Actually, American workers have been doing worse, not better, since free trade came in. Real wages have gone down
Citation needed.
Did you go check out the link I provided?
That link says nothing about real wages, it does not even have the word "real" in it.
Do some research.
I have done research.
I don't have time, I'm (supposed to be) studying.
What are you studying? Economics? Since you seem to believe "real wages" have gone down since free trade has started I seriously doubt it. There is NO free trade! If you studied economics you should know that.
Where are the good, middle class income jobs now? Can you get one without a post-grad degree? Even getting a bachelor's degree doesn't guarantee a decent income: try getting a good job with just a degree in English, and be sure to practice up your slurpee-slinging skills.
I knew people, knew because I had to leave my friends behind when I moved to get therapy, who only had a high school education who had good middle income paying jobs. The best paying job I had was in construction, and I was low on the totem pole. Other than the military it was also the only one where I had health insurance. I certainly didn't have any special skills or talents, just the will to work.
you've conveniently forgotten the current economic crisis and the collapse of the debt bubble In western societies
No I didn't, I didn't think it was relevant to whether people's lives were better before free trade, which does not exist today, than they are now.
we've been living on debt for a while now, whether it's easy credit card and loan terms, or living off the increasing property values of our houses. (did the value of your house go up this year? Mine didn't.)
Oh, I totally agree. I've complained a number of tymes about people living beyond their means, and have said people who made bad decisions shouldn't be bailed out. As for my house, I rent and not own so obviously it didn't go up. I'm expecting the economy to bottom out not earlier than fall so I'd like to start looking for a home then.
I didn't equate immigration with protectionism. What I did say was that immigrants help make the US more prosperous.
Immigration is a good thing for the USA because we tap into the best and brightest of the world and bring them to the USA.
As I've posted previously I agree. I oppose all this anti-immigrant hysteria going on today in the US. However it's nothing new. No less than than a Founding Father of the USA, Benjamin Franklin, wanted to bar some immigrants. He sought to have a bill past barring Dutch, Germans, barred from settling in Pennsylvania. The Know Nothings was a movement in the 1840s and '50s that sought to ban Irish Catholics from the US. The Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese in the 1880s.
The problem is our policies are stacked in favor of third world countries as a sort of welfare
These welfare programs are what's bad. While some immigrants use taxpayer funded social programs they are actually a benefit to tax collection, even the unskilled immigrants.
When you make yourself too dependent on others, you have more instability than if you're self sufficient. That's actually an argument against free trade.
Are you self sufficient? I seriously doubt it. I doubt you went to medical college and became an MD, you farm and or hunt with a box and arrow you made and gather, and built your own home. Unless you did these yourself, you're not self sufficient either. As a matter of fact I bet you didn't manufacture the computer you used to write your response, from designing and fabricating the CPU to laying out out the motherboard. No, if you didn't buy a compleat system at most you bought the components off the self and assembled it.
The problem comes in if we were trading Cats for bags of wheat, now the market for heavy equipment dries up, we get no more wheat.
Actually the US is the biggest exporter of wheat. And with Australia the second largest but drought devastating agriculture there there will be more demand for US wheat.
You're assuming that the economy is largely dependent on foreign trade
It is. Take just oil. Most of the oil the US uses is imported. During the 1970s the US imported 1/2 of it's oil, now we import more. The US uses a quarter of the world's oil production. And it's not just wheat the US is the biggest exporter of, the US is one of the biggest exporters of other food produce as well. With the subsidies US agricultural businesses, the government gives hundreds of billions in subsidies, this drives third world farmers off their farms. Now that is bad, now only does it make others dependent on the US for food, it also gives large businesses billions of taxpayer dollars. I firmly believe in food security but this has nothing to do with it.
SHOULD we be if the result is more instability
Whereas lack of trade can cause instability trade can inprove it.
Also, can you explain why buying a foreign product in the hope that the foreigner will eventually buy a domestic product is even rational? When you have the power to ensure a 100% of the domestic product being bought by buying it yourself?
And every nation has all the minerals and other natural resources to make everything themselves? Yea, right. NOT!!! OIL!
The food subsidy issue goes back to what I was really asking about. At what point do you accept "economic inefficiency" (in terms of comparative advantage) for the sake of security? To me, the global food crisis demonstrated that food security is a real concern. Countries that depended on cheap foreign food imports got totally boned.
