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White House Announces Tech Tariffs, Investment Restrictions on China (axios.com)
The White House announced this morning a plan to levy a 25% tariff on $50 billion worth of Chinese tech goods -- with the exact list to be announced next month -- as well as tech investment limits for Chinese nationals and entities. From a report: It also plans to pursue litigation at the World Trade Organization relating to Chinese intellectual property abuses. The big picture: It's a show of force that has surprised some sources close to the White House who believed Trump would defer any aggression towards China until after the North Korea summit. A source close to the White House who has a keen understanding of the internal dynamics on China told me that this is an "initial move in a long negotiation that shows the Chinese Trump is very serious -- and a move to balance the criticism that he was soft on ZTE."
He's going to tax you 25%!
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Yes, he wants to be the exporter--the one threatened in the trade relationship by the capacity of the importer to just go to the next country over and pull the plug on your economy--so he's willing to harm America by reducing the benefit we get from lower-cost goods.
Mostly, he and Bernie Sanders don't understand economics, and they're projecting their failed grasp of macroeconomics onto a nation.
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We didn't "need" China before Clinton gave them MFN status and we don't need China now. We can make our own shit and if that means we have to stop feathering our environmental nest with more anti-industry regulations or you have a pay a bit more to replace your iPhone every 12 months then so be it.
Bernie Sanders similarly doesn't understand the macroeconomics of trade and thinks a trade deficit is your economy falling apart.
Low-cost imports make the importing nation wealthier. They raise the standard-of-living and cause economic growth.
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I don't care for Trump, but I'm 100% in favor of tariffs on China. Hell, I'm in favor of cruise-missile intercepting container ships from China. So, 25% tariffs seem tame. We should have cut them off a long time ago. Before you ask, yes I'm heartless enough to ask the poor to pay a bit more for those cheap (but toxic) flip-flops and Christmas lights at Wal-Mart. I'm weighing "access to cheap crappy garbage products" vs "having a job", and yes, the latter wins out.
And "with the exact list to be announced next month "
China don't have to worry, next month they will list what and when is going to be effectif hten, China will buy another hotel to Trump and every sanction willbe drop !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
I'm no lover of Trump's policies. He's an authoritarian ass and enabler to state violence (i.e. "rough them up a bit").
But I can't bring myself to be upset about this tariff, and think it's a shame that it can't be 100%. Yes. 100%, full cost of the item. People throw too many things out -- I've seen perfectly good electronics on the street due to a damaged power cord or similar minor issue.
We've become a throw-away society where "used" and "repair" are dirty words, and which produces an unsustainable amount of toxic, poorly recyclable e-waste. Trump may not mean to be an environmentalist, but raising the cost of dirt-cheap disposable electronics is ultimately an environmental good.
Remember the 80s and 90s, where people kept their TVs for 10-15 years, then handed them down to their college student children?
Better yet, fix what you have or keep it longer instead of generating more toxic e-waste because shiny and new! No one needs a new phone or TV every year. The difference between 1k and 4k is basically invisible to most people at actual viewing distance.
You need us more than we need you.
Yeah, you just keep thinking that.
Why would a 25% tariff be a 100% increase in retail price, considering that the tariff is on value, and value is less than value + retail markup? If anything, the increase would be less than 25%, since the tariff is not charged on the markup.
But yeah. Cry me a river. God forbid if people are forced to fix their electronics, keep them longer, buy used on Craigslist, instead of sending more e-waste to the landfill or to poor countries that burn it to remove valuable metals.
That link somewhat works against your point if you read into it-
The Chinese aren't simply shipping us cheap stuff. And at times it seems like they're doing less to lower production costs and invent new stuff than they are simply circumventing licensing costsâ" hence the intellectual property complaints.
If inventing new things is a boon, then creating a disincentive to invent new stuff (through not respecting intellectual property law) is a detriment.
What does or doesn't constitute sane intellectual property law is another subject entirely.
Also, having tariffs might encourage slightly more durable products or even repair of existing products vs dumping them as toxic e-waste and plastic waste. Ending is NOT better than mending, Brave New World is not an instruction manual.
I'm thinking you don't understand economics, either. The middle class spending their money doesn't make them wealthier. Owning things doesn't improve your standard-of-living, unless you base the quality of your life on how many material things you own. It may grow low paying retail jobs, but not wealth, except for the 1% of course.
The tech community in general is more educated and mere diverse (in some ways) than the general population and hence much less will to support trump. Plus tech CEOs are not psychologically the types to kiss the kings ring so yes, he is about to screw tech for both fun and profit. Probably he will use as leverage to extort more personal gain out of Beijing.
True, although we prohibit the sale of pirate IP here, so they can't export their stolen IP to America (and other countries operating under certain international treaties). Strengthening these international IP agreements was one of the big things for which people attacked the TPP: we don't like the Berne Convention (I'd rather limit copyright to 14 years, or some such).
My point is importing cheap stuff from China actually makes our economy more-powerful and raises our standards of living. People think it just means jobs go away and we get poorer somehow.
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Really, there is no doubt that there would be a large adjustment to make shutting out China, but I don't think we need them in a society ending kind of way. Things will be more expensive, but there will be more jobs and we will move on. Also, I'm not really clear on why we are so gung-ho to remove our dependence on foreign oil by pressing EVs and the like, but yet a reliance on a foreign manufacturing is a good thing that we need? Doesn't make sense.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Owning things doesn't improve your standard-of-living, unless you base the quality of your life on how many material things you own.
You work 40 hours. You trade that labor for things. You can get a limited amount of stuff in trade--that's purchasing power.
Food. Housing. Clothing. Your car. High-speed Internet. Healthcare. These are things for which you need buying power.
Lowering the cost of goods and services means your purchasing power extends further: instead of choosing between a car and healthcare, you can have both.
Literally nothing else is standard-of-living except what you can buy for your time worked.
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If the price of making the product goes up, there will still be downward pressure on retail price because people can only afford so much. This means the middlemen will take some hit, which is precisely where it should come out.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's a hoarding/bunker mentality versus a focus on quality of life.
On one side, there's the folks who want to keep economic and physical resources on hand and maintain and develop manufacturing capability to ensure self sufficiency.
On the other, you've got the folks who want to enjoy as many of the available ancient vises and modern conveniences as possible.
Both sides have good arguments supporting them. On one side, what happens if international trade goes to hell? And on the other, why live like a Great Depression survivor when that crisis may never come?
As with most things, the most successful strategy is probably a middle ground between the two extremes.
Most electronics are discretionary. Your life won't be materially different if you keep the old TV for a year longer or don't trade your phone in every six months.
I'm sure they will negotiate a solution where her business gets a concession and this goes away. The good thing about corruption is that it's predictable and it's much easier to run a business in a predictable environment.
What kind of idiot thinks that insulting someone is good way to start negotiations? When you buy a car, do you start by telling the salesman how fat his mother is?
