You started this thread asking for opinions and now, of course, it’s morphing into an attack on conservatives and Republicans. What President spearheaded and signed NAFTA and China’s ascension to the WTO? What President is now pushing for free trade with Columbia and South Korea? I’m trying to have an intelligent discussion here. Do you really believe their is a monolithic Republican view on this? Really? What is the Democrat view?
I’ve told you what I want. I want a currency that isn’t overvalued. I want the federal government to have a much lower role in our economy, and society as a whole. I want trade restrictions on China. I want completely open trade with more countries. I want less meddling in the economy. If you want specifics, that’s tough to do because, from my opinion, our system so is so far removed from what I want, that I don’t even know where to start. But I would suggest looking at Hong Kong and Singapore.
You also mentioned numbers of 5% and 20% in relation to shoes. I don’t know where you get those numbers, but this isn’t Econ 101. I own a pair of shoes made in America, (Red Wing MN baby!!) They were more expensive but they are better quality, so I bought them. But I’ve also bought American products that are inferior to other countries. I’ll never buy a Dell again, that’s for sure. I think it’s very jingoistic of you to assume that simply because an American makes something, it is necessarily better than one made by an Asian. I also think it’s wrong for anyone to tell me from where I have to purchase anything. I believe in liberty.
I hope that gives you more of an idea, but please, try to be open minded, and not just a typical expat Republican/conservative hater.
Yeah, I believe in all that stuff. But I believe that when it is working, the capitalist system is pretty good and efficient. I hope someday that money will not be needed, but that is in the future. On Star Trek.
That’s clever of you. The only reference to that quote I can find is by Grover Norquist, someone who has NEVER been elected to ANYTHING. But I’ll play your game. I saw Dr. Ronnie, as you like to call him, in Minneapolis and he said he wanted to drown the FEDERAL government. Can’t you at least give the good doctor the benefit of the doubt when he says that just because the Feds shouldn’t do it, doesn’t mean a state can’t.
So, keep them coming. Who are the other Republicans who advocate for anarchy?
I would say the Republicans who say that public assistance creates dependency and that people are like stray dogs who should not be fed lest they multiply. Reagan said that government wasn’t the solution, it was the problem. He also said that people slept in cardboard boxes because they liked it. They like government that puts people in jail and wages war, but not one that helps people get educated or employed.
I’m not American, but I constantly hear the drone of Republican/Conservatives on Fox and on internet boards. I never see their plans, just lower taxes, cut spending, small government. That’s not a plan, there is no pro-active approach there, if anything it’s already proven to have failed. Small government can’t support advanced technological and infrastructure countries such as Korea and Japan. It can’t regulate global level pollution either. Small government would never have got man to the moon or won WWII. It’s also too simplistic and can’t deal with complexities of the modern world.
To be brutally honest Byush, your idea of copying Hong Kong and Singapore is absolutely terrible. First of all they are small city states. They depend on outside investment. They live off trading and finance and being an international hub rather than manufacture or domestic economy. They have no resources, no military, no real democracy, no agriculture sector. Their income inequality is one of the highest in the world (especially HK). They have little diversity, excepting Singapore which admits anybody with money to buy a house. They contribute very little to the world in arts or culture or innovation or ideas.
I don’t depend on America for anything, just can’t believe that a great country is being sold down the river by a small section of it’s population.
I’m confused, do you just have a visceral hatred for anyone with an R next to their name, or do you actually have policy differences? Who is saying people on welfare are stray dogs. Can I take everything Howard Dean has ever said and attribute to anyone with an R next to their name?
I assume you think the wars in Asia were ludicrous, but what else? Drug laws? I’m with you on both of those. Is that the extent of Republican policies in your mind? Wars and jails? You can’t be that obtuse. If I said all Democrat policies are handouts and condoms, would that be accurate?
Are you saying that you don’t believe welfare creates dependency? If you think the “Conservative idea of less government and low taxes is a worthy goal” can you tell me how you would apply that to our current society? Do you think we currently have less government and low taxes? I’m seriously lost here…
Right on, but can you tell me what the Democrat plan is? I mean, if all you apparently hear from Republicans is “lower taxes, cut spending, small government” then the only thing you must hear from Democrats is “higher taxes, increase spending, large government” I think you’re not listening hard enough, and I suggest you start looking at Ron Paul for the future of the “conservative” movement. I can’t speak for the old timers in my country, but as a young guy, I can tell you that Ron Paul is HUGE with my generation. You won’t hear it on ANY of the mainstream media, both right and left. Fox News is harder on Ron Paul than all the others combined! And unlike Barrack Obama, Dr. Paul’s supporters believe in his ideas. So when he’s gone, his ideas will continue on.
