Hey, you're the one proposing it as a viable alternative to foreign oil.
It's one of many. Another good one is using e-coli to digest cellulose into gasoline. There are many other synthetics available with the wealth of natural resources we have in the United States- it just takes imagination and a willingness to do what is right regardless of profit, something that no capitalist today has.
Yeah right. the bottom 50% of the world population is more concerned with fresh water and something to eat than killing the west.
Who cares about the world? I'm talking about the United States, where the bottom 50% have guns.
Fat is actually a form of malnutrition; it means that you're not eating regularly and you're not eating healthy. The principle cause of not eating healthy in the United States is that nutrition has become a selling point- healthy foods are therefore more expensive.
Any most of the truly homeless are either mentally ill or simply unwilling to exist in society, they aren't relevant to the discussion.
So everybody who took a subprime loan is mentally ill.
No, their job is to abide by the laws of the country/state and serve their shareholders.
And since taxpayer money is used to create those laws, those laws should support the taxpayer.
My answer to yours is 'knowledge is power'. If you don't know about something then you can only fear it. The only way to know if something is a real threat is to know it an understand it. Usually when that happens the preceived threat of the unknown is not justified in the slightest.
Oh, I understand it- I am it. I am the threat. I am exactly the same type of personality that has become radicalized all over the world. There is NO difference between me and a suicide bomber. I know the danger- apparently you are too stupid to know the danger.
But if you want to ignore things by sticking your head in the sand (and getting your ass blown off) then go right ahead. Incidentally the religious fundamentalists do exactly the same thing as you are doing - fear through ignorance.
Yes, which is the point. I already know the danger, so why would I put myself into the danger?
A good for instance in this case is Thomas the Tank Engine wooden trains. Wooden train technology uses magnets to join the trains together. Magnets are no longer made in North America- anywhere. ALL magnets in the world are made in East Asia. You literally cannot buy wooden railway sets that are 100% made in America. The WTO actually has made it illegal to manufacture magnets in the United States- not just unprofitable, but illegal, as in if we start up a magnet factory here we'll face tariff sanctions in the world court to prevent us from exporting those magnets.
Needless to say, I have a 4-year-old boy. I knew this and didn't buy him such train, but others gave him gifts. Sure enough, he had a James the Red Engine that was manufactured between 2002 and 2004, in China. Because of that, I have to pay for expensive heavy metal testing that our health insurance won't cover, and he may have to go into Chelation Therapy to expunge the lead from his body.
Tell me, is your free market willing to pay for that?
Spoken like someone who has never left their basement let alone travelled anywhere. Go visit a few places around the world and look for yourself with an open mind. I guarantee that will change your point of view.
The answer to that is, it's too dangerous. I'm looking for security, not a chance to be a martyr. Besides, I have everything I need within 3000 miles of home. Why should I go elsewhere?
Oh, and keeping an open mind seems to be a great way to have your brains fall out.
You have wrote that spending your money you enhance the local economy more than spending it in foreign goods at lower prices. If it is so, you have no excuses to not buy local. Whatever was or is the price. If the goods you need are not available, under your theory, you will have a greater profit producing them locally than buying them from abroad. This is the normal behavior of Marxists, they like talk the talk but they refrain to walk the walk. They prefer to someone else to walk the walk.
I buy locally whenever I can. The WTO and NAFTA are trade agreements that by law, prevent us from buying locally. INDIVIDUAL PROFIT is not a consideration int he analysis at all- because it's just a straw man, a fake.
This is the same arguments protectionist all over the world use to protect their commerce against concurrents. I, an Italian, could say the same of the good produced in the USA and sold in Italy or in the EU.
Absolutely, and it's true. The USA's bad labor protection laws (in comparison to Europe) give us an absolute advantage over the EU. Just as the lack of worker and environmental protection in China is kicking all of our asses.
Then the 8 cents and 8$ is purely made up statistic. Historically protectionism went against economic growth in the [not so] long run everywhere and always.
Bullshit. Protectionism worked just fine for the Chinook Trading Tribes, there was a reason why Chinook was the warm wind and the Five Brothers was the evil cold east wind.
If I buy good or services at lower prices I am able to buy the same good or services and be able to spend the saved money in different ways (saving, investing, buy more of the same).
Except, of course, that's money wasted to the greater community- because it's left our community to benefit somebody else, or it's been hoarded to benefit nobody. Savings and investing is the greatest lie in the world.
I'm richer if I'm able to buy the same goods at lower prices.
But the community is poorer, which is the point. There's a reason why people starved in the United States last year.
Protectionism, in the long run, make all poorer.
Community is a greater value than money. You're measuring your net worth entirely in terms of worship of an idol.
