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 ...
Do you have any evidence of this other than your imagination?
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).
Hogwash.
The relative values of the currencies are adjusted at the time of the transaction. That's what's known as the "exchange rate".
Wrong. We have become much richer by getting lots of "stuff" such as plasma TVs by borrowing money from foreigners to import from them. It's a ridiculous way to be "rich" but most Americans seem to be impressed with the results. Same as some primitive African tribe when Sahib comes around and sells them knives and axes.
What crap. Japan and Korea are doing very well and China's GDP is growing near 10% each year
You are the most ignorant kind of free trade ideologue. You just can't let go of what some college prof stuffed into your young skull full of mush. Or maybe you picked it up elsewhere
What crap. Japan and Korea are doing very well and China's GDP is growing near 10% each year
You are the most ignorant kind of free trade ideologue. You just can't let go of what some college prof stuffed into your young skull full of mush. Or maybe you picked it up elsewhere
sorry was for mase
While I have great respect Tom Sowell (and genuine appreciation for his work), again, economic “laws” and physical laws cannot be compared. (And I’m not brushing off your recommendation for his book — I generally obtain and read all of his books, but I’ve been rather busy this farming season and have not had the time to pursue such reading).
The point where even such august economists as Dr. Sowell run afoul in this comparison is this:
When I toss someone out of a second-story window, the results will be immediate and repeatable.
When some government/business/sector violates some economic “law,” they have a wide variety of ways they can try to ameliorate the consequences. If we were to compare this to the gravity/second-story-window idea, it would be as if you were able to slow down your fall by flapping your arms really hard — or, better yet, hiring someone else to flap their arms really hard somewhere else as a proxy for you, to cushion your fall.
eg, macroeconomics: we know that the current account deficit is unsustainable. We have learned economists who have been predicting that this violation of the laws of macro-econ will catch up with us. Yet, through one contrivance and another, we’ve been able to forestall the reckoning for years. One day, we *will* have to pay the piper for this.
Another example: the whole dot-bomb economy. We have all sorts of economists talking smack about “The New Economy.” Everyone who had a grain of common sense knew that what was really happening was that the dot-bomb companies were able to engage in this “new economy” for only so long as they were allowed to print stock options, but not be forced to expense them. Finally, the accounting boards demanded that reality be pursued, and the economic model of the late 90’s in Silicon Valley imploded, taking huge chunks of investor capital with it. If the laws of economics were as immutable as the physical laws of the universe, those dot-bomb companies would never have made it past their first round of capital, because they would have been out of cash.
This is the sort of thing I’m talking about. Clever manipulation of the laws of accounting, finance, etc — allow these “laws” of economics to be skirted - maybe not forever, but for extended periods of time.
Whereas if you flapped your arms *really* hard on the way down from the second story, we’d need a timepiece with sub-millisecond precision to measure the piffling difference in enforcement of the law of nature.
Economic “laws” may eventually catch up with people, industries and even entire nations... but the definition of “eventually” can stretch out for quite a long time (eg, more than a lifetime) and create whole industries and governmental policies in the meantime, who have as their reasons for existence the skirting of these “laws.” If these economic laws are suspended from delivering their consequences for an extended period of time (eg, a lifetime), do they actually exist for those who live during their suspension?
I would argue not.
This, I would posit, is the reason why we have the problems enshrined within Social Security/Medicare. It is an economic law that Ponzi schemes eventually collapse. But if you keep growing the number of people at the base of the scheme, the people at the top see no impending failure. At some point, however, the law of large numbers kicks in and the failure will happen. But for the lifetime of those who got in early and died before the penalty phase.... that law might as well not have existed. See where I’m going with this?
“Again, specifically, what would you like me to prove?”
Prove that free trade has made a major contribution to the increase of economic wealth in the past thirty years or so years, or since the 1950s. Not sure what your first time period was.
“* The new economy has not distributed prosperity equally, in contrast to previous periods of economic growth, so inequality in lifetime wage growth has risen rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s. The gap between the high and low achievers has widened by some 20 percent not because those at the top are doing better, but because so many of these men are now doing worse.”
