Posted on 08/17/2016 7:09:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
And I think they know the game is winding down and that eventually they will have to face an angry America that has been strip mined. That is a huge reason for the importation now of tens of millions of foreign workers.
Instead of factories being taken to the labor, now the labor is being brought to the factories. Then they can eliminate transportation costs.
We are the big market of the world. They wanted foreign labor rates and had to go overseas to get them. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your “foreign” factory in the Midwest?
And that friends, is why we are seeing 20 to 30 million Mexicans, Africans Moslems and Chinamen being imported.
Milton Friedman, on a tour of China, was shown a building site where a gigantic excavation was being done by hundreds of workers using shovels.
He suggested, "You know, if you brought in a couple of backhoes and bulldozers, this could be completed in a week" and the reply was "That's true, but we could not handle the resulting unemployment."
To which Friedman responded "Well, if it's unemployment you are concerned about, you should throw away the shovels and give them all spoons."
We have a spoon brigade here on FR and it's a lot bigger and more aggressive than it used to be.
Not to mention lost opportunities.
Job openings in my area of work used to be openings in the USA ... now for that one opening here, instead they will hire two to three Indians - who the USA trains. I work in IT for an American company (YUGE one) and I work with 70% Indians.
Also layoffs and lost opportunities do not happen in a vacuum ... that’s a job lost to the USA which means lost purchasing power ... lost local restaurant business, lost local a lot of things if you think it out.
H1-B abuse and the refusal to deport illegals by Bush Republicans and Obama Democrats is all part of the same scheme. The Wall Street Journal used to be very open about advocating this stuff.
They do this not because they are some evil hybrid of Montgomery Burns and Scrooge McDuck, but because the folks who manage our IRA's and 401k's insist that they do so.
We had better start thinking right now how conservative, free enterprise economics are going to work in a world that needs 30-50 percent less labor than it does today.
Because that is the way we are headed.
Cartoonish examples being the forte of those who can’t or won’t address real world issues.
You may save on the cost of car. But now your taxes go up to support the people out of work.
“Personally, giving each auto worker a $200,000 shot in the arm doesn’t make sense.”
It would make more sense to just give every affected worker a lump sum payout that could tide them over while they find a new job, than to try to prop up businesses that can’t operate without subsidies.
Allow me to add small appliances, tools, equipment, and dozens of other items are barely made in the USA or the number produced here is a fraction of what it was in the past.
Now, Williams is a bright guy, but he misses the obvious point. We should be making these items in the USA also. There is no reason to have surrendered them to overseas producers.
Finally, it is a national security issue for the USA to have a manufacturing base that includes significant production in every class of product.
So let’s get rid of the tilt, and have real free trade. If Americans choose to overtax and over regulate our industries, that’s not any other country’s fault, it’s our own.
“The only results of free trade agreements is a sharp drop in quality of products”
SO true. Remember even 20 years ago. You walked through a Walmart, a hardware store, etc and there was a variety of decent products. Actually some good stuff
Today its aisle after aisle of Chinese crap. Coleman is an example, used to have some first class products. In the free trade craze the outsourced everything to China. You won’t find the Chinese crap in someones camping supplies in 30 years, still being used.
They might cost a few bucks more, but patriotic Americans who care about quality and jobs will gladly pay the premium.
Won't they????
“The best thing that we can do is to have a robust economy such that he can find another job. “
Lame article.
He doesn’t point out that in the current economy the worker is likely to find a job that pays much less than his previous job. (Or 2 part time jobs is much more likely). Some robust economy.
“Free Trade” is part of a package along with Massive immigration and H1-B visa’s to drive down American wages.
In a consumer economy it doesn’t make much sense to have massive numbers of workers who lack the money to purchase goods and services.
Finally Free Trade is poison at the Ballot Box.
Love Milton Friedman, a brilliant man who wrote simply enough (which is another gift he had) for me to understand as a dopey progressive teen ... him and Robert Ringer converted me to conservatism ... BUT! He was also the father of gov’t subsidized student loans ... a great idea in theory ... but hasn’t worked out very well.
IDK ... is the USA/average American better now for as it is practiced ‘Globalization’ and ‘Free Trade’ ?
Nafta good ? TPP good ?
NO, they aren’t stopping them. They are simply making it penalty free for foreign slave labor factories to sell at a price that an American based factory cannot match.
I’m talking literal slaves. Walmart is full of frozen fish from Indonesia. They literally have islands and ship with slaves.
I am convinced that if the Nazis had Auschwitz in operation today, we would let them sell the inmate built products here tariff free, and anyone who said it was wrong would be a “protectionist”.
These companies are sending our jobs to Mexico and China where they save bundles on cheap labor then ship the cars etc back to America WITHOUT discounting them. Do you think Carrier ACs or Ford F150’s will cost less now that they’re made in Mexico??
NO they won’t. The shareholders make more money is all and our taxes go up to pay for more unemployment.
Fair Trade?? NOT!! Not even Free Trade because these bad deals cost Americans plenty!
Yes.
However, what stopped the US is the movement of those industries overseas due to financial incentives to do so.
So, any start-up in the US has to be from scratch.
Yes, I think the US will support American made. But there’s a catch. You can’t expect high wages for your job, but buy cheap, slave labor cost imports.
Quality cost outperforms cheap quality over time. My tools prove it.
“then of course there is a distinct tilt to the playing field”
There’s always going to be an uneven playing field. Even if we banned all foreign goods entirely, the regions and states will lower wages would be able to produce cheaper goods than other parts of the country, and the field would still be uneven. As long as there is competition, there will be losers. Try as I might, I can’t find “level the playing field” under the description of the federal government’s duties listed in the Constitution either.
“All the trade goes from the country with the lower costs of production to the country with the higher costs of production, and there is no reciprocity.”
All trade, by definition, involves reciprocity.
A tariff is only what the founders ran the country with for the first 100 years. It was around 1910 before the tariffs were not the main source of funding the government.
Of course, that was before we had to fund a welfare state and a massive military presence all over earth with a non-stop state of warfare.
That's my preferred solution.
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