This because in a world where commerce is possible, specialization of the production is possible and with specialization come a huge growth in productivity.
Growth in productivity is just lost jobs.
The commerce is historically the source of the wellness and wealth of the nations.
Only if your priest is Adam Smith instead of the Pope.
If it is not, please name a country rich that don't commerce.
The Kalapuya considered themselves to be extremely wealthy. Of course, their wealth came not from commerce, but from living in harmony with the planet at a standard of living that was within the carrying capacity of their environment. They were wealthy enough to engage in commerce of course, but that commerce was not the source of their wealth, but rather the result.
That's what I'm really asking for- our country to be self sufficient, and provide for EVERY citizen a job sufficient to provide food, clothing, and shelter- before "specializing" and allowing people to become rich. Because only then, only when everybody is taken care of and NOBODY slips through the cracks, can we call ourselves as Wealthy of a People as the Kalapuya could. Unless we are WE, and not individuals, we will never gain that simple wealth of a third world worker.
What's wrong with HBO? I thought that was the channel that makes all those expensive glossy dramas.
Dramas that encourage mortal sins like Lust and Greed. My child can do without such input. He'll get plenty from the morally bankrupt capitalist state advertising to him throughout his life.
..and reducing overall purchases which would make a good portion of those workers unemployed
Why would overall purchases decrease below substinence level?
(note: supply of labor would have increased, so its price, aka wages, would have fallen),
How does cutting off foreign imports (immigrants included) INCREASE the supply of labor? I would think that closing the borders would decrease the supply of labor.
in turn reducing purchases in the existing businesses which would go belly up and make their workers unemployed, which would again inflict downward pressure on wages, and so on until achieving new (old?), lower equilibriums of wages, employment and GDP.
I'm sorry, you lost me with how cutting off immigration and other imports increases the supply of labor.
The economy would be literally rolled _back in time_ this way, it would have been like running reverse on video. You just don't get the math of it.
Um, actually, that's the point. To roll the economy back to the idea of a self-sufficient, and therefore able to tell any other country to fsk off, United States of America.
This scenario has already been tried during Great Depression, when govt filled with sentimental illiterates like you prolonged depression of US economy into 1940s, while it could have been over by 1930 if govt didn't stupidly insist on enforcing high wages of union mob (nobody more was employed because wages were set artificially above their true, market price - no demand) enforcing high prices (which siphoned off the money that would have otherwise been used to make more purchases in new businesses and would get new companies rolling) while simultaneously strangling money supply (which caused severe liquidity crisis).
The difference being that we'd increase the money supply to go along with the increased wages. Or rather, revalue the wages to go along with the money supply. Liquidity is a fungible input- there's no reality to money to begin with, it has no intrinsic value.
You're an offshot of that righteous, sentimental, and tragically harmful idiocy.
Harmful to whom? To the rich, or to the poor? I'd point out that the Great Depression is EXACTLY what we need to end the materialism of the age.
I've still got Mod points to spare- I'm noplace close to the 50 in a day limit.
Having said that- in the 1960s was when Japan started to export cars to the United States, which was the beginning of the long, slow slide. Or did you think the first Datsun to hit these shores was in the early 1980s?
There is no transaction between you and those who, say, buy whatever produced in India. That transaction does not involve you, regardless of whatever sentimental hyperboles you spin.
There is when I have *NO* choice left but to buy from India, or China, or elsewhere. As I already do in certain small components such as capacitors and magnets (I've tried because of the incredibly shoddy ability to follow a capacitance oil recipe- this is the primary cause of motherboard failure).
Similarly, I didn't agree for my govt to impose idiotic tariffs on my very own nation (to its own disadvantage, but people en masse think with sentiments like you instead of trying to use their brains and add the numbers up). That is not trade, that is politics and govt regulation, and you mix two realms that overlap but do not cover.
I don't care about tariffs- I want zero contact. I don't want the choices of a toy manufacturer that I can't kill affecting my child's health EVER AGAIN.
It's none of your fucking business if some people in the local community buy at Walmart instead of this "mom & pop" business. Not to mention that "mom&pop" is cost-inefficient in comparison. Which makes those local consumers spend more than they would have spent at Walmart. Which means they don't save what they save with walmart for the same quantity/quality of goods. So they are left with less money they would have spent otherwise. So ceteris paribus, "mom&pop" cost.. jobs.
Except, of course, that Walmart stuff is crap and just fills up landfills. Which destroys my groundwater that my child drinks. That's treason- allowing greed to affect the local environment.
It is a paradox of perverted reality that those selfish consumers benefit USA and altruistic, dim gooks like you actually put it at disadvantage, nevertheless, that's how calm, rational thinking indicates it happens.