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But (as a human, not as a country), what's wrong with living cheaply, not keeping up with the Joneses (they're dumb anyway) and just keeping old stuff or buying used? The tradeoff from living cheaply won't be hoarding of money or stuff, it will be the ability to have a one-parent, 40 hour a week working family. Trading free time for stuff that doesn't enrich your life anyway.
The problem is that the population does not remain static. And with more mouths to feed (and house and clothe and educate so that they aren't a drag on the economy) year over year, you *need* that productivity increase just to keep things the same.
And don't forget, to have anything to buy used, someone at some point had to have bought it new.
Nothing at all.
The only *real* trouble with that is that's not what mainstream culture values. It's a marketing machine, and as soon as you opt out of the lifestyle of constantly buying shiny new crap you're worthless to advertisers and therefore irrelevant.
There are some good resources for those who think in those terms. One of my favorites is the Mr. Money Moustache blog.
Mainstream "kultshah" is essentially a bread and circus for the stupid and terminally ignorant.
Simple, enact policies to keep population static domestically. Invest heavily in economic development programs abroad that encourage and provide birth control as well. Earth is overloaded as it is. Perpetual growth is an illness, not the solution.
Low-cost imports make the importing nation wealthier.
Yeah, instead of investing my money on making things to sell, I blow all my money on cheap plastic shit from China! Just like Warren Buffet. That's why I'm so rich!
Isn't it at 3.9%? But Trump thinks the method is incorrect and real unemployment is over 20% :D
Hasn't worked for 40 years. Explain that. We've tried your system, and it has systematically sucked the wealth out of the country that was created in no small part due to protectionist trade policies in the beginning half of the 20th century.
Or you've been seeing the consequences of a tax policy that's insufficiently progressive to stop the wealthy from using their wealth to accumulate an even larger share of the wealth.
Oh wait, your guy just signed a bill that transferred a massive amount of wealth to the already wealthy... I hope you're ready for another 40 years of the rich getting richer and the rest running in place.
I stole this Sig
Oh man, think about the cheap 3D printers!
leading the pack, I see.
You don't need any productivity increase just because you have more people, because productivity is defined as output per something, and absent indication to the contrary that something is an hour of labour.
tl;dr every mouth that needs feeding comes with two hands to work.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
it seems the only negotiation you have ever been in is the car/thing buying kind. There are *A LOT* more sort of negotiations and it seems you don't have the experience of them. I would say your life inexperience is really showing.
That wasn't a typo, it's covfefe's brother.
Seriously, though, T is confusing and confounding other nations because of his flip-flops, surprise "temporarily exemptions", vagueness, etc. Today's proclamations maybe be irrelevant tomorrow via a new Tweet. Most world leaders are relatively careful, systematic planners and don't know what to make of his style.
I'm not going to even say T's unpredictable style "doesn't work"; for it's too early to judge. I'm merely saying that it's baffling the h$ll out of world leaders and negotiators.
Maybe there is a method to his madness. I wouldn't bet on it personally because it resembles trolling to me, but can't rule it out yet. It's an interesting experiment; I just hope us lab-rats survive it all.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't know if your descriptions are accurate, but the people you describe make up a majority of the public. We need an economic system that accounts for that and seeks better outcomes instead of maximum profit.
You don't know what the word "authoritarian" really means (in a political context). Trump is gentleman compared to a real authoritarian.
:).
If you keep calling everyone a "nazi" or "authoritarian" then everybody will get the idea that nazis and authoritarians were not that bad really.
Btw you will know what authoritarian means when the state starts confiscating succesfull businesses and politicians/journalists get some exotic poison or just plain old get killed in their elevator.
And also, quite true about Trump being accidental environmentalist
there's the folks who want to keep economic and physical resources on hand and maintain and develop manufacturing capability to ensure self sufficiency.
That's not quality-of-life; that's your local economics market. Back before manufacturing was big, America had this huge dialogue about how evil manufacturing was encroaching on the good American way of life where 90% of the workforce was in agriculture.
Quality-of-life is how people live, not how your nation's means of production are composed. It's about the people. It's about being able to eat, about being secure and not becoming homeless, and about having access to hygiene and medical care and social mobility.
On one side, what happens if international trade goes to hell?
Your nation has already fallen.
If we lose stable electricity for a day or two, our entire logistics system falls apart. We rely so much on communications and on shipping from town to town--much less across the states or to other nations--that we can't even keep stores stocked without trucks showing up every single day. After five days of high-speed communications being down across the nation, this nation isn't recovering; it's already over, the Constitution is no longer and shall never again be in force, and there is no capacity to maintain order and domestic tranquility.
Trade with other nations is a mechanism of stability. It gives us allies who are vested in helping us stay in one piece, and severely reduces the likelihood of war because neither side could sustain it.
why live like a Great Depression survivor when that crisis may never come?
In which case your isolationist nation is getting invaded by someone with the military prowess of Canada.
As with most things, the most successful strategy is probably a middle ground between the two extremes.
That assumes either side is an extreme, rather than that we're simply not leveraging mechanisms we should use. Holding your breath every 60 seconds could be said to be a middle-ground between breathing and not breathing when faced with, for example, air pollution.
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No you don't. Productivity is the amount produced per person (or per working-hour, depending on context). Population growth to carry capacity is unchanging productivity; population growth stops at carry capacity because productivity decreases when you exceed your maximum technological production rate and start pulling excess labor per unit produced.
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So you don't buy a new TV and instead buy a new pair of shoes to replace your worn, failing ones. You buy nicer food. You insulate your house better (and save more money, thus able to buy nicer things).
I still have a OnePlus One. I wish the 5t didn't have round corners and the 6 didn't have round goofy corners and rabbit ears.
I also wish it wasn't so expensive to pay people to clean and maintain my lawn--or that I had more money and cared more about paying people to do that than about buying anything else.
Who are you, really, to tell anyone how to live? Are they wrong for buying XBox over the functionally-superior Sega Dreamcast and killing one of the greatest not-Nintendo game console producers every to exist?
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The tradeoff from living cheaply won't be hoarding of money or stuff, it will be the ability to have a one-parent, 40 hour a week working family. Trading free time for stuff that doesn't enrich your life anyway.
I don't think that even the economic ability to have a single-parent, 40-hour work-week family means it is a good idea. If you look at the statistics, children coming from single parent homes are over-represented in just about every category for negative life outcomes whether it's crime, suicide, teen pregnancy, drug use, etc. The economic growth that we've seen has allowed us to support this without collapsing in on ourselves, but it's not a good thing. All of the labor being devoted to dealing with those issues could be redirected to enriching our lives in other ways.
I didn't say anything about single parents.
I was talking about two parent families with one working parent and one stay-at-home parent. Or two parents working short enough hours to be able to spend time with their children.
