Posted on 11/21/2006 12:14:53 PM PST by presidio9
That is true about the minimum wage.
I don't believe in shadowy cabals.
I DO believe that human nature is fixed and that mass phenomena evolve according to what for want of a better word I would call "rules".
This global economic system which you would call into being cannot and will not exist without a global political system to safeguard it and to tweak it.
That global political system overthrows MY local political syatem, which I hold dear, and is the enemy of everything I value.
You believe, apparantly, that either the global economy will not call into being a global government, or that such government will be benign.
I don't agree with you.
It has nothing to do with shadowy cabals.
Running everything on a sales tax is complete hogwash.
We have, what? A $12 trillion economy.
Perhaps 40% of that, $4.8 trillion, is retail sales, including house sales.
Government costs about $3 trillion a year.
What are we going to do?
Slap a 75% sales tax on everything, in order to raise that money?
Here folks have been arguing that a 20-30% price increase on textiles from a protective tarriff would be the death ofg the American economy, but to get rid of the income tax, we're just going to slap a 75% on all exchanges. Yes, I have seen the arguments that it won't be nearly that high.
They are wrong. It would have to be. We would have to extract $3 trillion in taxes out of a $4.8 trillion retail economy. Try tha, and the corruption you will see will be unprecedented.
Anyway, we're not going to do anything like that, just as we're not going to do a wealth tax. We have a balanced approach: income, property, sales, capital gains, user fees, and that is about the best that balancing interests in a democracy can do.
What will happen is that the Democrats are going to let the Bush tax hikes expire without renewing them. And then, given political gridlock in Washington, we'll essentially have the Clinton tax code for the foreseeable future.
Bush expended a lot of political capital on Social Security reform, whioch went nowhere, of course, but whicuh certainly agitated a large number of people who saw more of their security imperiled. So, his initiative in that regard was a net political negative, and will remain so.
Apparently, Republicans are determined to remain politically unrealistic about economic security matters, and are going to continue to espouse high theory that most people don't trust and aren't going to accept.
This will remain the Achilles' Heel of the party, and we're destined for a long time in the wilderness, as the Democrats end up getting the credit for the performance of the economy.
It's too bad, but there you have it.
No I do not believe that people engaged in commerce with as little restriction as possible will result or must result in global government.
I am for less government, not more, and I would be against any global government.
You wrote: "Nope, we don't make a lot of stuff here any more. We all know why and there aren't a lot of attractive alternatives."
Like steel, and batteries, and electronics components, the sort of things that go into military hardware and logistics pipelines. We buy these things from China, which also holds our debt.
And this means that, no matter what China does, we can never go to war with China. They own the capstone of our financial economy, and they own the productive means of key components in our military logistics supply chain. THEY make the stuff, we don't. We have truly sold them the rope by which they can hang us, all in order to buy socks for $2 instead of $5.
Economically, it seemed like a good deal.
But we pawned national security for cheap consumer goods.
The means of industrial production are the means for war.
We have gutted the industrial base, and contineu to do so, and we are transferring the industrial base to the country that outnumbers us 5:1 and which is our most likely adversary, and our principal ideological opponent in the industrialized world.
We pawned our birthright for a mess of cheap pottage.
And there is no apparent repentance, or even realization of the problem!, from many rock-ribbed Republicans, per this thread.
The economic mentality of the GOP seems to be Maginot.
First of all, I am no Democrat.
I am a Republican.
I am a militarist. Democrats since McGovern are pacifists.
I am a moralist. I oppose abortion, euthanasia, fetal stem-cell testing and gay marriage.
And I am an economist. Your view of how the economy works is narrow and crabbed, and the Republicans have followed it off an electoral cliff.
De Tocqueville did indeed say that.
And Republicans would say that people figured out they could vote themselves money with the New Deal, in 1932, and that it's all been downhill from there. Well, in a sense that's true: the New Deal certainly does use public power to create social security in the broadest sense of the word: public retirements, public medical insurance, public food programs for the needy, and regulation of the financial and industrial sectors. No doubt about it.
So, supposedly, since 1932 we have been on a downhill slide, because we "socialized" the economy with the New Deal. Newsflash: no part of the New Deal has ever been dismantled, and the economy has grown geometrically since then.