I don't consider piling up money to be a benefit. Nor do I consider contact with the REAL gooks (get a dictionary, idiot) to be a benefit.
That's what you get when you read marxism for dummies. FYI, the crucial point here is so called "transformation of prices" (labor into market prices), and marxists routinely "forget" to tell people that Marx has failed at this. As well as legions of lefties after him. Marx' labor theory of value is bullshit it turns out (go read e.g. Mark Blaug on rigorous mathematical proof), ergo this "profit is theft of wages" theory is bullshit.
Mark Blaug is the real fake- you missed the fact that he failed to separate out descrete units in his mathematical proof.
Labor is a COST. Not value. profit is made on merchandise on market outside the company, not on labor within the company.
If you were paying your workers what they were actually worth- there would be no profit. Only by cheating the worker of his worth can you have profit.
This businessman in 19th century has been employing lots of boys to turn the steam flowing to engine cylinders on and off. On off on off. One boy has cleverly tied the piston that was going down to the piston that was going up, and so it worked automatically and the boy went play. Businessman summarily applied his invention and selfishly and logically fired all the boys.
Except, that never actually happened- because nobody could turn the valves fast enough. If your premise is a lie, so is your conclusion.
Question: what happened to supposed value of labor of those boys? Evaporated? If so, why the value of enterprise and product wen t up instead of down when boys were fired? Why did his profit go up since supposed value of labor has evaporated?
The labor never existed to begin with, so it doesn't matter. Next time pick a real world example.
The key aspect here is of course necessity of labor. But its necessity does not make it _source of value_. It's still a cost, not value. That's why businessman's profit went up when h
That's what I always say: just sink those ships with Microsoft EULAs trying to cross our borders, and make our own copies! (I am a European.)
I've got no problem with that. The last time Bill Gates spoke before Congress, he proved himself to be a Free Traitor who cares NOTHING for America.
Well, until labour demand outstrips labour supply again.
Robots will keep that from EVER happening again.
You're being too pessimistic. But this will of course not happen in our lifetime given that we still have a potential labor supply of billions of poor people to go, unless WWIII or some other cataclysm kills of (preferably the inferior) half the world population instantly. The WWIII solution however only works if means of production remain available, so there is no reason to be too enthusiastic about that option: controlled cataclysms are notoriously hard to manage. You can for instance try to nuke part of the world based on GDP/capita, but this can get out of hand if other countries don't appreciate your good intentions and join in nuking the wrong people and lands. The black death pandemic in Europe in medieval times is for instance often credited with improving living conditions and making the Renaissance possible in Europe, but the positive effects set in more than a century after, which isn't very helpful.
Very true. And a century is too long- by then we'll have turned over all the jobs to the machines.
If foreign trade is bad, so must be trading with strangers not from your state or county or city.
Yes, but slightly less so. Foreign trade is bad because other countries are not covered by the same set of Federal Laws, giving them an absolute advantage, and you don't know how stable their government is, opening yourself up to potential consumer deaths when the supply is poisoned or cut off altogether. The argument against not trading with out-of-state, county, or city strangers is more money based- every dollar you spend with an out-of-state corporation gives 8 cents back to your neighbors, merely for the cost of doing business in your state. But every dollar you spend with an in-state manufacturer will give $8 of economic movement back to your neighbors- multiplying the power of your dollar to affect your community. This is in general of course- a much better example is the choice between driving and taking public transit, which in Portland, OR has become a $2.6 billion boon for the local community (since our trains run on clean wind and water energy, and our buses run on biodiesel and locally produced CNG, it's literally the difference between paying the Big Oil companies and paying local producers).
Better you only buy from your neighbors or from your family. Or better, don't buy anything from anyone and do it all by yourself. In this way you could maximize your worker protections and the preservation of your environment.
HBO doesn't make as high of a percentage of children's programming as they used to but when I was a kid they had Fraggle Rock, that was clearly for kids, Encyclopedia Brown, and they still have their "Happily Ever After" minority fairy tales.
Fraggle Rock was also on NBC, Encyclopedia Brown has been on PBS, and Happily Ever After also plays on BET. Why pay extra for such a family-values unfriendly channel?
I'd go a couple steps further back and say ever since Nixon. But Nixon was a liberal in comparison to Reagan.
But a part of this for me is a fear- we're heading towards a world war of religions. Aligning ourselves with Atheists isn't going to be a help in that war.
The bottom 20%. Approximately. Since about 5% of those are homeless (though that number might grow in the wake of the subprime lending scandal), it's hard to measure. But the World Health Organization listed 4.5 million deaths from malnutrition in the United States last year. Of course, malnutrition in the United States rarely means a skinny corpse, due to the cost of transfat in relation to other available foodstuffs, but it does mean stuff like scurvy, rickets, and among children and infants, failure to thrive.