As stated above I totally agree. Every nation should have food security but there can still be trade in food after food security is met. Oranges don't grow everywhere, neither do bananas, or coffee? Are you willing to give up a cup of joe? Trade in food add spice to people's diet. That coffee originally came from Ethiopia in Africa. Yet it's drunk all over the world. A shortage of potatoes caused by late bligh, used to make vodka as well, caused the Irish Potato Famine. However potatoes are not native of Ireland.
International trade has made man people's lives better.
I do think, however, that a nationalized health/pension plan would be a good idea. The big problem with private industries picking up those costs, is that, as their need for labor shrinks (as it did when we moved toward automation) their pension/healthcare funds became unsupportable because there are so many fewer workers paying in.
Health care could be dealt with by allowing a freer market, which would help private industries. Currently only employers who offer employees health insurance gets a tax writeoff. However if everyone who bought insurance got the same writeoff then there'd be more competition for insurance. Competition would reduce the cost of the insurance. This goes back to World War II. Back then congress passed a law barring employees from paying employers more, however congress allowed the employers to pay for health insurance for employees and if they did then they got a tax deduction. But if individuals buy insurance themselves they do not get the tax writeoff. That was the one good thing I think McCain offered during the campaign, he proposed everyone get the tax writeoff.
Let me take it further. For those who were denied or who couldn't afford insurance I'd have insurance issuers pay into a fund that would then cover them.
China could improve the working conditions and the well being of it's citizens, but it chooses not to in order to maintain it's competitive advantage over the US.
China executed Zheng Xiaoyu for corruption and possibly tainted products. How many has the US executed for the same thing? The Chinese are trying to let a freer market improve the well being of it's citizens.
Purposely "investing" money in the US that would normally go to improve the lives and working conditions of the Chinese people.
While Chinese have a ways to go still, their lives have improved. I knew someone who escaped from the Chinese mainland who now regularly leads trips there. At one tyme he could have been imprisoned for returning.
Actually, American workers have been doing worse, not better, since free trade came in. Real wages have gone down
Citation needed.
Second, there is no free trade, but for now just say there is. Before free trade how many people could afford a computer? TV? A car? Fact is discounting the recession we're in American workers are doing better not worse. For instance through 2007 homeownership had increased. In 1996 65.4% of Americans owned a home but in 2007 68.1% did. So instead of renting and paying someone else's mortgage people could build capital, something of value.
This basically means that your average person has it tougher than her parents did.
We have it much better than our parents did. At least many of the people I know IRL. Take my family. My dad was enlisted in and retired from the US Air Force and my mom worked her way through a 2 year tech school while raising three children to become a lab tech in a hospital. My older sister went to college after going in the Army where she majored in nursing and she now works as one. My younger sister worked through college to get her Masters. Now she runs her own accounting business and owns some rental property, she has others pay her mortgages. Me, I'm on disability, and receive disability payments. But before the accident that caused my disability I was in college majoring in Computer Engineering. We were the first generation in my family to go to college. My sisters moved from low income to middle income and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the sister who owns her own business becomes wealthy.
With free trade, workers in the US have to compete with workers everywhere else in the world
And those workers are all buyers as well. It's not a zero sum game. As people's income increases they are able to buy more which creates more jobs and invest more which those who create jobs can borrow. Everybody benefits. Now I'm not saying the system isn't flawed, it is, but people's lives have improved.
This is something I strongly agree with. We (and, by 'we' I mean the western world, not any specific country) can't keep passing environmental and labour laws, and maintain free trade. The end result will be that everything is produced in places without them.
Studies show that as income increases people's care for the environment also increases. This is part of the Kuznets curve. Partially the way it works is that at first people are just concerned about living, eating, and having a roof over their head without having to work all the tyme. But as people make more they become concerned about their environment as well. Afterall why be concerned about pollution if you don't have enough to eat? This extends to health as well as work conditions.
We should encourage free trade, but only with countries that mandate a minimum level of worker and environmental protection
Many in the Third World see this as a way to keep them from improving their lives.
Most of Detroit's problems stem from their inability to make small cars people want, and being forced by congress to make lots of small cars (CAFE requires manufacturers to have a certain fleet average fuel economy and it applies separately to domestic and foreign made cars). So Detroit must build a huge number of small cars that no one wants and sell them at a big loss.
