Posted on 04/30/2013 6:18:19 PM PDT by expat_panama
The problem mostly lies with the people who insist that, when you trade your money for an imported good, you add to the national debt. And they're serious.
So remember that the next time you buy a Nikon--the national debt is your fault, and not the federal government's.
That's the point: if you are a protectionist, you want to punish me for drinking Heineken. So, rest easy, we agree about nothing.
you get worked up over nothing. i’m a heinekin drinker myself. last night i had a box of heinekin while i was burning some of my property to hopefully kill ticks.
which leads me to another point - chinese crap should be banned. how the hell does an iron tooth rake break. oh, but is was cheap.
lack of punctuation due to eating and typing.
You’re an example of why I no longer find the “free trade” argument even remotely persuasive any more.
Even when I go to the authoritative source of trade policy, you still won’t believe that it’s a lopsided deal. You free trade guys are like the university PhD’s who advocate socialism. Sure, it’s never been a success anywhere. Sure, Stalin and Mao starved 10’s of millions to their deaths. Sure, those of us who have been opponents of socialism can point to piles of bodies and pyramids of skulls.
But socialism would work “if only we implemented it correctly.”
Same deal with “free trade.” Sure, we’re obliterating entire industries. Suuuure, we’re shipping boatloads of cash offshore in the world’s largest and longest trade deficits, which economists have no ideas on when, how or how badly it will end. Sure, there’s been no average household income growth in the last 10 years. Sure, we’re funding communists, who are not our friends, to the point where they can expand their military to become a regional superpower. Sure, we’ve put ourselves in a ridiculous position where we’re now putting our tactical military data traffic on ChiCom satellites.
http://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-signed-10m-deal-chinese-satellite-support-u-113030799.html
But “free trade” is the sexy idea you’re going to ride into the ground. Just like those university PhD’s and students who wear stupid t-shirts with Che’s picture emblazoned on it have been riding the dead horse of socialism into the ground.
For my part, I used to be a “free trade” advocate. I was a big “free trade” advocate in the 90’s. Wrote letters to Congress, championed the idea, blah, blah, blah. But I’m not an ideologue; when new data shows me that an idea isn’t working, I change my mind. I now liken “free trade” people to pilots who will fly an aircraft into terrain because they put their trust in some moving map GPS system with a beautiful LCD display and blinky lights... while refusing to look out the window and noticing that the rocks and mountain goats are getting rather large.
The data are now pretty unequivocal: “free trade” has enriched lots of people... but very few of them are here in the US.
I’m an American first. I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about whether people off-shore get richer, or whether they’re eating dirt. It’s really Not My Problem. We have enough problems of our own. For example, the economic well being of my countrymen is now my direct problem. The reason why the Fed is punishing savers, the reason why we’re running a trillion-dollar welfare state, is because the US economy has been hollowed out and exported to other countries. In an additional fit of stupidity, our political “leaders” are seeking to import millions of dumb-as-rocks immigrants into the US, when we couldn’t employ them all even if we melted down every backhoe and excavator in the land and turned them into shovels to create jobs digging ditches.
I’m no longer a free trader because I can see the writing on the wall. The nation’s economy isn’t able to produce jobs any more, because the “new economy” model of passing around bits of paper has a very marginal economic multiplier. People who don’t have the brains to trade “paper wealth” are going to fall further and further behind, and those who will never be smart enough to navigate the modern fetid swamp of finance will likely fall so far behind that they’re *permanent* welfare cases.
As a result, politicians will tax or outright confiscate the assets of those of us who have any assets left, to keep the poor from rioting as they are now doing in Europe where the money has truly run out. “Free traders” should wake up and study of Cypriot banking issue much more closely... because that’s an example of what happens when the rubber truly hits the road in the “free trade” endgame.
Europe is a wonderful example of “free trade” failure writ most large. They created a “free trade” zone (the EU), then they decided to remove any currency arb or friction from the trade (by creating the Euro) so that they could become a “United States of Europe” (without the patriotism of a united set of states, naturally) and now they’re augering into the ground with the throttles to the firewall. I just did a month-end review of economic data and the data out of Europe are almost uniformly horrible, even in Germany. If “free trade” were all it were cracked up to be, then Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and others wouldn’t be in for-real depression levels of unemployment.
wow, that was an impressive piece. Great points.
Imagine I draw on a sheet of paper and you trade me some oranges for it. Where's the debt generated?
Take a look at #64. It’s not the government’s fault people are unemployed, it blame lies upon “free trade.” And the only way to fix it is more government. And when unemployment rises, as it will, “free trade will be blamed again and more government will be needed. Stir and repeat.
True, there've been times that I prefered calling it the 'so-called trade deficit'. Funny how people cling to the crazy idea of all that 'money' leaving the US and somehow staying in foreign mattresses.
It *is* the government’s fault. They’re the ones who set the parameters of the trade negotiations.
Duh.
You didn’t think that point through very far, did you?
But we haven't surrendered any of those things.
None of the Alinsky-ite Free Traders still have yet to provide any evidence that Free Trade works.
Free trade reduces tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade. Trade increases. Sounds like it works to me.
Now why don't you provide evidence that raising taxes on Americans works.
Well, there's plenty of evidence that protectionism doesn't work. I'll go with freedom.
You've nailed it! The so-called "free trade agreements" that countries are wont to negotiate these days are anything but free trade. True free trade would happen only when the government said to go ahead and trade what you wish with whom you wish.
Having to hire a team of lawyers to sift through several thousands of pages of legislation just to try and make a buck is hardly free trade.
You were right. Free trade is so great that it affects markets where “free trade” doesn’t even exist:
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/05/01/us-shale-gas-boom-undermining-putins-gazprom/
The Russian energy firm Gazprom is increasingly off its stride in Europe, its largest export market. Bulgaria has managed to negotiate a 20 percent price cut in its new ten-year contract with the gas giant, an unprecedented reversal of fortune from only a short time ago. Gazprom had cut off gas to the Ukraine in 2006 and 2009 during contract negotiations, which left Bulgaria freezing for several days as they were on the same pipeline. Bulgarians are probably relishing their success now with no small amount of schadenfreude.
The cause of the turnaround, the Wall Street Journal reports, should come as no surprise: the shale gas boom in the United States. The US has begun exporting gas to Europe, and has also ramped up coal exports by more than 250 percent since 2005. The net result has been to knock Gazprom back on its heels. The WSJ reports that the negotiations with Bulgaria were heated, with Gazprom’s negotiators shouting in frustration on several occasions. . . . Putin’s hardball tactics in his near-abroad when Russia was energy top dog were instrumental in confirming him as an authoritarian bully in the minds of many Westerners. These tactics also inadvertently made Russia more vulnerable to shifts in the global energy market, with many of its main customers desperately seeking out alternative suppliers so that they would never find themselves backed into a corner again.
bookmark
Outside of running a magazine he inherited, not much.
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