Since when is it their job to be patriotic (by your definition, apparently)?
Since they accepted incorporation papers from the State. Or, for individuals, since they were born here. It's everybody's job to be patriotic and pull together for the sake of the community.
Based on your other spewage, you need to learn some economics. Your economic policies would take us down the path of Mao.
Considering what China has done to us in the global marketplace, that would be bad how?
You asked where I get MY oil- not where we'd get ours if foreign sources were cut off. The answer there, is that we don't need it after last week's breakthrough with genetically engineered e-coli.
Why should we do this?
To keep the bottom 50% of our population from killing the top 2%.
Maybe not, but I wouldn't put money on it.
I would- it's now possible to solidify a border against *anything* crossing it, I've built the microbots myself, they're not that complex.
I'm sure you'll have fun making stuff without access to imported raw materials.
The United States is quite rich in raw materials, thank you very much. Or at least we would be if we weren't exporting them to China.
And vice versa.
So what? Once we simplify our economy to a single country for the sake of reducing chaotic variables in the engineering, what does it matter if other countries copy us?
If it takes 1.2 billion third worlders working 12 hours a day in the cheapest of conditions to support our standard of living, what makes you think that we could support the same standard of living off of 300 million Americans working 8 hours a day and taking every other Monday and Friday off?
We couldn't- but then again, that may be a blessing in disguise. Have you read any Sayyid Qutb? He had a lot of crap- after all, he was the first Islamic Jihadist- but he was somewhat right about America's materialism destroying our spirituality.
1. create a mini-world economy, where we have a mini third-worldish American population working in the same conditions as the real third worlders, supporting a mini-regular America population, who live as we do today, or
2. some other more politically correct arraignment where there are a lot more people that are poor, but not third-world poor, and a lot fewer people are rich.
Either way, the mean standard of living goes way down.
I prefer #2- but to get there we're going to have to travel through #1.
Something about that makes a fiscally liberal social conservative like me very, very sad. Maybe Sayyid Qutb and his students were right about the United States of America.
But surely you wouldn't say that trading the national corn surplus for central american bananas (which were then distributed to the people) would be robbing the people?
I can when we could instead be using some of that land we use for growing corn for greenhouses to grow bananas, thus providing more jobs for more farmers. I can if the only reason we have a corn surplus to export to begin with is because we're paying taxes into a subsidy to raise it below cost (that's another part of my idea- no farm subsidies for businesses that export). I can if we can create everything we need right here, with no help from *anybody* else.
What if there was no surplus of steel, but you could trade some of it for timber which was in extremely short supply?
Timber isn't in short supply- it's a renewable resource. Just make Oregon's 3-for-1 law federal and nationwide (plant back 3 trees for every tree you harvest) and in 80 years you'll have more timber than we could ever use. And taking away a necessary item like steel to trade it for trees is just plain stupid.
A noble goal, but trade (foreign or otherwise) should make that easier not harder. I think you're assuming a pre-existing mis-distribution of wealth which is not relevant to the theoretical question of whether foreign trade is good or not.
Free trade has created the mis-distribution of wealth. Look at the top 1% of corporations supposedly headquartered here- NONE of them are truly domestic companies, they *all* use imports and exports. They have no loyalty to America because they are no longer American companies- just trendy PO boxes with overseas bank accounts to avoid income taxes.
You'd be right if it was FAIR trade- but it's not FAIR trade, it's the exploitation of foreign workers and American consumers for the profit of the extreme minority.
Not necessarily, or even often, true. Exports aren't wasted resources, they should be traded for other useful resources such that both parties benefit.
Only individuals benefit from trade. The American people go without so that we can trade? That's stupid. Take care of our own first, then trade if we have SURPLUS only. When every American has food, clothing and shelter; that's when we should start trading again.
Trading should result in increased utility for both parties.
Utility is for the rich- and 75% of America is not. Let's try feeding everybody a balanced diet, and having a roof over everybody's head first.
And of course importing cheap foreign goods will destroy any local production capacity for those goods - but that's just because it's inefficient to produce locally.
Efficiency doesn't matter as much as security does- destroying local production capacity leaves us dependent on trading partners instead of self-sufficient.
However, any goods required for national defense should definitely be the subject of trade protectionism in case trading partners turn hostile and cut off the import supply.
As long as we have a single homeless person in the United States, we have failed at national defense.
Oh, the Chinese can afford them- then we become a nation of renters paying our cash back to our Chinese overlords. Why do you think they want a trade imbalance in the first place?
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, you're the one proposing it as a viable alternative to foreign oil.