Don’t know, what did we do before NAFTA? The US hasn’t always been this way.
Increasing taxes on imports, and enforcing environmental standards globally on corporations selling imported good in the US
increased jobs in monitoring and enforcement
increased US manufacturing jobs, especially on infrastructure, subsistence, and common, low priced consumer goods
Which will cause
decreased exports for countries putting up reactive import tariffs
loss of jobs and profits from those decreased exports
These are not two equal effects. The trade deficit was already large and has increased over the past 10 years, the US had exports in April of $148.8 billion and imports of $189.1 billion
a deficit of $40.3 billion or 27% (it was $40 billion in March), so if in the pathological case every dollar of international trade was eliminated, there would be a huge net dollar gain and a corresponding net jobs gain. There were 140 million employed in May and 14 million unemployed (10%), and between 2001 and 2008, 2.4 million jobs were lost to China alone.
I’m not for immediate clamp down, and I believe that these type of moves have to be coupled with the safety nets I’m always pushing (especially retraining of laid off sector workers due to the lost export work). It is a complicated situation, my suggestions won’t fix everything and need a lot of details, but what are you looking for here?
Why is the solution you’re suggesting NOT going to cause even more industrial migration overseas, constantly in search of the lowest costs, wreaking havoc as the business cycle and the newfound exports cause increased demand and over time increased wages in every country as they go in and out, all with the eventual goal that it’ll settle out globally? The liberal solution will almost certainly have a net increase jobs domestically, which will in turn put more money in people’s pockets to drive the domestic industries.
You’re extrapolating too much. There was a Republican who said that people on welfare were like stray dogs. You just don’t feed them, he said. From Texas I think.
I know about Ron Paul, I thought he was libertarian. Anyway, I’m not one to get ideological, it’s all about practical common sense solutions, do it the Chinese way (I mean don’t get fixated to one way of doing things…not the throwing people in jail and reeducating them part). Another comment and I know some people might not like what I say, but when a small group of people try to benefit from the majority of the population in my mind they are the enemy of the state.
Ron Paul is popular because of the seeming simplicity of his platform - reduce government at all cost. Pull out of the UN. Free-market healthcare (the man has truly lost it). Global warming is a “hotly contested issue” (horseshit, the argument’s been manufactured by big business). It’s a shame people are so uneducated and/or selfish that they’re attracted to simple but unrealistic and often totally untrue messages. Libertarianism is not freedom, it’s a delusion of freedom manufactured to feed on western man’s want of freedom to do whatever the hell they want, which does not make for a good society. You want the vast majority of the US population to be poor, undereducated, sick, and above all selfish? Follow libertarianism to its ultimate end, just like most religions.
About the point of ‘liberty’ in choosing what to buy. A tariff of 5% or 10% doesn’t remove that liberty. You are too simplistic. I will give you an example. If more manufacturers setup in the US following this tariff they can easily bring the cost down 5% to 10%. It’s not a zero sum game.
In addition, the reason why the foreign products cost more is due to manipulation of currency and pollution and society controls. You might think you have ‘free will’ but you are being manipulated into buying foreign products, simply by the fact they are cheaper. That was manipulated, it didn’t occur accidentaly. We have much less free will than we think, scientists have even discovered that our brain has decided what we will do before we are conscious of that decision. Finally liberty gives people the choice to make the right decisions, to push for good or bad. Perhaps people should use it in a more positive manner than you espoused.
Nobody is talking about closing off imports, just rebalancing. The world is not black and white. Not all American goods are superior to Asians (I should know, I have traded in scientific goods from Asia). But it is true that often American goods are better, they are sturdier and last longer.
BTW, Dell just assembles computers in America, it hardly produces anything in America, it never did (second time you made an error regarding American brands manufacturing locations). Now Dell is moving into service provision and may ultimately move all assembly of products offshore just leaving a logistics hub in the US.
Quite simply because it will make our exports cheaper. During 2008 the dollar dropped and our manufacturing skyrocketed. There was even a month (or quarter even) when our exports surpassed our imports. If we stopped propping up the world system that uses our dollar as a global currency, we would see it go down to a much more realistic level, making our exports much cheaper to foreign countries. That doesn’t come with out setback, which I mentioned before. And I’m not talking about a two week correction. But I am saying that, over time, we should be working toward lowering the price of our currency. And then the only reason we would lose jobs is because we aren’t competitive.
