Posted on 02/08/2009 7:36:34 AM PST by LowCountryJoe
[Snip] Critics of China say it is keeping the yuan undervalued to gain an advantage in the international marketplace. A cheaper yuan makes Chinese goods less expensive in the United States and American goods more expensive in China. As a result, American producers find it harder to compete with Chinese imports in the United States and to sell their own exports in China.
There is, however, another side to the story. The loss to American producers comes with a gain to the many millions of American consumers who prefer to pay less for the goods they buy.
The situation is much the same as when the price of imported oil falls, as it has done in recent months. Domestic oil producers may see lower profits, but American consumers are better off every time they fill up their tanks. Consumers similarly gain when a cheap yuan reduces the prices of T-shirts and televisions imported from China.[ /snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
...policy by the NYT
Let's outsource your highly-compensated job to India to save money.
Then when you change fields, let's outsource your new job too.
After four or five tries, then we'll ask whether the short-term dislocation of outsourcing is worth it.
Hint: The Third World countries should have done it by developing their own economies first (an indigineous middle class which produced for and consumed from their own country), rather than just stealing US jobs, selling the goods to *us*, and pocketing the difference.
That would have been true decoupling.
Cheers!
Great points!
Free Traders are becoming like Global Warming people...their theories do not stand up to real-world situations...yet come up with even wilder things to justify why their failed beliefs work
The Third World should have developed their own economies and not based it on US wealth-redistributing by bad trade deals
Of course, the cheaper goods could come in handy....after all those unemployed Americans from Free Trade will have to watch how they spemd their unemployment checks ;-)
The economic catastrophe we are involved in is directly related to the loss of American jobs and American manufacturing capacity overseas, frequently to countries which are actively hostile to America - like Communist Red China and the OPEC monopoly.
Trade with other nations should be based on an equal playing field with American strategic and economic interests of primary concern. There is no way American workers can compete with slave labor in Asia without reducing themselves to their level and rolling back generations of progress towards a better life style for most Americans - a life style which has made us the envy of the world.
Both the Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in conspiring with their international corporate buddies to pull this off, and they have even linked One Worldism with it. Their ultimate goal is to undermine our culture, our language, and our borders - and they are well on the way towards that goal.
If we were ever involved in a major war again, we simply lack the industrial capacity to produce necessary war material on our home soil.
This entire situation is a total disgrace and I don't care how many economic wizards the opposite side pulls out of the closet to try and defend this nonsense on theoretical grounds.
It is similar to the manipulation of the international energy markets by the OPEC conglomerate and their international oil company buddies.
Unless American conservatives can successfully separate themselves from the uncontrolled capitalist robber barons which have helped create this mess, we are facing an eventual take over of our economic and political system by the same kind of run-away socialists who keep getting elected in western Europe.
Regardless of all the fine economic theories of people who support unregulated capitalism, when voters lose their jobs they will vote for any dangerous demagogue who promises massive government aid to provide them with jobs and income - as they already DID so in the last election.
We need another political party. Both parties have betrayed America and the basic ideals of the Founding fathers.
Spoken like a true top-down, central-planning type. Maybe it’s because Mankiw’s knowledge of Economics is sound that this let’s him maintain his job of teaching Economics by those in a better decision-making position to evaluate what he brings to the education-table. If Mankiw were from India — and knew what he currently does — I have no doubt that he would be imported here; his textbook is widely used in academics...not that you’d know anything of it.
????
Please explain.
If Mankiw were from India — and knew what he currently does — I have no doubt that he would be imported here; his textbook is widely used in academics...not that you’d know anything of it.
I wasn't referring to his textbook, nor to his credentials, but to the lies behind globalism.
Maybe you missed this.
IBM is shipping US workers overseas to do their jobs overseas -- no word yet (wink, nudge) on whether they will be paid US salaries or local salaries.
I work at another company doing the same thing.
Such actions are a proof that the "no qualified Americans" was a baldfaced lie, done from greed and lemming-like bahaviour on the part of the CEOs.
Also it proves that the tale of gazillions of Indians with IQ's of 600+, who would eagerly lead US corporations to a new land of eternal profit without costs, was a lie.
The problem with protectionism is that the US is the main country NOT doing enough of it -- with regards to jobs, industries, and intellectual property.
Cheers!
Outsourcing is destroying our life style and our economy.
Go get him Grey Whiskers!!
I worked for Uncle Sam for over a decade and spent most of that time overseas. I had first hand, and repeated exposure to how our trading “partners”, even many good allies, are taking us to the cleaners when it comes to trade. They cheat in many many ways. We are getting robbed and simultaneously having a big party selling off what is left of our economy in return for a final cheap goods fix. But the bill is coming due.
I’m all for free trade. As long as it is FAIR trade. We must be intelligent about it. If you think we can sustain ourselves as a nation without producing real wealth and without a manufacturing base you’re nuts.
Protectionism is patriotism in war and in business. Protecting American citizens is the operative aim to justify having a country.
I will never understand this.
Most economists these days would not know the meaning of a true “free market”...since the majority are tenured professors at government-funded schools....and most private colleges and universities take $$$ in government grants
The ultimate for any Free Trade economist is to have his position outsourced to India or China...where we definitely can find economists who support a Globalist agenda....at much less cost.
Of course, those economists would be whining like liberal socialists then....
So many of these economic theorists ignore basic things like national GDP, consumer spending, supply and demand, etc....and many of their own theories contradict some of their other theories
Good points....
Its like the ones who preach the mantra of Thomas Sowell....who pretty much subscribes to the line of (quote from your post):
Foreign Protectionism = Good
US Protectionism = Bad
In fact....the Euros are all now upset with UK PM Gordon Brown...because he dared to lower UK VAT 10%....which means those same Davos crowd crying “protectionism” are now upset because one of their own no longer wants to “protect”
We definitely have a problem with deficits but simple trade wars will not fix it. Back in 1970s we had lots of printed money, govt jobs and little imports and it didnt work out well. It was a bad time, unemployment and inflation. We need an exporting industry and we need to compete and that means there is no Santa Claus, the party is over. The trade war/tarrifs (ie taxes) idea will backfire. GWB tried it with steel and it killed more american jobs than it created.
I suppose this works if your entire economy is based solely on consumption, but if anything the state of current affairs shows that this is not sustainable.
The idea that we "need" an exporting industry is something the globalists have been parroting for the past 40-years. The "need" was CREATED as a Cold War weapon, and it didn't have to be (and shouldn't have been) continued after the fall of the USSR. Before that we were a successful nation with a small fraction of our GDP and middle-class in any way tied to import/export. When so many foreign nations are tied into the US economy so heavily they become the guaranteed losers in any trade war and they know it. The threat of "trade war" by other nations is a BLUFF as we can do massively more damage to them than they can do to us..AND THEY KNOW IT. All it takes is a President and Congress with balls and the path of "free trade" that the USA is taking, that was the overwhelming cause of the deteroriation of the British Empire to the state it's in now, will start to reverse. As with anything it can't be reversed suddenly. Protectionism has to be phased in slowly in the same way the policies of "free trade" were. A good start would be an across-the-board 17.76% revenue tariff.
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