Posted on 07/28/2003 6:36:40 PM PDT by RaceBannon
There has been a few threads on here where Free Trader enthusiasts have defended their view, and have been responded to by those who feel that Free Trade is not helping the American Economy, in fact, is part of the reason we are NOT going to see a great recovery any time soon.
I am one of the latter. The following is a cut and paste job, taken from my own comments on these threads, which I feel tell my side of the story.
Some of the points are repeatd, 3 and 4 times. That is because I feel they are the forgotten reasons and ideas why we are in what I believe are dire economic straits.
Feel free to comment.
Over 200 years of constant movement forward in time.
Historically we never "needed" free trade in any way, because we were living in a convoluted economic system in which we were exploiting most of our workers anyway (slaves in the South, Chinese coolies in the West, Irish immigrants in the coal mines of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, young Eastern European and Asian girls working in sweatshops in Northeastern cities, etc.).
Because we've eradicated all those practices here in the U.S., we have to figure out some other way to make our system work. All we've done is exchange our exploited labor for someone else's.
Your definitive statement:
I'm guessing at these numbers, BTW
Besides, with that logic, China shouldn't need free trade.
Your quoting Marx saying that free trade is destructive, In case no one told you, Marx was an idiot. Furthermore, in that quote he is stating that free trade is destructive to the social order, by removing nationalism it would focus discord on the conflict he percieved between the bourgeiouse and proletariat. Like I said, he was an idiot...
HOW? And how did those changes suddenly cause us to go the "free trade" route in the 1960s?
HAHAHAHA, This is equivilent to saying that I want to find a new Ferrari for $25,000 so I can sell it for $50,000. Welcome to reality, perhaps you should focus on another product or service. If you do figure out how to get it at that price let Ferrari know how you did it so I can pick one up.
We didn't develope some of the world's largest sea ports in the 1700 and 1800 hundreds because we needed them to protect us from trade. Those sea ports were crammed with merchant ships...doing what?
If the Chinese were making Ferraris, we probably could afford one. I for one can't wait until the 80% of people in country are making goods I want to trade for instead of rice. I have no use for rice.
It is no coincidence that the "free trade" era began at about the same time the post-WWII reconstruction of Europe and Asia had come to an end.
My one complaint about many opponents of free trade (Pat Buchanan is a classic example) is that they look back with nostalgia upon the 1950s as the "normal" economic condition in this country's history. In fact, this is not the case at all -- the 1950s were an anomaly, not the norm. The U.S. was able to function back then as an industrial superpower because we were the only ones in the world who had the industrial capacity to meet the world's needs.
So the socialists managed to get the West to remove tariffs on the hare-brained notion that "free trade" was somehow pro-Western, even though it violated every economic practice and historical precedent the West had.
I am. Which is why the $65,000 software is staying on the shelf. My company is too small to compete in that field with larger firms that already generate enough business to make the $65,000 purchase worthwhile.
I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before an alternative software package is developed. I've already come across a much cheaper package that does about 90% of what the expensive one does -- I'm just trying to figure out if my staff has the programming capability to do the other 10% at a reasonable cost.
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