It's one of many. Another good one is using e-coli to digest cellulose into gasoline. There are many other synthetics available with the wealth of natural resources we have in the United States- it just takes imagination and a willingness to do what is right regardless of profit, something that no capitalist today has.
Yeah right. the bottom 50% of the world population is more concerned with fresh water and something to eat than killing the west.
Who cares about the world? I'm talking about the United States, where the bottom 50% have guns.
No they aren't. They're fat.
Fat is actually a form of malnutrition; it means that you're not eating regularly and you're not eating healthy. The principle cause of not eating healthy in the United States is that nutrition has become a selling point- healthy foods are therefore more expensive.
Any most of the truly homeless are either mentally ill or simply unwilling to exist in society, they aren't relevant to the discussion.
So everybody who took a subprime loan is mentally ill.
No, their job is to abide by the laws of the country/state and serve their shareholders.
And since taxpayer money is used to create those laws, those laws should support the taxpayer.
My answer to yours is 'knowledge is power'. If you don't know about something then you can only fear it. The only way to know if something is a real threat is to know it an understand it. Usually when that happens the preceived threat of the unknown is not justified in the slightest.
Oh, I understand it- I am it. I am the threat. I am exactly the same type of personality that has become radicalized all over the world. There is NO difference between me and a suicide bomber. I know the danger- apparently you are too stupid to know the danger.
But if you want to ignore things by sticking your head in the sand (and getting your ass blown off) then go right ahead. Incidentally the religious fundamentalists do exactly the same thing as you are doing - fear through ignorance.
Yes, which is the point. I already know the danger, so why would I put myself into the danger?
A good for instance in this case is Thomas the Tank Engine wooden trains. Wooden train technology uses magnets to join the trains together. Magnets are no longer made in North America- anywhere. ALL magnets in the world are made in East Asia. You literally cannot buy wooden railway sets that are 100% made in America. The WTO actually has made it illegal to manufacture magnets in the United States- not just unprofitable, but illegal, as in if we start up a magnet factory here we'll face tariff sanctions in the world court to prevent us from exporting those magnets.
Needless to say, I have a 4-year-old boy. I knew this and didn't buy him such train, but others gave him gifts. Sure enough, he had a James the Red Engine that was manufactured between 2002 and 2004, in China. Because of that, I have to pay for expensive heavy metal testing that our health insurance won't cover, and he may have to go into Chelation Therapy to expunge the lead from his body.
Tell me, is your free market willing to pay for that?
Spoken like someone who has never left their basement let alone travelled anywhere. Go visit a few places around the world and look for yourself with an open mind. I guarantee that will change your point of view.
The answer to that is, it's too dangerous. I'm looking for security, not a chance to be a martyr. Besides, I have everything I need within 3000 miles of home. Why should I go elsewhere?
Oh, and keeping an open mind seems to be a great way to have your brains fall out.
You have wrote that spending your money you enhance the local economy more than spending it in foreign goods at lower prices. If it is so, you have no excuses to not buy local. Whatever was or is the price. If the goods you need are not available, under your theory, you will have a greater profit producing them locally than buying them from abroad. This is the normal behavior of Marxists, they like talk the talk but they refrain to walk the walk. They prefer to someone else to walk the walk.
I buy locally whenever I can. The WTO and NAFTA are trade agreements that by law, prevent us from buying locally. INDIVIDUAL PROFIT is not a consideration int he analysis at all- because it's just a straw man, a fake.
This is the same arguments protectionist all over the world use to protect their commerce against concurrents. I, an Italian, could say the same of the good produced in the USA and sold in Italy or in the EU.
Absolutely, and it's true. The USA's bad labor protection laws (in comparison to Europe) give us an absolute advantage over the EU. Just as the lack of worker and environmental protection in China is kicking all of our asses.
Then the 8 cents and 8$ is purely made up statistic. Historically protectionism went against economic growth in the [not so] long run everywhere and always.
Bullshit. Protectionism worked just fine for the Chinook Trading Tribes, there was a reason why Chinook was the warm wind and the Five Brothers was the evil cold east wind.
If I buy good or services at lower prices I am able to buy the same good or services and be able to spend the saved money in different ways (saving, investing, buy more of the same).
Except, of course, that's money wasted to the greater community- because it's left our community to benefit somebody else, or it's been hoarded to benefit nobody. Savings and investing is the greatest lie in the world.
I'm richer if I'm able to buy the same goods at lower prices.
But the community is poorer, which is the point. There's a reason why people starved in the United States last year.
Protectionism, in the long run, make all poorer.
Community is a greater value than money. You're measuring your net worth entirely in terms of worship of an idol.
This because in a world where commerce is possible, specialization of the production is possible and with specialization come a huge growth in productivity.
Growth in productivity is just lost jobs.
