Here’s What Trump Doesn’t Get About American Manufacturing

Fortune ^ | 2017-01-14 | Bill George

[arthurus]

A 10% flat tax with no exemptions, no deductions, no credits does not even require an IRS. The reality is that without an Amendment either to repeal the 16th or to institute Constitutionally unalterable Flat Tax, the infinitely malleable income tax is not going away. Adding general tariffs to that is just piling on. It would be like adding a VAT. And tariffs are like the income tax, infinitely malleable and useful for social engineering. I would like to see the Income tax Constitutionally replaced by either a rigid flat tax or a uniform tariff.

[ConservativeMind]

You would do well to keep that link I used to rebut your position. Aside from that one reference in which the lecturer said that England had been under “Onesided Free Trade,” the rest of his presentation goes to great lengths to show how incredibly advantageous that situation was for England. He has all sorts of numbers to back it and his argument is clear.

I thank you for making me dig that up. I, too, am keeping that link for reference.

You need to read it.

[riverdawg]

Of course trade creates losers as well as winners. Nothing I have written says otherwise. In a world with trade, compared with a world without trade (autarky), the gains of the winners exceed the losses of the losers. This leads to an opportunity for the winners to compensate the losers for their losses. Now, this compensation most often does not occur in the real world. This is a failure of the political system, and of policymakers’ creativity, not a failure of trade itself. Workers displaced via trade in the textile or automobile industries, for example, could receive compensation in the form of retraining and relocation assistance and maybe extended unemployment compensation. In my opinion , the latter should take the form of an upfront, lump-sum payment rather than a weekly check for a fixed period of time.

[central_va]

Thank you for the honesty.

So it is better to pay off "displaced" workers, destroy communities, lives, property values, the nations industrial infrastructure, technical know how, national security and peoples self respect in the name of "free Trade"? I say bull shiitake to that. You may want to carry out Marx's grand plan but I for one won't be a "useful idiot" for the leftists.

[riverdawg]

So, I now have transformed in your mind from a Nazi to a Marxist. That’s quite a trick.

There have been many policies that create both winners and losers, but that doesn’t mean they should not have been implemented. Deregulation of industries like trucking, energy, and the airlines disrupted many workers’ careers, but the gains to consumers outweighed the losses of those workers. The challenge for policy is to find creative and humane ways to use these gains to make the “victims” whole.

[central_va]

There are no losers with high tariffs. Only winners. Maybe Americans will consume less durable goods for a while, put up with some inflation, but eventually domestic manufacturing will take up the slack and after 10 years nobody will notice that everything is now made in the USA. The temporary inflation is a small price to pay to put America BACK TO WORK. The upside is huge.

I guess you are not familiar with Marx's opinions and discussions about free trade. They are quite extensive. Google that sometime.