Things will be more expensive, but there will be more jobs
No. There will not be "more jobs". Look, protectionism isn't a "new" idea. It has been tried over and over throughout history. In fact, it has been more the norm than the exception. It hurts the economies of both importers and exporters, and leads to job losses and lower living standards.
Outside of military equipment, big-ticket specialty/precision items, airplanes and cars, the US doesn't manufacture many consumer goods anymore, especially tech goods. Unless his next announcement is a nationalization of what little manufacturing infrastructure we have left and a shift to something like war production to force the electronics industry to come back, I don't think the President is thinking this through.
Even if factory work came down to minimum wage, it would still be too expensive to compete with China and other countries. Companies would rather go out of business than open factories domestically. It's a nice idea, and I would love to see factory work as an alternative to shoveling everyone into higher education. But, it would have to be way more than a 25% tariff to get anything to change.
If we actually could accomplish this I would like to see it. Factory workers of a previous generation were able to have good careers and provide for their families. Now, unless you're in the technology sector you're going to end up automated out of a job, and most of the tech jobs are headed that way too.
Hasn't worked for 40 years. Explain that.
The US economy has more than doubled in the last 40 years.
Quick quiz - Who was the president that put in wage and price controls?
https://www.cato.org/publicati...
That's right, Another fine honest Republican, the honorable Richard Nixon.
On Aug. 15, 1971, in a nationally televised address, Nixon announced, “I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States.”
Wow...... Wage and price freezes. Hey - how'd that work out? Probably as good as what will hapen with the tarriffs on Chinese tech, and then the US working to make certain that the jobs of the Cell phone mfgr we kicked out are saved.
Funny how the Demoncrats are called the party of socialism, when the Republicans actually implement it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You make some very good points there. Good food for thought.
Can you phrase some of your ideas as positives (do X, Y, and Z) instead of negatives (this means you've failed, it's already over, X isn't Y).
What mechanisms should we leverage that we're ignoring or underutilizing?
I think this was more about having the ability to have one parent work and the other stay home.
This is a problem because if gets wrapped up in so much religious conservatism/nostalgia for the 50s where a woman's place is in the home. Why couldn't it be both parents having to work less overall so they had more time to actually raise their kids?
Kids from two-parent homes do end up doing better, but they do way better when both parents actually have time to spend with them. If both parents could work a flexible 25 hour work week instead of the old-school "Your butt must be in the seat from 8:30 to 5 every weekday" then things would be better.
I live in a reasonably affluent area and we have a mix of families -- ours and many others are 2-income FTE families, in some cases one parent is a doctor or lawyer and just has the spouse do all the childcare, and in others you have two total workaholic parents with high-pressure jobs. That third group has similar problems to the single-parent kids because even though they have tons of money, the parents don't have time to spend raising the kids or are too exhausted to do anything when they get home.
Look, protectionism isn't a "new" idea. It has been tried over and over throughout history. In fact, it has been more the norm than the exception. It hurts the economies of both importers and exporters, and leads to job losses and lower living standards.
Tell that to the Chinese as they've been using protectionist policies against the US for decades and engaging in tactics like flooding Western markets with super-cheap goods by "dumping" products at artificially-low prices subsidized by the Chinese government at a loss with the sole purpose of destroying US industrial and commercial sectors.
The Chinese have in effect been waging a trade and economic war against the US for decades. This response is long overdue and relatively mild in comparison.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
That would be it exactly. Xi will now instruct Kim to capitulate to a reasonable peace compromise with SK/Trump in exchange for Trump not raping them at the WTO. So, China, how many hundreds of billions of dollars a year are the Norks' nukes worth to you?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
During the time electronic toys and what not have fallen in price, what's happened to the price of food? Construction costs?
Ohhhh.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Trump didn't insult Xi Jinping's mother. What he said is that he's not going to let us be screwed over by unfair trade practices. I don't think the car dealer salesman is necessary, but if one insists in that analogy it would be more like letting the salesman know that unlike the last guy, you don't intend to lay sticker price.
What the timing does is it frames the negotiation, allowing US negotiators to "give" something to China during the negotiations, to relent on something, by easing the tariffs and restrictions. We can give them something they want, and get something in return, simply by going back to the same policy we had last month! :)
Now the *starting point* of the negotiations is that China wants something from us - easing that policy. Otherwise, the starting point was we wanted something from China - their help pressuring North Korea. In a negotiation, it's always better to be on the side being asked for something, rather than be the one asking for something.
Don't forget "or build locally"
-=Lothsahn=-
Sorry, but he was vague on details. I agree the US has been screwed on trade, but fixing it without triggering trade wars is not easy. T never laid out specific strategies, scenarios, and examples of how to do that. Or anything for that matter. Those who worked with him in business say he has an ad-hoc shoot-from-the-hip style. Perhaps it works, perhaps it doesn't, or works in some circumstances but others. Regardless, he's never written or described anything that can be turned into a relatively clear deal-making algorithm. Yes, he can be tenacious, but often to his own detriment, according to some real-estate analysts. His successes can often be traced to his self-promotion abilities and sometimes charisma, rather than shrewd decisions themselves.
And his Art-of-the-Deal ghost writer admitted much of the book is fluff.
By the way, "temporarily exemptions" should have been "temporary exemptions" in my message.
Table-ized A.I.
Simple, enact policies to keep population static domestically. Invest heavily in economic development programs abroad that encourage and provide birth control as well. Earth is overloaded as it is. Perpetual growth is an illness, not the solution.
Investing in a wall would do the most to keep the population static domestically. Without immigration the US population is slightly dropping over time. Mass immigration is the ultimate example of socializing the losses as our schools, infrastructure, and cost of housing all work against the 99%.
Sometimes, I really just like to point out that a question was in similar vein to "what if your stomach ruptured? You still need a way to get nutrition into your body." A nutrient IV might do that; however, if your stomach ruptured, you'd be dead.
In Nordic nations, they use collective risk sharing--generally social insurances like unemployment and disability insurance--to handle structural change.
Basically, you get wealthier by improving technology or trade, which means you expend fewer resources (ultimately, labor) in total to achieve the same ends (that's basically what economics is: people economize, which means they try to expend the least means for the most ends). This brings structural change: you need fewer workers somewhere, so you shift around the position of your employments (a factory town might collapse here or there; people lose their jobs, other people gain jobs, and you end up net-even on jobs before population growth).
Structural change has winners and losers; typically, you're looking at less than 0.1% of your workforce being the losers--if you lose 50,000 jobs in a particular exchange, that's 0.03% in America, and the secondary impacts might bring it up to 0.1%. So 99.9% of your consumer base is better off, and they're better off by so much that the winners can compensate the losers and still be way ahead. That's collective risk sharing.
