Posted on 11/21/2006 12:14:53 PM PST by presidio9
"But when you impose tarriffs, the price of everything goes up, and pretty soon the poor people that you were trying to protect can't afford to buy anything."
Prices do not go up infinitely.
And they don't go up on everything.
They specifically go up on the things that we import in large volume from low-skilled overseas workers: textiles, steel. We don't yet have free flow of agricultural products and truck drivers from Latin America, but get CAFTA going and you can watch the Midwestern farms go out of buysiness and all th3e trcukers switch over to being Juan Valdez too.
There is no job that Americans do that cannot be done as well by a foreigner for a lot less money. I note that company health plans in some places are now encouraging ill workers to fly to Asia for major operations. It's cheaper over there. EVERYTHING is cheaper somewhere else.
For comparison's sake, the states in the US which have won the "race to the bottom" in terms of corporate regulation and taxation are NOT the most prosperous or best educated by any stretch of the imagination. There is a level of government infrastructure and regulation which makes for more profitable and efficient markets than quasi-total deregulation does.
Interesting that the word "socialist" gets bandied about incorrectly a lot whenever one wishes to speak sanely about taking care of one's own people.
But here's another word: globalist. The net result of absolutely free trade in a world full of dictatorships - including the 1.1 billion man Chinese dictatorship - is that every one of your industries goes out of business over time. If we can do it, they can do it cheaper. And will. So, we either become like them, or we decide that unfettered globalism doesn't take us to the place we want to be.
Because those are no longer social welfare plans, but just wealth transfer away from productive savers and investors to nonproductive consumers. That is as sure a way to kill the economy as any of your other ideas.
Which is also the point. When you can have a better standard of living (starting out) on welfare than working unskilled labor, many choose to stay on welfare. Now, if you invest in yourself and get some skills, you will be able to move up the ladder, but as many in the manufacturing states have found you can wake up one day and find your plant is moving to China or India. Like or not, all those jobs being lost do have an effect on politics.
You make good points. Free-market theology is right in theory, but politically a loser in practice. The Right needs to pay serious attention to the (respectable) working class and the lower middle class. If it doesn't, patriotism, defense, and the cultural issues won't cut it.
We don't need to be big-government conservatives, but we do need to rethink how we talk about economics, and how we approach trade.
Meant to ping you to 64. Don't agree with you all the time, but you do bring up valid points.
I beg to differ in this respect: there are lots of middle class folks who are small business owners and who do employ one or more people. And we all know small businesses make up the bulk of the economy.
I don't understand where you're coming from at all. Are you saying that America's lower class would be better off if we shut out china so they could quit their jobs and get back into the sock-making and phony novelty vomit factories and earn the right to pay more for those products on the consumer end?
Tarriffs, like all consumer taxes are actually a much bigger burden on those who spend a higher percentage of their disposable income.
Lately I've been having trouble figuring out if I've somehow logged on to DU...
You're making my head spin. Let's just get rid of welfare. problem solved, right? Good luck with that. Let me know how it works out.
Unemployment only appears to be at a historic loaw.
Measure it the way they measured it back in the 1930s, and it's not so low.
It's sort of like base inflation. Sure, you can say inflation's low, if you take energy out of the equation.
Now, it could be that people in Ohio and Indiana, who have long intelligently voted for the GOP, all of a sudden got stupid and didn't realize how good they have it and voted Democrat.
Or you could take a deep breath and realize that all the GREAT economic data we are constantly being told about...IS...NOT...TRUE.
Particularly in the Midwest. The Midwest is going out of business.
And with it, the GOP.
So, just like in any other market, adapt or die.
Right. It means taking thousands of dollars out of people's pockets when purchasing items and moving those dollars to the Federal gov't. You think you'll get that money back from the government ?
Good move there, sport.
In practice, free markets work pretty much every time they're tried.
"Or you could take a deep breath and realize that all the GREAT economic data we are constantly being told about...IS...NOT...TRUE."
Anyone seen the latest M3 figure yet?
Bueller?
Bueller?
Of course, because they have invested the most in the economy.
No matter how you slice it people will vote their pocketbooks as they see it, not how Foxnews tells them how they see it.
They're not ? You think they are an investment ?????
LOL. Quite so. Tariffs are mainly a way of saying that our standard of living is too high to be able to support low-value work. So our standard of living must be lowered (by raising prices) so we can "compete" with low-value work.
Didn't mean to ramble. My point was that there is an incentive for people not to work.
I meant to say it: Tariffs are mainly a way of saying that our standard of living is too high to be ~supported by~ low-value work.
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