts, I do have concern for fellow Americans, and my family members.
I have that concern as well. But that concern doesn't translate into attempts to solve all their problems with national-level policy changes. That's a core Democrat approach to life: What ever your problems, the government should fix them.
Again, I'm surprised how many otherwise conservative people are so gung-ho to turn to the government to solve their employment problems.
His column is exactly what I was referring to - by offering everything to American shoppers from other countries who do not offer us the same deals we will soon, if we don't already have a situation that is irreversible.
That out that one word and you are surprised?
Notice who controls the House and Senate lately?
Not simplistic, but simplified. It's simplified to zero in on the core subject. If trade "deficits" are bad, then they should be bad in every case. If not, then there's something other than the "deficit" that's really the problem.
By looking at a simplified analogy, we can see if a particular issue is really a problem or not. That's why the grocery store question works so well.
It really has no basis in any discussion about the advantages / disadvantages of trade where the manufacturing standards are different. This is why there is no such thing as “free” trade when dealing with a country where the standards are different. When the rules for manufacturing are different from one country to another.....there is an “unfair” imbalance....and we get what we have now. Loss of jobs in manufacturing.
OK, now we're looking at something other than the actual trade "deficit". The problem might be that our trade partners have different standards than we do.
Let's simplify that issue with an analogy. If I own a business, say I'm a car manufacturer, and I do business with a supplier who makes tires, and that supplier pays his employees less than I pay mine, should I stop buying from him? What if I offer better benefits, or pollute the environment less than my tire supplier. Should that be cause for the government to bar me from further business with him?
Or, extend it a little. Should California be banned from trade with Wyoming because Wyoming doesn't have the same labor or environmental standards as California? Should I be forced to buy only Wyoming-made tires? (There aren't any...)
Have the economies of California or Wyoming suffered because of the difference in standards?
If you're talking about safety standards, I agree with you. Imported goods should have to meet exactly the same standards as domestic goods. There must be a level playing field with regard to regulations.
“None of which had much, if anything, to do with trade policy? You’re funny. For someone who wants us to believe he knows so much about how a successful economy works you certainly have an odd way of trying to prove it. LOL!”
You’re just plain ridiculous. You’ve provided nothing to support your contention the free trade has made these huge contributions to increased wealth in the past thirty or more years, yet you continually make assertion after assertion as if you’ve provided iron clad proof.
Nope, it doesn't. Maybe you should ask someone other than yourself. :-)
Just because the word "deficit" is used in both terms does not mean they're related.
“Outsourcing is not a matter of trade barriers. Higher education today requires personal contact with professors either in the classroom, office hours, or online interaction. The delivered product is not a commodity today. Foreign professors who teach here receive the same compensation as legal residents.”
I’m not saying what does or does not currently prevent outsourcing of teaching jobs. I’m saying, like in other areas, the rules of the game in higher education can be changed to make use of outsourcing. And, again, savings would come from paying professors salary scale of their home country (India), not US scale. They wouldn’t be teaching and living here, so would not receive US pay, the same as for outsourced engineering, computer programming, accounting, radiologist, etc., and other jobs done in India for US companies or institutions.
Members of other institutions or companies presented many reasons why their work could not be outsourced, but those reasons were ignored and outsourcing has been utilized. Rules and traditions can be changed.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner! :-)
Economic “laws” have no such consequences.
This is where you're mistaken. Thomas Sowell (Basic Economics) has done an admirable job of explaining precisely that point. The laws of economics do accurately predict the outcome of government policies, regardless of the country or its government.
Read the book. Really. It's very, very good.
Economic “laws” have consequences that are the outcome of a set of human behaviors and relationships between individuals or groups of humans. Not every person will receive the same outcome every single time.
True, but that's only because the variables involved are large and partially uncontrollable. That doesn't invalidate the law in question.
To a lesser degree, even experiments with gravity will have some amount of error due to uncontrollable variables (variations in the rotation of the earth, friction due to air, temperature, etc.)
In the macro-view, the laws of economics quite accurately and consistently predict outcomes. They can't predict a specific dollar amount of rise in demand for a specific commodity, but they can (and do) predict that increasing the available supply of that commodity will cause its price to decrease.
It's more generalized, but it's law nonetheless.
Again, specifically, what would you like me to prove?
If you don’t know that top earners in the US have seen their earnings increase faster than lower wage earners, then you shouldn’t be in this discussion. It’s been shown in gov’t stats for a number of years.
Well, of course incomes for the top quintile have gone up faster than lower wage earners. They derive more of their income from capital gains. If you could prove that the bottom two, three or four quintiles have not been experiencing real growth in their incomes you'd do it. Obviously you cannot.
Not much to do with free trade.
Because you say so? Is that why the more protectionist countries always have lower per-capita GDP's?
This discussion is about free trade, not about total economic growth.
You're the one who's challenging your opponent's understanding of economics and trade. Maybe if you answered as many questions as you ask this discussion would be more productive.
And, class warfare can be waged from the top or bottom of income earners. The top wants to influence government policies to benefit them (and they have), and the lower earners want to influence policies to benefit them.
Sounds like a good argument for keeping government out of the equation as much as possible, which is exactly what my argument has been throughout this thread.
No, it doesn’t. Their peg allows them to continue to export goods to the US regardless of externalities that cause currencies to fluctuate.
It also is allowing them to export commodity-based inflation to the US economy, and there’s not a thing the Federal Reserve can do to stop that. If we were using the “same currency”, then actions taken by the Federal Reserve would ripple through into the Chinese yuan. Since it is clearly obvious that actions by the Fed do not do this, there is no basis in fact for “all intents and purposes we are using the same currency.”
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