In Norway, they've taken this so far as to have a fund preparing for the eventual global decline of oil demand. Norway is a big oil exporter, and renewable energy is the future. It makes sense, then, for workers and corporations to pay into a sort of fund that will then allow the government to manipulate the structural change and rebuild Norway's economy so as to restore order and protect the losers in this exchange when it comes. In theory, you'd want to diversify your holdings in some manner immune to national collapse, such as by holding a debt portfolio spread between various nations and thus being protected against a global recession that more-heavily impacts some than others (see: Greece, Italy, Spain).
I've suggested a sort of Universal Dividend in the United States, largely because you can build one under 2016 tax laws without creating new deficits, cutting services, or increasing tax burdens. It's a strange and complex shuffle: I restructured Social Security on top of the Dividend (retirement and disability bridge the gap between the Dividend and their payments as would otherwise be obligated under current rules), and the taxes are offset by the Dividend in theory as a rolling tax refund (pays twice-monthly, so a slightly-higher tax rate as you go through the middle classes turns into a slightly-lower tax rate when you count the Dividend as a tax refund).
The funding structure for this Dividend is a separate FICA tax on all personal and corporate income. It's 1/8 (12.5%), and in 2016 would have paid every adult in the United States a total of $6,700 in twice-monthly payments of $280. That has the largest proportional impact on the poorest, and has a large localized impact in areas of concentrated poverty: an increase in consumer spending creates a need for labor to keep up, or else your stores simply can't stock and sell goods fast enough. That's essentially similar to Keynesian Stimulus, like the one Barack Obama used to stop the 2008 Great Recession (remember getting a $300 check in the mail?), but always on.
This type of direct-cash risk share is similar to both a social insurance and a universal basic income. Every time productivity increases, the Dividend increases in the same proportion--it's profit sharing (= dividend) of the whole of wealth creation. Because of the localized-poverty concentration effect above, it provides interesting protection--more as more is needed--against things like automation (technology), outsourcing (trade), and immigrant labor (also trade, but they spend their income here). It does this, of course, by sharing the benefits of those things.
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My grandparents were in the second world war (like within range of a He111) and my parents were born just after. Even though rationing ended before I was born, I was brought up as if "make do and mend" was the eleventh commandment. Eleventh and twelfth, maybe.
I'll come in again.
Try telling that to kids[1] today, the vacuous, whiny, materialistic little shits.
[1] Which is anyone under 30.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's confounding only because most business negotiations are done in secret. When it leaks out it makes a lot of sense.
Trump has done a few things differently than most presidents. First, he's refused to divest himself of his businesses - usually a president puts their business in a trust so any decisions they may won't have potential conflict of interest.
It's why Russia is a big deal - it's one of the few countries where his businesses have done really, really, really well.
Or why ZTE suddenly deserves a lot of support (China dumps a half billion into a Trump hotel).
Next thing you know, Mexico will build a Trump hotel and it'll be "wall? what wall?" or if Mexico wants to build stuff using American equipment, "NAFTA GOOD!"
The problem is, these negotiations are done in private and under the privy of no one, so what looks erratic really turns out to be negotiation tactics to get a better deal.
Trump bends the way the dollars flow.
Low-cost imports make the importing nation wealthier. They raise the standard-of-living and cause economic growth.
Isn't something like 90% of everything at Walmart imported from China? Not sure how that squares with the above as a positive.
[ Not trolling you, just saying something that is anecdotal, but probably actually wrong. ]
On the other hand... Seems Trump is trying very hard to prove that trade wars are "easy to win."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
the wealth out of the country that was created in no small part due to protectionist trade policies in the beginning half of the 20th century.
Right, because massive destruction of infrastructure and manufacturing capacity in Europe had nothing to do with it.
FTFY.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Lowering the cost of goods and services means your purchasing power extends further: ...
Unless what you end up getting is crap, then you'll just have to buy it again, which doesn't help you but the sellers.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You work 40 hours. You trade that labor for things. You can get a limited amount of stuff in trade--that's purchasing power.
Food. Housing. Clothing. Your car. High-speed Internet. Healthcare. These are things for which you need buying power.
Lowering the cost of goods and services means your purchasing power extends further: instead of choosing between a car and healthcare, you can have both.
Literally nothing else is standard-of-living except what you can buy for your time worked.
You forgot to mention that while some goods can be bought more cheaply you also see your wages fail to keep pace as has been the case since the 70's. It's a race to the bottom wage wise so it's not nearly as rosy a picture as you paint. Moreover economists agree that they duped us and the impact was far worse than estimated. Opps, their bad but our loss.
Citations:
http://prospect.org/article/de... https://www.economist.com/node...
shush!! since when the reality is important! when trump says that he is getting poor... err... sorry, ignore that! the USA are getting poor, it must be true!!
The sad part is that while the US economy increased, most of the profit went to the top 1%
Higuita
Some argue stagnation may be a good thing. Some highly religious groups battle "the modern world" because they think we are diving face first into chaos and (perceived) moral decadence.
There is no absolute "law" of the science or the universe that says technical progress is a "good thing". Science can only make predictions at best, not give value judgments. It has no feelings.
Sure, we have more medicines, but also more people to feed, perhaps stretching our farms to a risky no-margin-for-error limit. Doomsday scenarios are endless. I'm not giving a preference here, only saying a case can be made.
Table-ized A.I.
This remains a joke. Trump restored ZTE because China gave Ivanka a trademark that she wanted. There has NEVER been such a corrupt president in office as trump. If he wants to be fair, he will put the same tariffs/vats on CHinese goods that they put on western goods. Likewise, he would require that all factories with chinese owners to have 50.1% American ownership. In addition, no more deals will be allowed in china for moving manufacturing over there. IOW, when we develop a product here, it will not be allowed to be manufactured in CHina, or for that matter, for ownership to be transfered to any chinese company.
Not sure how to deal with their subsidies, dumping, and manipulation, but even this would be a good start.
Then allow China to deal with it as they see fit. If CHina removes an items, so do we.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What's wrong with having 4 kids by 5 baby daddy's. Some people want no kids some want 37. It's their choice to have the kids. I see nothing wrong with that so long as they can support them on their own.
actually, he will get about 12 years, not 4. Pence might only get 8 years, but hopefully not.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Are we cooperating with China this week, or fighting them? How about North Korea? Is there anybody in the administration with a plan?
Have you read my blog lately?
Simple, enact policies to keep population static domestically.
It's anything but simple. If you curb births, you end up with a population tilted toward aged non-working citizens. These people are expensive because of their healthcare, generally don't buy a lot of things because they are on fixed incomes, do not contribute to the work force, and pay little taxes because of it. If you don't have a healthy population of younger taxpayers the system falls apart.
We'll just switch to the Russian-made routers.
Have gnu, will travel.
No, you're right; it's just that things like Cordoba Guitars are made in China, Fender Guitars are often made in Korea, high-end bicycle frames are made either by Trek or in China, high-end bicycle components were made in China or Japan until SRAM moved from China to Taiwan in 2016, and so forth.