If you don’t know this, I wonder where you’ve been living the past twenty or so years. I’ve found some very long articles and nothing that gives good summaries. Here’s the link the above comes from:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-02/uow-npo022002.php
Maybe I’ll find something more in summary form later.
If you put a large truck of Nintendo Wii game consoles in the parking lot of Wal-Mart with a large "Free Nintendo Wii here!" sign on the side on a Saturday afternoon, the results will be immediate and repeatable.
When some government/business/sector violates some economic “law,” they have a wide variety of ways they can try to ameliorate the consequences. If we were to compare this to the gravity/second-story-window idea, it would be as if you were able to slow down your fall by flapping your arms really hard — or, better yet, hiring someone else to flap their arms really hard somewhere else as a proxy for you, to cushion your fall.
Or, you can modify the consequences of gravity by giving your poor victim a safety harness and rope, or by putting a large, inflatable cushion on the ground. Those are real, common modifications to the consequences of gravity. They do not alter the reality of the law.
The consequences of changes in macroeconomics are slow in coming. There is economic momentum, just as there is physical momentum. But the timing of the consequences does not define the existence of a law.
Thomas Sowell's book proved precisely that point. The laws of economics are the same no matter where you go, and no matter who you are or what you believe.
How come we are building NAFTA super highways to bring in more Chinese crap via Mexico ports. The thinking is that our trade deficit is sustainable and capable of being expanded
Squanderville versus Thriftville (Warren Buffet)
fortune ^ | oct 2003 | Warren Buffet
Posted on 01/07/2004 11:35:03 PM EST by dennisw
By Warren E. Buffett, FORTUNEI'm about to deliver a warning regarding the U.S. trade deficit and also suggest a remedy for the problem. But first I need to mention two reasons you might want to be skeptical about what I say. To begin, my forecasting record with respect to macroeconomics is far from inspiring. For example, over the past two decades I was excessively fearful of inflation. More to the point at hand, I started way back in 1987 to publicly worry about our mounting trade deficits -- and, as you know, we've not only survived but also thrived. So on the trade front, score at least one "wolf" for me. Nevertheless, I am crying wolf again and this time backing it with Berkshire Hathaway's money. Through the spring of 2002, I had lived nearly 72 years without purchasing a foreign currency. Since then Berkshire has made significant investments in -- and today holds -- several currencies. I won't give you particulars; in fact, it is largely irrelevant which currencies they are. What does matter is the underlying point: To hold other currencies is to believe that the dollar will decline.
You’re clearly not up on the current trade issues between the PRC and the US.
Here’s some reading for you to do, from the pro-free-trade Forbes, of all places:
http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2007/08/08/afx3997945.html
and Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601009&sid=a9_E9yIQIBAU&refer=bond
Now, NB that the PRC doesn’t even need to sell off US Treasuries to implement a retaliatory policy. At the rate of our budget deficit, all they need to do is stop buying US government debt. They buy so much of it, that without their buying, interest rates would have to move upwards substantially to attract replacement buyers.
The PRC used to peg the Yuan to the $US at something like 8.11:1. Now the “floating” exchange rate is about 7.5:1. If it moved against the $US the way it should, the Yuan would be much, much more valuable than that. Witness the move of a truly freely traded currency, like the Euro or loonie. The loonie is now at parity with the $US, a move of nearly 15% this year, and that’s an indication of how weak the dollar has become.
The IMF reckons that if the Yuan were truly floated, it would be trading at about 2.095 yuan to $1.00, not 7.51:1.
The PRC continues to peg the yuan, now to a “basket” of foreign currencies, and it is allowed a very, very narrow float of something like 0.3%.
A more accurate analogy of government interference with economic laws would be to say that you could alter the effect of the law of gravity by altering time, and therefore alter acceleration. That’s what is happening when governments play with the monetary base to get out of the laws.
Or, in the case of a country like Russia, they repudiate their debt.