And on one of your other main points, I don’t subscribe to the idea that just because someone was born in America, they are entitled anything more than someone born in Calcutta. I don’t believe that someone born in America they should use the power of the state to enforce rules depriving people around the world of the only tool they have to better their lives. I’m not a nationalist. I believe in individualism, and I don’t think someone from Africa is entitled to anything more than an American. I think they should all be entitled to the same thing, liberty.
It’s nice to see what you really think about any one who disagrees with you. I’ll try to keep it civil and just say that I disagree with your assessment of libertarian philosophy and that just because your juniors don’t like the society we were bequeathed, doesn’t make us idiots.
I think that libertarians should set up a mini-state, maybe in Alaska somewhere. Give them some sheep, chickens and shotguns. Seal it up , come back a year later and see if anybody is around to say hello
The idea of devaluing the dollar has its merits, but it would need to be handled carefully and also make sure that you don’t get into a round of competitive devaluations.
Funny you should mention that. About 10 years ago I was watching a 60 minutes episode (I think) where they were discussing global supply chains, and how the US is so dependent on Taiwan (!) that Taiwan could cripple major sections of the economy just by stopping a few key components - and I’m almost certain Dell was held up as an example of that. Of course, that was 10 years ago - I read that they’re moving some plants to Mexico now - arriba arriba! andale! You hear that giant sucking sound? It’s the sound of even more jobs moving out of the country.
That was after the 921 earthquake. The world suddenly realised how dependent it was on chip manufacturers in Taiwan. It happens everytime there is a severe natural disaster here, suddenly people take notice of this little island
I’m from Ireland and Dell was a major contributor to the Irish economy for many years. Ireland has been a huge beneficiary of foreign investment from American firms. It continues to get large investments from American IT firms, you name it they are all in Ireland. They like investing in Ireland for many reasons but the biggest reason is still the 12.5% corporate tax with which they can wash their European profits through before repatriating or moving to an off-shore island somewhere. Of course Dell have now moved onto Poland to assemble their computers at lower costs.
It’s nice to see what you really think about any one who disagrees with you. I’ll try to keep it civil and just say that I disagree with your assessment of libertarian philosophy and that just because your juniors don’t like the society we were bequeathed, doesn’t make us idiots.[/quote]
Nice way of putting it, but being polite doesn’t make the ideology any less ignorant of the facts and generally selfish. I don’t hold this contempt for “anyone who disagrees with me”, I save it for the anti-intellectualism being peddled by the anti-evolution, anti-choice, and anti-global warming right - it’s just plain evil, because it’s not ignorance on the part of the peddlers, it’s willfully making unsound arguments that may have devastating consequences in order to satisfy the drive for increase profits, or establishment of a religious social order. Let’s not beat around the bush here - libertarianism as personified by Ron Paul is just plain wrong, in many of the same ways that Evangelical Christianity is, or communism worship in the sixties and seventies by parts of Hollywood and left-wing culture. That’s as polite as it’s gonna get, because this drivel is seriously ruining the US (and other countries).
My problem wasn’t only the computer, but the service. And the computer problem involved an incorrect screw that was used. I thought everything was screwed together in Texas? And what was my first mistake regarding manufacturing location?
All I can say again is that if we lower the dollar we will achieve the same effect, but without the consequence of a trade war. It’s easy to slap tariffs on one country, but it’s difficult to control your currency with only one country. If we devalue our currency, a country like China could try to follow suit, but their currency is alright relatively low. They would see the costs of oil and food skyrocket. Their only choice would be to compete. Then they would either win or lose but they wouldn’t be able to peg their currency to our over valued dollar in order to strengthen their manufacturing.
When we start “rebalancing” then other countries will just follow suit. So when cars from Japan become more expensive, meat from The US will become more expensive in Japan. If we slap tariffs on Canadian produced cars, then Canadians will slap tariffs on American made machines. As you like to say, it’s not black and white, unless you think other countries will just sit back and relax while jobs leave their countries to The States.
If wouldn’t have to pay anything to the central government, or follow any of their rules, I would be totally for that.
The answer I have to the round of rebalancing is…who is the biggest pig in the pen. Who has the juiciest patch of grass. America. America has a deficit in the import/export of pretty much every good there is excepting food.
What’s clear is that real change is required, now (not just Obamachange ).
Yes, you’ve said that many times, but you’ve never said how or why. I know you think I’m just an ignorant hick of some kind, but I like to think I’m well read. I studied economics and political science at a great school. And I grew up in Minnesota so I’ve heard all of your soundbites before. I used to believe them, until I started looking into it.