Logitech? China. Apple? China. CISCO? China. Intel? USA. Oxo Good Grips, some of the best-made kitchen tools I've seen? China. Breville, some of the best kitchen appliances? Designed in Australia; manufactured and assembled in China. KitchenAid? Manufactured around the US, with a lot of higher-end products manufactured in China, and the final assembly for all stand mixers done in the USA so they can sort of claim all mixers are "made" in the USA.
WalMart actively pressures their suppliers to reduce costs or get out. When they hit a cost wall, WalMart pressures them to manufacture in China. WalMart's entire business model is basically selling cheap crap.
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Sure. The main problem with the fallacy is it costs more to produce crap at exactly the same quality in the domestic nation than in the foreign trade partner; and producing at a higher quality is also cheaper in the trade partner nation than doing so domestically. You get cheap crap because people buy cheap crap and sellers are trying to undercut each others's prices in a world where consumers don't care about quality comparisons.
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what's happened to the price of food
Generally represents lower of our consumer expense share each year; caveat: we eat more out-of-home, and food out-of-home is food plus paying for a time-share of servants to cook and serve and clean for us, which is more than just food.
Construction costs
Screwing around with international trade and making oil more-expensive has been a part of it; the bigger part has been running down mortgage interest prime rates, causing home prices to run up so the monthly mortgage payment is the same (which pins consumers to their mortgage, whereas a high prime rate market with depressed home values enables consumers to put little extra payment into their mortgage and avoid large amounts of interest costs).
Since you absolutely must pay 2-3 times as much of the cost of the house to buy it, we can charge 2-3 times as much for the same house if we build it, and so construction workers can run up their labor prices and take a big chunk of that, too. Want home improvement? That guy could be building a house for twice as much; you better up your hourly offer or he's not fixing your bathroom.
That's still not the whole story. It's huge and complex and annoying because of how the housing market works (it's not strictly a production market, but mostly a market of trading family heirlooms).
It has slowed down a bit in recent decades. Oddly enough, food and clothing keep going even when the overall trend pauses.
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You forgot to mention that while some goods can be bought more cheaply you also see your wages fail to keep pace as has been the case since the 70's.
Working 40 hours and being able to buy more means your wages are keeping pace with your cost-of-living increase.
That said, so long as you're not arguing that wages (other than the minimum wage, which needs government support) are falling or remaining stagnant, you're not wrong; with a 10% increase in average purchasing power, you can have everyone's purchasing power go up by 5% and they're all still...well, richer. They're also lagging behind.
I've actually suggested a completely-new approach to tax and income policies which ties minimum wage to 1/4 the GNI-per-Adult ($10.20 in 2018 based on a policy I wrote) and effective tax rates to the GNI-per-Capita and some equivalence scale magic (it's a straight-forward process, but tedious to explain; being straight-forward makes it less-complex, but having some math involved makes it slightly-annoying).
That all essentially means your taxes go down if you don't get a proportional share of the productivity (if it goes up 10%, your income goes up by inflation, then goes up by 10% from there, and you pay exactly the same effective tax rate at that point), and the minimum wage also goes up in proportion to productivity growth (except it never goes down). That maintains the structural foundation, and doesn't force the structure into a given shape above that--except it sort of prevents it from becoming more bottom-heavy (or at least resists).
The per-capita income is about $59,000 and the per-Adult income is about $86,000. You need some structure below to have structure above, but the people at the bottom shouldn't be immobilized by poverty or completely unable to care for themselves. When that center point moves, the people at the bottom should move along with it: the entire structure should shift forward instead of simply elongating, and the bottom should shift forward in the same proportion as the center.
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I'm a pirate, you insensitive clod
If I were in Maryland I'd vote for you.
Here's an example of T's "negotiation" style. When he formed Trump Airlines, a dispute arose with a competitor airline. When T didn't like their proposed compromise, he started bad-mouthing their safety record, using arguably questionable statistics.
Normally the airlines don't advertise based on safety records because it hurts the entire industry by spooking customers. It's like reminding grocery shoppers what's in hot-dogs. Sales of all brands would take a hit.
So the other airline looked at T's real-estate record, and realized he picks nasty fights that appear to have dragged both parties down. If you don't share your soup on his terms, he'll piss in the pot and nobody gets any. Therefore, the competitor airline acquiesced to some degree. (Their actual reasoning was not made public, but it appears that's what happened based on the terms.)
Whether that technique scales to international deals is another matter. You may win a "battle" or two, but lose lots of longer-term goodwill such that it may not be a net beneficial strategy. Then again, long-term benefits may not be his goal.
Table-ized A.I.
If I were a better fundraiser, I'd probably be sitting on an easy win. ;) People seem to know who I am wherever I go, though, which is uh. Interesting. Now the question is do voters know who I am?
I might start a lobbying organization and publish a policy handbook whether I win or lose. It may contain some radical ideas.
If you like reading economics lit, I'm pulling in data from the Nordic model among other places. There's another book on the same topic. I don't always agree with their conclusions, and sometimes they don't make conclusions (e.g. they point out that indefinite unemployment insurance is easy to game and that people stay on it not-as-long when it's limited to 2 years, and also point out that this doesn't necessarily mean more employment because these people may be trading into jobs other people were getting and so the unemployment rate can stay the same either way--a deficiency I've commented on in our 6-month system here: it relies on people floating in and out, not on reducing actual unemployment).
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Well, China has been a supporter of North Korea since at least the early 1950's. so that connection is reasonable.
OTOH, the way I would react to the dealings (as I have heard them) so far is "You can't trust any deal you make with the US.". Admittedly, this isn't original with Trump, but he's been more blatant about it than most administrations. And at least so far he *appears* to be adhering to the letter of the agreement. ... I.e., ZTE is back in business. (This, of course, depends on the details of the proposed tariff.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Right, it's not falling apart, just hemorrhaging wealth to other nations. Specifically China. But the economy is growing so we can live with a half trillion open wound every year. Seriously, our economy is huge, we can take it. And a decade or two that has really elevated a bunch of poor Chinese peasants into something resembling middle class. It's truly money from those who can afford it to those who need it most. Been a big help with all sorts of averaged worldwide metrics. Obesity is now a bigger problem than malnourishment almost entirely because the Chinese started eating.
Low-cost imports make the importing nation wealthier.
