[Uncle Miltie]

“I’ll take ‘Higher Taxes’ for $200, Alex!”

[1rudeboy]

When Pat Buchanan says “economic patriotism,” he really means “national socialism.”

[dfwgator]

And if not for those factories, what would Bangladesh do?

[C. Edmund Wright]

The following paragraph represents what Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman think Pat Buchanan is right about:

.....(the end)

[bert]

There is no such thing as economic patriotism as defined by Pat. His views were outmoded when the 30’s brand of Republican isolationism was in vogue. I suppose it was injected through his cradle slats.

The end result is Chavez style nationalization. I can’t understand why so many conservatives demand a path away from capitalism

[Mr. Jeeves]

Pat forgets The Other Part - that US government taxes and regulation have made it impossible to produce low-cost goods here, regardless of what tariffs may be imposed.

[bert]

There is an ironic factoid I’ll share.

About two years ago I went to witness the machines being exported to Bangladesh. They were a 9 year old fully automatic Japanese system for converting bales of cotton to T shirt yarn. Raw cotton in one door, spools of yarn out the other.

There were very few employees required to operate the fully automatic, pretty much state of the art machinery.

Hard times are coming to Bangladesh........ the equipment from th North Carolina plant will put some Bangladeshi’s out of work.

[Sheapdog]

Don’t know why I bother to post this stuff. Read the complete article and comments - are quite good.

I know it just brings out the “free-traders” who exalt in their ability to understand the complexities of the modern global economy while those who disagree are naive troglodytes who don’t know anything about history or economics.

Let’s just disagree.

[Leto]

Wonder if Pat is still driving his Benz, LOL.

I would guess these wages allow one to live in Bangladesh. The issue Pat is our government making it hard to do business here.

[mjp]

Not long ago, the shirts, skirts, suits and dresses Americans wore were “Made in the USA” – in plants in the Carolinas, Georgia and Louisiana, where the lower wages, lighter regulations and air conditioning that came after World War II had attracted the factories from New England.

So, its ok to move production to a cheaper state but not to a cheaper country.That doesn't seem rational.

Tariffs prevented exploiters of labor from getting rich here on sweatshops abroad

But it was bad for American consumers because the protectionism caused higher prices for consumers in the long run.

And so it came to pass. U.S. real wages have not risen in 40 years.

When prices keep going higher thanks to protectionism and government inflation of the money supply, real wages will not rise despite a rise in money wage rates.

[dfwgator]

It was dead in 1976 when Paddy Chayefsky wrote the screenplay for the movie, "Network"

"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs! There are no third worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels!… You get up on your little twenty-one-inch screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today."

[Mad Dawgg]

Pat will tell you that over regulation and high taxes have caused our problem with outsourcing. And like a True Big Gub'Ment Republican he wants to fix such by adding even more Government regulation and higher taxes.

Its the "digging yourself out of the hole by using a bigger shovel" theory of Government.

[SeminoleCounty]

All the critics of Buchanan on here, cannot provide one shred of evidence that Free Trade works. Watch em go Saul Alinsky trying to defend it

[9YearLurker]

And if companies have to pay a ‘competitive wage’, they’ll go to the locales where the workforce is more skill—and Bangladesh will fall further into poverty.

Yes, safety should be observed, but condemning the low wages of low-wage countries leads to exactly what such ‘compassionate’ people at least claim to want to avoid.

[allmendream]

Well OBVIOUSLY the problem with America is there isn’t enough of the right kinds of taxes!

[dennisw]

Tariffs are a great idea but were even better 20 years ago before we stupidly funded the rise of China and Japan by buying their stuff. This helped them get ahead of us in many areas. The moment to strike was when we were dominant and should have had the nationalism, pride and cojones to keep it this way

[Clemenza]

Matbe because $1.50 a day indoors in a factory is better than 50 cents a week working in the fields?

I live in a country that has the high tariffs that Patsy dreams of. If you can tolerate $70-$80 for a pair of Levis (that's how much they cost down here), be my guest, Amurka...