The commerce is historically the source of the wellness and wealth of the nations.
Only if your priest is Adam Smith instead of the Pope.
If it is not, please name a country rich that don't commerce.
The Kalapuya considered themselves to be extremely wealthy. Of course, their wealth came not from commerce, but from living in harmony with the planet at a standard of living that was within the carrying capacity of their environment. They were wealthy enough to engage in commerce of course, but that commerce was not the source of their wealth, but rather the result.
That's what I'm really asking for- our country to be self sufficient, and provide for EVERY citizen a job sufficient to provide food, clothing, and shelter- before "specializing" and allowing people to become rich. Because only then, only when everybody is taken care of and NOBODY slips through the cracks, can we call ourselves as Wealthy of a People as the Kalapuya could. Unless we are WE, and not individuals, we will never gain that simple wealth of a third world worker.
What's wrong with HBO? I thought that was the channel that makes all those expensive glossy dramas.
Dramas that encourage mortal sins like Lust and Greed. My child can do without such input. He'll get plenty from the morally bankrupt capitalist state advertising to him throughout his life.
..and reducing overall purchases which would make a good portion of those workers unemployed
Why would overall purchases decrease below substinence level?
(note: supply of labor would have increased, so its price, aka wages, would have fallen),
How does cutting off foreign imports (immigrants included) INCREASE the supply of labor? I would think that closing the borders would decrease the supply of labor.
in turn reducing purchases in the existing businesses which would go belly up and make their workers unemployed, which would again inflict downward pressure on wages, and so on until achieving new (old?), lower equilibriums of wages, employment and GDP.
I'm sorry, you lost me with how cutting off immigration and other imports increases the supply of labor.
The economy would be literally rolled _back in time_ this way, it would have been like running reverse on video. You just don't get the math of it.
Um, actually, that's the point. To roll the economy back to the idea of a self-sufficient, and therefore able to tell any other country to fsk off, United States of America.
This scenario has already been tried during Great Depression, when govt filled with sentimental illiterates like you prolonged depression of US economy into 1940s, while it could have been over by 1930 if govt didn't stupidly insist on enforcing high wages of union mob (nobody more was employed because wages were set artificially above their true, market price - no demand) enforcing high prices (which siphoned off the money that would have otherwise been used to make more purchases in new businesses and would get new companies rolling) while simultaneously strangling money supply (which caused severe liquidity crisis).
The difference being that we'd increase the money supply to go along with the increased wages. Or rather, revalue the wages to go along with the money supply. Liquidity is a fungible input- there's no reality to money to begin with, it has no intrinsic value.
You're an offshot of that righteous, sentimental, and tragically harmful idiocy.
Harmful to whom? To the rich, or to the poor? I'd point out that the Great Depression is EXACTLY what we need to end the materialism of the age.
I've still got Mod points to spare- I'm noplace close to the 50 in a day limit.
Having said that- in the 1960s was when Japan started to export cars to the United States, which was the beginning of the long, slow slide. Or did you think the first Datsun to hit these shores was in the early 1980s?
There is no transaction between you and those who, say, buy whatever produced in India. That transaction does not involve you, regardless of whatever sentimental hyperboles you spin.
There is when I have *NO* choice left but to buy from India, or China, or elsewhere. As I already do in certain small components such as capacitors and magnets (I've tried because of the incredibly shoddy ability to follow a capacitance oil recipe- this is the primary cause of motherboard failure).
Similarly, I didn't agree for my govt to impose idiotic tariffs on my very own nation (to its own disadvantage, but people en masse think with sentiments like you instead of trying to use their brains and add the numbers up). That is not trade, that is politics and govt regulation, and you mix two realms that overlap but do not cover.
I don't care about tariffs- I want zero contact. I don't want the choices of a toy manufacturer that I can't kill affecting my child's health EVER AGAIN.
It's none of your fucking business if some people in the local community buy at Walmart instead of this "mom & pop" business. Not to mention that "mom&pop" is cost-inefficient in comparison. Which makes those local consumers spend more than they would have spent at Walmart. Which means they don't save what they save with walmart for the same quantity/quality of goods. So they are left with less money they would have spent otherwise. So ceteris paribus, "mom&pop" cost.. jobs.
Except, of course, that Walmart stuff is crap and just fills up landfills. Which destroys my groundwater that my child drinks. That's treason- allowing greed to affect the local environment.
It is a paradox of perverted reality that those selfish consumers benefit USA and altruistic, dim gooks like you actually put it at disadvantage, nevertheless, that's how calm, rational thinking indicates it happens.
I don't consider piling up money to be a benefit. Nor do I consider contact with the REAL gooks (get a dictionary, idiot) to be a benefit.