Yes. Also high-cost imports. Pretty much anything the buying is willing to pay for is a net-wealth gain. Otherwise they wouldn't do it. It's kinda how trade works. And cheaper goods means more trade. And global trade has been great for society. Super-great for anyone that managed to move their factory over there. And by that I mean outsource (haha, it's not like China gov would let Americans own that). Although it's a real fucking kick in the teeth to the previously middle class factory workers, or those expecting that lifestyle. Certainly a contributor to the growing GINI coefficient. (That's the income gap between the wealthy and the poor)
Hope they keep buying US bonds though, otherwise our government is fucked. You know, more so than the agency heads actively dismantling themselves. Interest paid on federal debt is... what? 11% of GDP?
hmmmm, I think he's an ass, but I think he's right about this one. China has been subsiding solar cells and steel. Much the same way that America's "farm bill" subsidized corn and various crops. It makes those products cheaper and more competitive abroad. We can buy food CHEAP. We do that to protect our breadbasket as it's not the sort of thing a nation wants to do without. Likewise, people in China can build things out of steel girders for cheap.
The.... targeted dumping and presumed intentions may or may not be true... Someone in some meeting probably had that intent, so sure. But it really is protectionism.
But where's the money coming from? We protect our farmers. China protects their steel industry. Who pays for that? America, it's the tax payers. In China, I'd argue it is (or at least was) more due to the suppressed currency. The Chinese people have artificially low wages (relative to the rest of the world) because they pegged their currency to the US dollar. And that's on top of that whole "crazy bad" levels of pollution. That tactic made China competitive and they kinda took a majority market share of global manufacturing. So China has experienced explosive growth, and all in all it's worked out. But I think the next generation isn't all giddy from being elevated from starving paddy-farming peasants and expects to be middle class. They're becoming consumers.
With a (more) centralized state-run economy, China has had a much more focused strategy than the US. Like I said it's worked well. And while they're dependent on having global customers... we're also dependent on them buying US bonds to fund our government... And hell, if all those freighters shut down this year, we'd be FUCKED trying to spin up a manufacturing sector. It's like a decade-long process.
It was her turn !
Trumps base is people just like you, who think tariffs will solve all your problems.
So you think only China makes cheap electronics / disposable crap you buy? And you think a tax aimed at just China won't have Americans just buy their cheap junk from the next country on the list? You're even less bright than before.
Things being more expensive may mean more expensive exports and fewer jobs. Or more automation and no more jobs. It's a complex web of feedbacks and simplistic will not do.
On one hand China hates women, so they must be good. On the other hand, "muh trade war". Aagh, why do things have to be so complicated!?!
/sarcasm
obligatory
The danger is it looks like an internal power struggle.
it's not falling apart, just hemorrhaging wealth to other nations. Specifically China. But the economy is growing so we can live with a half trillion open wound every year.
A half trillion dollars of imports is not our nation becoming poorer. We aren't shipping our wealth out. We're working our labor to efficiently produce, and trading that efficient production for production which is done more-efficiently (lower cost to us) elsewhere.
We can make 20 million tonnes of potato and 10 million tonnes of melon with equal exercise of labor (cost). Mexico can make 10 million tonnes of potato and 20 million tonnes of melon with the same labor. Instead, we make 30 million tonnes of potato, Mexico makes 30 million tonnes of melon, and we trade a third of our potato for melon. Now, instead of exercising the labor to make 40 million tonnes of potato (US) or melon (Mexico), we're exercising the labor to make 30 million tonnes of either and trading 1/3 of it. That means 25% of our potato-melon labor can go on to farm wheat or cotton, or transition into manufacture (the evil that destroyed America's good agricultural heritage) or IT, medicine, and services (the evil that destroyed America's good manufacturing heritage).
In other terms: we're spending $2 billion on 20 tonnes of potato and $2 billion on 10 tonnes of melon; now we're spending $2 billion on 20 tonnes of potato and $1 billion on 10 tonnes of melon (basically, we bought that other $1 billion of potato and traded it for $2 billions of melon). We've got $1 billion lying around to spend on other stuff.
So here's the thing: what if potato isn't a thing? What if Mexico has their own potato, and sells us melons?
Well, instead of spending $2 billion on 10 tonnes of melon, we spend $1 billion to have that 10 tonnes imported. We still have $1 billion of spending money lying around to spend on other stuff.
All of these melons need to be shipped, sold, and so forth as well, along with anything else we buy. Shipping, of course, got more efficient (the wooden shipping pallet turned 48 hours of labor into 4 hours); and IT services like Spotify and Netflix deliver over a highly-efficient data pipe (Internet download).
The Marxist dream is to wall off Mexico and force a handful of people to work to make melons while the rest of the consumer base pays twice as much for melons, remaining poor.
The Keynesian reality is that our labor force expands to meet carry capacity for jobs, created by consumer demand, and this slowing of expansion results in that same "natural unemployment rate" under economic conditions (it's 5% in the US, and I'm trying to pin us to the 2-3% full employment rate) whether you're a poor nation with no trade or a wealthy nation importing a lot of stuff cheaply instead of making it inefficiently.
The whole idea that you must be bleeding money because you're importing more than you export is economics as a zero-sum game. It's a world where technology doesn't exist and babies are instantiated by God snapping his fingers and having the Stork deliver them on his schedule.
Pretty much anything the buying is willing to pay for is a net-wealth gain
It's only a net gain if you're getting at the same quality as you would otherwise but with lower price (or cost, I guess, since your price is labor trade... it gets complex here). People are rational, but not knowledgeable: a lot of sellers make their living by convincing people a low-quality good is better than a high-quality good, and inverting price (you pay more for less because it says Sony Vaio or Apple on the tin).
it's a real fucking kick in the teeth to the previously middle class factory workers, or those expecting that lifestyle. Certainly a contributor to the growing GINI coefficient.
Sort of. Technology does the same thing as trade: it creates structural change. Your GNI-per-Capita goes up--we're richer on a per-
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So blatant is his criminality there is no need for allegations or charges.
But just for completeness here they are:
Disagreeing with CNN.
Entering office WITHOUT the approval of Robert Muller.
Increasing government revenues while lowering taxes.
Not seeing that improving the economy is not the most important thing, like Van Jones said.
So completely criminal that we can surely sidestep formalities like impeachment hearings, the petty opinions of the electorate, and the welfare of the United States in removing him from office.
Case closed !!
Increasing government revenues while lowering taxes.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!
Wow, you drank so much of that kool-aid that you're immune to facts. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Automation is happening equally everywhere no matter what happens. It's still better to have a factory here with 10 non-automatable jobs then to have it in China with any number of jobs, provided cities don't give up so much to have a company there they fail to reap any net benefits for it *cough*Amazon*cough*.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
OK ... here's a fact for you:
US revenues are up 12% compared to previous year.
"Federal Budget Surplus for April Largest on Record"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...
How can that be? We REDUCED taxes?
What facts do you have?
Memorial day is a good time of year to break out the Kool-Aid. Unless you're in Jonestown, of course.
As opposed to what? A modern luxury status symbol like the iPhone?
Oh, wait. They were made in China.
If China is churning out cheap shit it'e because people are buying it. There's very little of it in the UK..
"Hello, welcome to the showroom. Would you like our wheelmobile?"