My point is that all the doom mongering is BS. But you are correct that many things have happened since we had soup lines. Reagan and others opened up trade more than before, and we are considerably more affluent because of it.
In Texas, the governor wants new toll roads so that he can spend their highway money on other stuff while collecting new taxes from the private companies that will operate them. Of course all such money comes from the citizens, one way or another, so in the end it's just a tax increase.
Why would the government give a rip about NAFTA when they can bring in more money from the people?
“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.”
You assume too much, you don’t know where I’ve been. And I would wager more than a dollar or two I’ve been to more places, and seen more than you.
You have your view, I have mine. I post in an effort to soften the approach of people like you. God intended for us to care about each other. People by their nature want to be cared for, even if they don’t deserve it. Here in our country, we have the power to totally ruin what has been built. So, when the free trade crowd starts espousing things that I see as destructive, I attempt to reason. Most, like you, don’t want to hear it.
I know the mantra of the free traders:
** Unrestrained free trade is nirvanna, (forget that the partners have different constraints, that is, China doesn’t have EPA, OSHAA, etc.)
** It’s every man for himself. If you are incapable for whatever reason, you deserve what comes your way. Do not compel charity, it’s up to the giver. If the giver has a stone cold heart, tough. I think people should have to pull their way, but I also think there are mitigating circumstances, and not everyone is suited for college. Before you start, I was lucky enough to be college material, I have a degree.
** This is a transition, retrain, re-educate, suck it up. A degree is easily $40k now. Kind of hard to start over, especially for someone who is mid 40s.
** If you lose your job to an H1B, or to offshoring, you weren’t valuable enough. I find that obnoxious. Much of the infrastructure that businesses in America use to increase their wealth was here before their company. They use the wealth of our nation, then globalize, forgetting where they came from, or what they used to develop.
** Americans aren’t special. The people in India and China need jobs too. Right. Americans aren’t special until a company needs Americans to bleed to protect their interest.
We have significant differences. But 2 things are going to happen eventually:
#1 - Hillary Clinton will become president. That won’t make me happy, but it will make the free traders less happy.
#2 - One day, China will follow Venezeula’s lead and nationalize companies over there. This I will enjoy. I’ll love to hear the American companies scream about protecting their interests.
In the meantime, watch for glycol in the toothpaste, I hear it’s bad for your eyesight.
incorrect but nice try
** If you lose your job to an H1B, or to offshoring, you weren’t valuable enough. I find that obnoxious. Much of the infrastructure that businesses in America use to increase their wealth was here before their company. They use the wealth of our nation, then globalize, forgetting where they came from, or what they used to develop.”
All very true. We have some “citizens” who act as if the lion’s share of the benefits of being an American should go to them. They forget, or are just too dishonest to acknowledge, that the opportunities here have been won, and built up over a couple of centuries, with people from all classes and educational levels contributing to the accumulated value and possibilities available to an American citizen.
But yeah, when their interests need to be defended with blood and courage, they won’t be anywhere around, but they will certainly be counting on those whose economic prospects they cared nothing about before, and still care nothing about.
And, no, no one is proposing socialism or anything like it. Just an economic system that provides reasonable rewards for all those who work, rather than allowing trans-nationals to cut the earnings of some by importing vast amounts of legal and illegal labor, and moving any job they can to the cheapest labor they can find around the globe.’
#276 intended for brownsfan #274.
And all that fighting & dieing and shooting stuff?
Well that's for the 'lower classes'; i.e. Dick Chaney (just for an example) and a S/L of others now enjoying the benefits of their decisions not to risk their fanny in the military.
And they have for years enjoyed the benefits of living in this great land.... but at night, when they slide under the sheets, just before they close their eyes, they know what they are.
Free traders are Hillary’s best friend. Same for the retarded businessmen who love open borders. They hasten the day of Hillary because when things turn to shit people flee to their last shelter from the storm. Which is US Gubbermint
We can’t have the trade deficits and nation debt that we currently have call ourselves affluent.
And, I’m not even speaking of the sub-prime bomb that is roiling western economies other than our own, because of free trade.
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