That's what you get when you read marxism for dummies. FYI, the crucial point here is so called "transformation of prices" (labor into market prices), and marxists routinely "forget" to tell people that Marx has failed at this. As well as legions of lefties after him. Marx' labor theory of value is bullshit it turns out (go read e.g. Mark Blaug on rigorous mathematical proof), ergo this "profit is theft of wages" theory is bullshit.
Mark Blaug is the real fake- you missed the fact that he failed to separate out descrete units in his mathematical proof.
Labor is a COST. Not value. profit is made on merchandise on market outside the company, not on labor within the company.
If you were paying your workers what they were actually worth- there would be no profit. Only by cheating the worker of his worth can you have profit.
This businessman in 19th century has been employing lots of boys to turn the steam flowing to engine cylinders on and off. On off on off. One boy has cleverly tied the piston that was going down to the piston that was going up, and so it worked automatically and the boy went play. Businessman summarily applied his invention and selfishly and logically fired all the boys.
Except, that never actually happened- because nobody could turn the valves fast enough. If your premise is a lie, so is your conclusion.
Question: what happened to supposed value of labor of those boys? Evaporated? If so, why the value of enterprise and product wen t up instead of down when boys were fired? Why did his profit go up since supposed value of labor has evaporated?
The labor never existed to begin with, so it doesn't matter. Next time pick a real world example.
The key aspect here is of course necessity of labor. But its necessity does not make it _source of value_. It's still a cost, not value. That's why businessman's profit went up when h
That's what I always say: just sink those ships with Microsoft EULAs trying to cross our borders, and make our own copies! (I am a European.)
I've got no problem with that. The last time Bill Gates spoke before Congress, he proved himself to be a Free Traitor who cares NOTHING for America.
Well, until labour demand outstrips labour supply again.
Robots will keep that from EVER happening again.
You're being too pessimistic. But this will of course not happen in our lifetime given that we still have a potential labor supply of billions of poor people to go, unless WWIII or some other cataclysm kills of (preferably the inferior) half the world population instantly. The WWIII solution however only works if means of production remain available, so there is no reason to be too enthusiastic about that option: controlled cataclysms are notoriously hard to manage. You can for instance try to nuke part of the world based on GDP/capita, but this can get out of hand if other countries don't appreciate your good intentions and join in nuking the wrong people and lands. The black death pandemic in Europe in medieval times is for instance often credited with improving living conditions and making the Renaissance possible in Europe, but the positive effects set in more than a century after, which isn't very helpful.
Very true. And a century is too long- by then we'll have turned over all the jobs to the machines.
If foreign trade is bad, so must be trading with strangers not from your state or county or city.
Yes, but slightly less so. Foreign trade is bad because other countries are not covered by the same set of Federal Laws, giving them an absolute advantage, and you don't know how stable their government is, opening yourself up to potential consumer deaths when the supply is poisoned or cut off altogether. The argument against not trading with out-of-state, county, or city strangers is more money based- every dollar you spend with an out-of-state corporation gives 8 cents back to your neighbors, merely for the cost of doing business in your state. But every dollar you spend with an in-state manufacturer will give $8 of economic movement back to your neighbors- multiplying the power of your dollar to affect your community. This is in general of course- a much better example is the choice between driving and taking public transit, which in Portland, OR has become a $2.6 billion boon for the local community (since our trains run on clean wind and water energy, and our buses run on biodiesel and locally produced CNG, it's literally the difference between paying the Big Oil companies and paying local producers).
Better you only buy from your neighbors or from your family. Or better, don't buy anything from anyone and do it all by yourself. In this way you could maximize your worker protections and the preservation of your environment.
Absolutely- quite true. That's the 'gonie way.
HBO doesn't make as high of a percentage of children's programming as they used to but when I was a kid they had Fraggle Rock, that was clearly for kids, Encyclopedia Brown, and they still have their "Happily Ever After" minority fairy tales.
Fraggle Rock was also on NBC, Encyclopedia Brown has been on PBS, and Happily Ever After also plays on BET. Why pay extra for such a family-values unfriendly channel?
I'd go a couple steps further back and say ever since Nixon. But Nixon was a liberal in comparison to Reagan.
But a part of this for me is a fear- we're heading towards a world war of religions. Aligning ourselves with Atheists isn't going to be a help in that war.
Who among our numbers is starving?
The bottom 20%. Approximately. Since about 5% of those are homeless (though that number might grow in the wake of the subprime lending scandal), it's hard to measure. But the World Health Organization listed 4.5 million deaths from malnutrition in the United States last year. Of course, malnutrition in the United States rarely means a skinny corpse, due to the cost of transfat in relation to other available foodstuffs, but it does mean stuff like scurvy, rickets, and among children and infants, failure to thrive.