So, evidently whatever De Tocqueville was talking about, it's not this.
Anyway, I've had quite enough of being called a Democrat and a fool by you. I do not know your position on national security and morality, but I DO know your position on economic issues. It is the mantra that the Republican party has been following for awhile, and it is foolish. It has created lots of industrial jobs - in other countries - undermined our own industrial base and left us in an economically and militarily precarious situation. Enough people are feeling the pain and fear of economic insecurity in the formerly-world-leading industrial zones of the country that they have turned away from the Republicans and will continue to do so, unless Republicans pull their heads out of their asses and stop listening to people like you, and start listening to people like me.
Want to lose? Keep following that drumbeat down, down, down, to industrially dependent (on China) nation status in the economic world, and permanent minority status in the American political workl.
I've been called "troll" here quite enough, and also "economically ignorant". What I am is the Ulysses S. Grant stepping forward in answer to all of you economic Burnsides and Hookers. Your view has done quite enough damage to the economy of the country and the political fortunes of the Republican Party. My view is going to be heard, WITHIN the Republican Party, where it belongs, and peoope like me are going to stand right here and fight you for control of this party, because it's too important to let you guys keep running things into the ground.
Let's start with the most basic measure of economic achievement: your PERSONAL economic status versus mine.
In our capitalist economy, the guy who makes the most money is the better capitalist, RIGHT?
Study the past to understand the future.
Your "people engaged in commerce with as little restriction as possible" is a fantasy.
IMO.
Easy.
They wouldn't.
Do you think they really care about their "economy"?
They're Marxist-Leninists. They don't even accept the concepts you are talking about.
"Trade" only works if there are property rights to be traded.
Property rights only exist if there is law to defend them.
Law only exists if there is government to enforce it.
You cannot have free trade or capitalism without government to enforce contracts.
And where shall the government that enforces contracts in the global economy be?
In economics, the most powerful economic actor makes the dediion. Nobody pretends the economic marketplace is a democracy. America set the Bretton-Woods rules, et al, because America was the strongest. The wheel is turning to China. You're right: there will not be one world government.
Rather, the Chinese government will set our economic policies for us, just as we have set them for Latin America.
That is, unless we do something about it.
What CAN we do about it?
Plenty.
Impose a corrective tarriff on Chinese goods and other goods produced by unprotected labor, for starters. That will equalize the cost advantage of using slaves, and will make the transport costs of bringing things from China a net cost which could be overcome by producing the same things in the US.
That's how you do it.
That's a whole lotta people you're talking about.
Which is the truth. We do not have the capability to fight a major conflict right now. We just don't have the domestic industry to support it. Which means we have to import war material from other sources. Which puts us in a very compromised strategic position.
My brother in law is very "free trade" and openly talks about how in a few years the US will no longer be able to project power like it does now, because other countries will start dictating how many resources we get.
Your brother-in-law is correct, unless we do something about it.
We are going to do something about it.
The trouble for Republicans is that it will be the Democrats who do the doing, and who will get the electoral credit.
It isn't hard to see the Democratic strategy: protect American INDUSTRY, because that's where the middle class workers are, but grant amnesty to Hispanic menial laborers and fieldworkers in order to gain a massive electoral advantage. That will work very well for the Democrats electorally, and if they do the industrial protections right, they will help engineer an industrial recovery (especially given the availability of masses of newly-regularized Hispanic labor under their amnesty program).
The Republicans have to have an alternative to that.
Apparently their alternative is to pretend that exporting the industrial sector is ok, because it maximizes profits to the holding companies. THAT part is certainly true. However, the price of those profits is national security and economic security for American industrial workers, which is far too high a price.
If there are other Republicans like me willing to stand tall, call a spade and spade, accept the principle that international trade is a good thing, but insist upon balancing factors such as tarriffs or import restrictions to overcome the cost advantage in using unprotected labor, then we have a shot of gaining political control. If the dominant Republican chord remains job-exports-are-efficient-therefore-good, we're not getting power back, maybe ever (Hispanic Immigration dwarfs the "Roe Effect"), and the Democrats will just set all the economic policies.
Since individuals would have substantially more disposable income, the net effect of the tax changes on purchasing power parity-adjusted income would be zero, and could even be made somewhat progressive by exempting groceries and utilities.