"Its fuel economy is terrible and there are only 27 cup holders. It may be a popular penis extension but really you're going to have to help me overcome those issues before I could even pretend to be interested"
Yeah, I'd insult someone to start a negotiation.
I give them money and I never get any from them.
When you run out of money you're fucked.
The payroll taxes and economic stimulus of a dozen jobs are neither here nor there. Other stimulus would depend on parts suppliers, and taxes so on, compared to tax incentives or environmental effects. Net benefit is likely, but not a given.
Not everything is material. If I lived a life where I could buy all I wanted but couldn't spend any time with people I like or express myself freely, it would certainly be a lower standard of living
horror vacui
Sure, but that's outside the control of this branch of economics. Economics in general is concerned with achieving the most ends with the least means.
In behavioral economics, those sorts of things are addressed by people forming governments to protect those things they call natural rights. You may notice a problem: people decide their vote doesn't matter, and don't vote. People also can't all be experts in everything that's happening, so we must vote in people who specialize in doing this (politicians are basically paid consultants who are supposed to represent our needs and desires in a time-consuming exercise requiring knowledge we don't have time to acquire).
Those societies then form the framework of rules within which we attempt to form strategies to achieve the greatest ends with the least means. It's more-efficient to let a dictator run everything, although the dictator may decide that certain things are better a certain way, and then you have to deal with those consequences--which inevitably mean insecurity. In a way, representative democracy attempts to avoid the severe damage of such dictatorships's failure modes while giving up the advantages of the occasional benevolent genius dictator who might actually solve the world's present problems immediately; and, being well-aware of the difficulty in locating such a benevolent dictator and the high likelihood that one is out there somewhere at all times, we go so far as to remove all emergency provisions allowing us to leverage such a thing now and then so as to avoid the inevitable outcome of instilling a tyrant who talks nice.
All behaviors are evidently the same behavior.
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The leader of Venice [The Doge ] was NEVER allowed to negotiate with any foreigner except when observers from the 'local parliament' were present. No foreign negotiations by leader in private! They knew how to avoid some problems.
Regards Eion MacDonald
If Paul CREATES and sells $50 of potatoes in a primary industry, but BUYS $60 of mexican melons, where's the fucking wealth going? Is Potato Paul getting richer or poorer? I'm not saying we should stop all trade, that's fucking idiotic. I guess Paul just really needs those melons. Shut down trade and Paul would then have to buy $120 of US melons or something. Whatever. But TRADE IMBALANCE is a direct and obvious example of a WEALTH TRANSFER. It might be the cheapest, best, most rational option, but it doesn't mean money and wealth isn't flowing in that direction. From us, to them.
BUT HEY! just to really hammer home that money flowing from one of the wealthiest nations to the poor masses of humanity isn't that bad of a thing. Frankly, they've earned it. Yay elevating our brothers and all that shit.
The whole idea that you must be bleeding money because you're importing more than you export is economics as a zero-sum game.
I explicitly said our economy is growing enough that it's not a problem. You talk a lot but you don't listen well.
The trick here is even a collapsed factory town is a tiny, tiny piece of our economy. Any one movement is 99.9% winners and 0.1% losers, if not much better. Most of them are 0.001% or further down (localized improvements).
A factory town? As in single? Son, you need to get out more. The Gini coefficient takes into account EVERYONE.
That means the GNI coefficient isn't much affected by [outsourcing to China] in particular, except maybe in the long run and by other, bigger mechanisms.
Yeah, no shit sherlock. Way to finally pick up what I was laying down. Like a full minute after you knee started jerking and you let your mouth start running. Factory jobs were outsourced to China (and automation started eating jobs around 2000). You can bet your ass that employing cheaper Chinese factory workers MOST DEFINITELY contributed to the rising Gini coefficient. It put more money to the US owners, while giving some money to the Chinese, and took away the money from the US workers. This is super obvious. A direct and rational cause and effect.
Gini coefficient. GINI, not the gross national income. It's named after an Italian guy. A metric of inequality.
Agreed, which is what I mean about Amazon. Cities fall over themselves to host HQ2 but they forget that there should be something in it left for them.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
from the 3 billion USD gift to Chinese Telecom?
I think you need to work through the range of possible consequences in what is a complex system of feedbacks. Whilst i have a set of principles and hopes for outcomes (e.g. Individual liberty and personal fulfillment on small and large scales) , I believe that reducing things to simplistic slogans is unlikely to result in An evidence-backed answer.
China has supported NK in its shenanigans since forever. What were they gaining from doing it before that they aren't getting now?
Maybe lardlad borrowed the lawnmower & didn't give it back?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You seem to be ignoring the fact that the government still needs to be funded.
https://washingtonpost.com/93c...
Fanciful thinking doesn't change reality, it just drives the nation deeper into debt.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
This is super obvious. A direct and rational cause and effect.
It's only as obvious as that mice are spontaneously created by the conditions of placing grain wrapped in a shirt. People believed that for a long time; they reasoned that they saw no mice, then there were mice, thus the mice must have been spontaneously created. Where there is grain, there are mice--they don't come, breed, and spread, but rather appear from the ether.
Your information is limited, and your conclusions are thus imprecise. What happens if you compare trade deficits to unemployment? And no, the conclusion is not that a falling trade deficit causes rising unemployment, either, even though the chart appears to show that (the correlation is the other way around: less capacity to buy, thus less importing).
Some folks have studied this in other nations, and written interesting things about such.
If Paul CREATES and sells $50 of potatoes in a primary industry, but BUYS $60 of mexican melons, where's the fucking wealth going?
This is a micro-economics question. Paul is of course operating on credit.
Shut down trade and Paul would then have to buy $120 of US melons or something.
It's more that, between Paul, Mike, and Brian, the US CREATES and sells $60 of potatoes, and CREATES and sells $120 of melons. In doing so, they exercise 6,000 hours of US productive labor.
Instead, Paul CREATES and sells $60 of potatoes. Meanwhile, people IMPORT $60 of Mexican melons. Now Mike and Brian have 4,000 hours to expend on CREATING chairs or wheat or cars.
There's an interesting issue here: the US consumers can now spend $60 on US goods and purchase 2,000 hours of labor (yeah it's like, 1790, no inflation yet). That can employ Mike but not Brian.
Here's the thing: people retire somewhere between 66 and 74. Jim was going to retire at 74, but he's got his Social Security going on (just ignore the anachronism) and a technological change has improved the farm work for keeping cows. Jim could go fight with Brian for that new chicken farm job that's opened up since folks are buying more eggs with the money they're saving on milk, but he retires at 72 instead of trying to get a job for the next 2 years.
Now Paul, Mike, and Brian all have jobs; Jim retired.
This is actually a hell of a lot more complex today: we bring in nearly 300,000 H-1B Visa permanent workers each year; college students go to grad school or drop out based on job availability; and, again, you've got the whole thing with people not retiring exactly at 66 1/2. You also have some funky thing that caused something called "Baby Boomers" that one time, where continued high employment availability leads to continued population growth until the job market slows down; the opposite is also true.