Since when is it their job to be patriotic (by your definition, apparently)?
Since they accepted incorporation papers from the State. Or, for individuals, since they were born here. It's everybody's job to be patriotic and pull together for the sake of the community.
Based on your other spewage, you need to learn some economics. Your economic policies would take us down the path of Mao.
Considering what China has done to us in the global marketplace, that would be bad how?
Doesn't scale at all.
You asked where I get MY oil- not where we'd get ours if foreign sources were cut off. The answer there, is that we don't need it after last week's breakthrough with genetically engineered e-coli.
Why should we do this?
To keep the bottom 50% of our population from killing the top 2%.
Maybe not, but I wouldn't put money on it.
I would- it's now possible to solidify a border against *anything* crossing it, I've built the microbots myself, they're not that complex.
I'm sure you'll have fun making stuff without access to imported raw materials.
The United States is quite rich in raw materials, thank you very much. Or at least we would be if we weren't exporting them to China.
And vice versa.
So what? Once we simplify our economy to a single country for the sake of reducing chaotic variables in the engineering, what does it matter if other countries copy us?
If it takes 1.2 billion third worlders working 12 hours a day in the cheapest of conditions to support our standard of living, what makes you think that we could support the same standard of living off of 300 million Americans working 8 hours a day and taking every other Monday and Friday off?
We couldn't- but then again, that may be a blessing in disguise. Have you read any Sayyid Qutb? He had a lot of crap- after all, he was the first Islamic Jihadist- but he was somewhat right about America's materialism destroying our spirituality.
1. create a mini-world economy, where we have a mini third-worldish American population working in the same conditions as the real third worlders, supporting a mini-regular America population, who live as we do today, or
2. some other more politically correct arraignment where there are a lot more people that are poor, but not third-world poor, and a lot fewer people are rich.
Either way, the mean standard of living goes way down.
I prefer #2- but to get there we're going to have to travel through #1.
Funny how a certain Egyptian mystic predicted this, and in so predicting it, caused the creation of al Qaeda.
Something about that makes a fiscally liberal social conservative like me very, very sad. Maybe Sayyid Qutb and his students were right about the United States of America.
But surely you wouldn't say that trading the national corn surplus for central american bananas (which were then distributed to the people) would be robbing the people?
I can when we could instead be using some of that land we use for growing corn for greenhouses to grow bananas, thus providing more jobs for more farmers. I can if the only reason we have a corn surplus to export to begin with is because we're paying taxes into a subsidy to raise it below cost (that's another part of my idea- no farm subsidies for businesses that export). I can if we can create everything we need right here, with no help from *anybody* else.
What if there was no surplus of steel, but you could trade some of it for timber which was in extremely short supply?
Timber isn't in short supply- it's a renewable resource. Just make Oregon's 3-for-1 law federal and nationwide (plant back 3 trees for every tree you harvest) and in 80 years you'll have more timber than we could ever use. And taking away a necessary item like steel to trade it for trees is just plain stupid.
A noble goal, but trade (foreign or otherwise) should make that easier not harder. I think you're assuming a pre-existing mis-distribution of wealth which is not relevant to the theoretical question of whether foreign trade is good or not.
Free trade has created the mis-distribution of wealth. Look at the top 1% of corporations supposedly headquartered here- NONE of them are truly domestic companies, they *all* use imports and exports. They have no loyalty to America because they are no longer American companies- just trendy PO boxes with overseas bank accounts to avoid income taxes.
You'd be right if it was FAIR trade- but it's not FAIR trade, it's the exploitation of foreign workers and American consumers for the profit of the extreme minority.
What kind of crap-ass parents let their kids watch HBO?!?!?!?!?!?
Not necessarily, or even often, true. Exports aren't wasted resources, they should be traded for other useful resources such that both parties benefit.
Only individuals benefit from trade. The American people go without so that we can trade? That's stupid. Take care of our own first, then trade if we have SURPLUS only. When every American has food, clothing and shelter; that's when we should start trading again.
Trading should result in increased utility for both parties.
Utility is for the rich- and 75% of America is not. Let's try feeding everybody a balanced diet, and having a roof over everybody's head first.
And of course importing cheap foreign goods will destroy any local production capacity for those goods - but that's just because it's inefficient to produce locally.
Efficiency doesn't matter as much as security does- destroying local production capacity leaves us dependent on trading partners instead of self-sufficient.
However, any goods required for national defense should definitely be the subject of trade protectionism in case trading partners turn hostile and cut off the import supply.
As long as we have a single homeless person in the United States, we have failed at national defense.
Oh, the Chinese can afford them- then we become a nation of renters paying our cash back to our Chinese overlords. Why do you think they want a trade imbalance in the first place?