When you say this:
Republicans are determined to remain politically unrealistic about economic security matters, and are going to continue to espouse high theory that most people don't trust and aren't going to accept.
What exactly are the policy prescriptions that you would make, besides a wealth tax? When people speak of "economic security" in reference to national policy, the typical recommendations are blatant abrogations of individual liberty, such as caps on CEO pay, etc. Perhaps your recommendations are different.
Speaking for myself only, I am more than happy to accept "the great risk shift" rather than expect corporate or federal paternalism.
If people do not accept the ideas of free market economics, they might as well not accept the idea of gravity. Does this refusal help them in any way? Do we really want to encourage serfdom and peasantry in the US? If I did not have to share a legal system with such people, I would be happy to let them persist in ignorance.
Trade reciprocity would be a good place to start. In other words impose the exact same restrictions, whatever they may be, on a countries goods they impose on ours. Example China imposes a 20%+ tariff on imported goods, we impose the same on them.
The election was successfully NATIONALIZED by the Democrats, with the wimp-libs accusing and the bogus media repeating (ad naseum) Bush screwed up Katrina, Bush lied us into war, Republican corruption galore, HIGHEST death and destruction ever, etc.
And to be honest, the GOP did the same thing to the Democrats in 1994, and the economy THEN was not awful awful awful.
But at the time (1994), the country at large was scared to death that Clinton and the Democrats were gonna mandate a SINGLE-PAYER National Health System, which would have put us ALL in long lines to see a doctor or go into a hospital.
And Newt Gingrich also created the Contract with America, budget cuts, term limits, school choice, etc. with which most Americans agreed.
The difference in '06 is the GOP had the facts on our side.
The national economy is great, perhaps the best ever.
And America is safer today than 2001, and perhaps ever.
Unemployment nationally is lower today, than perhaps ever.
The average youngster has more economic and career choices today, than perhaps ever.
Our military is better trained and more powerful today, than perhaps ever.
Yet we still have many individuals such as yourself who have not yet learned how to support themselves or their families.
My son, just out of school, went to a job fair and IMMEDIATELY got hired by a pharmecutical company making $65K a year, plus benefits.
Within two years, he was offered another job with another company, and now earns more than $100K.
ALL his friends (mid-20s) likewise are ALL working at relatively good jobs, one with a stockbroker, one in the education field, and another an accountant.
And they are NOT geniuses nor are they any different than millions of youngsters across America.
My advice to yourself, if you are having a difficult time economically, is to branch out and perhaps you will find another nitch.
OK, I'll bite.
What IS your view?
What SPECIFIC plan (economic) would you enact if you were Jim Webb, or if you were President?
And in the same vein, what SPECIFIC thing is President GWB doing that is "making" the economy so awful (in your eyes, anyway)?
We could have a productive discussion of (realistic) policy options. I would be happy to tell you what I would propose, but first why don't we take a hard look at the Retail Sales Tax (RST) you've suggested, and analyze it carefully. This would establish the benchmark for professionalism in the conversation.
I didn't propose a wealth tax. If you read back up the thread, you'll see that my response was a theoretical one, to a theoretical question. I said that if I were KING, we would have a wealth tax and no other tax. In the real world, a wealth tax is not on the cards in the USA, at least not for the moment. It certainly would not be part of the serious policy suggestions I would make.
So, let's turn, in a succeeding post, first to the RST you proposed. I will tell you why I don't think it would at all work as planned, why I think it would distort the economy to the point of wrecking it, and why I think it would be grossly inequitable to boot. Then I'll propose my own views as to appropriate policy, which you will then be able to assess. Unfortunately I cannot undertake that analysis of the RST right now, but will attempt it this evening.
Cheers!
You wrote:
"Yet we still have many individuals such as yourself who have not yet learned how to support themselves or their families."
and
"My advice to yourself, if you are having a difficult time economically, is to branch out and perhaps you will find another nitch."
You are very presumptuous, and I am smiling.
How much do you make every year?
The question is no more presumptuous than your statements about me, above.
And the question is highly relevant, because in a capitalist system, the ones earning the most money are the most successful, and have best mastered and understand the system, n'est-ce pas?
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