Long story short, we have high labor force participation and low unemployment. Our labor markets have shifted around structural change and continue to do so. Meanwhile, we all get more for every hour we work.
I explicitly said our economy is growing enough that it's not a problem. You talk a lot but you don't listen well.
Sorry, I assumed too much about your knowledge of macroeconomics. Let me remedy this.
Economies grow in two major ways. The lesser growth effect is the accumulation of factors of production: more population, more factories, and so forth. That kind of growth doesn't increase standards of living; it only increases GDP. In numerical terms, GDP-per-Capita and GNI-per-Capita stay the same.
The other type of growth is structural change. Structural change involves technical progress (the wooden shipping pallet eliminated 92% of labor in loading and unloading goods d
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If federal revenues are INCREASING how does that endanger government funding?
How does INCREASING revenue possibly drive the nation deeper into debt?
You claim sounds too incoherent for me to understand.
You missed the point of my statement. The point is not the quality or quantity of stuff that I buy. The point is that buying things does not make you richer. Investing and selling stuff makes you richer. And the US is buying hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stuff from the China every year. And every year the people of China are getting richer, and the people of the United States are now getting poorer.
When someone says you talk a lot but don't listen well, that's really not an invitation for a wall of text.
Furthermore, you're called bullshit on "Outsourcing to china increases the Gini coefficient" being obvious. Going so far as to compare it to the theory of spontaneous genesis..... and proceed to talk about trade deficits... Now, I get that they're related, I wouldn't be so nitpicky if you didn't employ so much hyperbole. But you kinda swapped out the topic there. Holy shit, shut up and READ a little bit. And if you DO read any of this, give comprehension a try. Seriously, this is TWICE. I was insulted the first time. Now I'm just giving up on you.
The MIT paper only says "FREE TRADE GOOD". But it doesn't mention trade deficits at all. Or imbalance. It only talks about budget deficits. And I agree, free trade good. Nobody has said otherwise. ...that graph shows DOES appear to show that it shows that you're full of shit. I was confused about why you were showing it to me. People getting laid off, money going overseas. But yeah, sure, they both probably just a function of the economy going into the shitter.
If a trade deficit were reducing our wealth, however, we wouldn't be able to pay the new laborers to work. Instead of growing, we'd be shrinking. We're not.
UNLESS WE FUCKING MADE THE MONEY SOMEWHERE ELSE! Jesus. Thricely I say unto thee: OUR ECONOMY IS GROWING ~~MORE~~ THAN THE HALF TRILLION WE SEND TO CHINA We can afford it.
This isn't the first time we've danced around each other you know. I think it might have even been years ago. Listen Lucid, John, if I may... my advice now, just as it was then, is still the same. You've got some good ideas, but holy shit you need to learn to simply AGREE with other people when they're agreeing with you. There's no need to start an argument over semantics or disagree with someone simply because they said the same thing in the wrong way. There's no fucking way you'll make it in politics if you're THIS fucking combative to people who would otherwise be in the exact same political camp. Stop bible-thumping your own choir. Be friendly, god damnit. And the pretentious thing won't get you votes.
Oh well since you got it all figured out, you should go tell the CBO that they are all stupid and replace them.
I guess you don't understand how lacking your understanding of government funding is.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
shut up and READ a little bit. And if you DO read any of this, give comprehension a try. Seriously, this is TWICE.
I did read. I thought. I considered objective reality.
I was insulted the first time.
That's because you said something and I told you you're categorically wrong. You've believed strongly your whole life that the sky is a brilliant shade of gold; I pointed up and said, "That... is blue." It can't not be insulting. I'm accusing you of being ignorant and lacking knowledge of the world.
Let me explain this to you in simple, brief terms by an example.
If we ceased to import Men and Boys's Cotton Trousers and Pants from China and instead made and sold those same products in American factories, the cost in terms of wages to produce those would go up. The direct employment from this manufacturing in China would be around 178,000 American workers; however, with the cost increase, American consumers would be able to purchase only enough sufficient to support 58,000 American workers involved in domestic production.
Out of 158 million workers, that's .037%.
That's at the same quality. For the American pants to be of higher quality, the cost would be higher, affordability would be lower, and fewer jobs would be created.
A minimum-wage American worker now works 1.8 hours to buy pants; under this scenario, the worker works 3 hours instead. This 67% increase applies across the board: for a worker who works 0.6 hours to buy those pants, that person now spends 1 hour's wage on the same pants.
First result: 99.96% of Americans are poorer. The ones most impacted would be the poorest, by the way.
Because of this, Americans purchase fewer pants or fewer things which aren't pants.
With less purchasing, fewer trucks are driven to ship goods. Fewer retail cashiers, inventory specialists (unloading trucks), and other such support can be employed. The numbers for these are actually calculated by the cost differential between Chinese- and American-made pants.
That loss comes out to be around 92,000.
58,000 jobs created, 92,000 jobs lost
Second result: 34,000 fewer American jobs in total.
you need to learn to simply AGREE with other people when they're agreeing with you. There's no need to start an argument over semantics or disagree with someone simply because they said the same thing in the wrong way.
I can't agree with you when you're wrong.
You're saying the trade deficit is causing loss of wealth which is being offset by growth--a ridiculous statement because hemorrhaging wealth in that way would cause negative growth and a declining capacity to support jobs and population.
Thricely I say unto thee: OUR ECONOMY IS GROWING ~~MORE~~ THAN THE HALF TRILLION WE SEND TO CHINA We can afford it.
See this statement? It's rooted in ignorance. This is you saying something that has no basis in reality. I explained why this is (it has to do with labor: you're trading time), although only in a brief statement buried in a wall of text.
I'm saying that by importing cheap goods from China, we make the American poor and middle-class wealthier and create thousands of American jobs.
that graph shows DOES appear to show that it shows that you're full of shit. I was confused about why you were showing it to me. People getting laid off, money going overseas.
Sorry, let me explain the graph.
Do you see the green line? That's the unemployment rate. The red line is our trade balance--lower means deficit (more imports than exports).
Notice that, at a nearly $200 billion trade deficit in 1987, we have 5.5% unemployment.
Notice that, at a nearly $800 billion trade deficit in 2005, we have 5% unemployment.
The increase in deficit doesn't increase unemployment
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There's no fucking way you'll make it in politics if you're THIS fucking combative to people who would otherwise be in the exact same political camp.
tl;dr: Imports from China have made all Americans--especially the poorest--wealthier and increased the number of American jobs in total. Gini coefficient is caused by internal structural policy, not trade. Growth is not somehow covering up loss; the things you claim are loss are a major cause of America's growth.
Basically, everything you're saying is wrong, and either the opposite is true or there's no relation between the things you're claiming and what's actually happening.
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