What a laugh. Because Detroit refused to build fuel efficient vehicles back in the '70s Japanese companies ate their lunch. GM spent millions on research for the EV1. What did they do with it? They did not sale it they only offered 3 year leases, in parts of Arizona and California. Yet people were willing to buy them.
It reminds me of the talk about protecting 'American' jobs, all the anti-visa and anti-immigration groups calling for protectionism of American worker
My question is this, if you do not feel any sort of loyalty to the fellow citizens of your country, why the heck should they feel any loyalty to you?
By supporting immigrants he is supporting his fellow citizens. Immigrants create jobs. Let's take a look over at Silicon Valley [pdf], many tech businesses are started by immigrants thus creating jobs. Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, is from the Soviet Union. How many jobs has Google created? I think what most scares Americans are the unskilled immigrants from Latin America. However most Americans graduate from high school and acquire some skills. Most of those immigrants though dropped out of school and are unskilled.
I agree that there's an appealing aspect to "Buy Local", but the reality is that it's economically inefficient. I think you'd be surprised by the aggregate effect of this on the economy if everyone were to do it.
What about the subjective components of cost? More importantly, what about future costs? I'm sure you're familiar with arguments for protectionism, so what is your response to them?
When one nation enacts protectionist laws other nations follow suit shutting down exports. The protectionist law Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act made the Great Depression worse than it would have been without the law. No matter how it's sliced and diced national economies depend on international trade. As a recent example look at US based Caterpiller, the world's largest heavy equipment manufacturer for construction and mining. Because other countries can't buy Cats they have had to close down factories putting the employees out of work.
Why do you want to limit economic improvement to certain people?
There are a ton of answers for this. The simplest is selfishness -- if I help my physical neighbor, I get more benefit out of that than if I help some random dude across the globe. For instance, maybe he'll find the cash to put in better landscaping so I don't have to look at his ugly brown grass each evening.
By helping someone half way around the world you enable him or her to buy what the US exports, which creates jobs thus helping your neighbor. Or don't you have Cat employees next door? What about farmers? The US is the largest food exporter, largely because you the taxpayer gives hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill. If you really want to help your neighbor then tell government not to give his tax dollars to large corporations.
Economists have us bailing out our banks, again, to the tune of how many trillions? Whatever they say is efficient, I think, we should be tempted to do the opposite.
Bankers wanted the banks bailed out. Many economists opposed the bank bailout. Economists got together to write the White House opposing the bailout.
Why do you buy carrots from a local farmer when you could do the same in your own yard and not have to drive to his market?
But you do (accidentally?) raise an excellent point -- many people have a garden full of more or less useless plants -- some of them are ornamental, but someone somewhere is allergic to most of those. In this economy, gardening is becoming more popular, so indeed you are being silly.
Most people, not everyone because some like me love to garden, would only garden because they feel they need to due to a bad economy. The last tyme a lot of people in the US grew food crop gardens, they grew Victory Gardens during World War II, the first lady, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged people to plant them. That's what I like about the current first lady, Michelle Obama, she recently did the same.
Though I live alone last year I grew enough tomatoes and tomatillos to make sauces and salsas to can so I could have a jar of each every week for a few months. The greens were enough to have salad for lunch every day for a few weeks, as it is I gave most of them to my next doors neighbor. I also gave them a lot of rhubarb. And like the greens, a jar of squash a week could have lasted a few weeks. Other than carrots, Purple Dragons, onions, and peppers, I'm not sure what annuals I'll plant, I've still got about 3 weeks until last frost date here. Besides the rhubarb I also have blue berries and strawberries for perennials.
As all you do is distort and criticize, without backing up the criticism with data whereas other do provide some data this is my last response on this thread.
Buying products that are made/grown in closer proximity to you has many advantages:
In general I support buy local but local products can be inefficient. A few years ago the "Economist" published a summary of a study on international trade; cost; and efficiency, both economic and energy. One of the examples it gave was with sheep. Despite sheep grown in New Zealand needing to be shipped to Britain for consumption it was more efficient than raising the sheep in Britain. Googling I found study: "Food Miles - Comparative
Energy/Emissions Performance of New Zealand's Agriculture Industry [pdf]". It says sheep shipped to England compares favorably with sheep shipped from elsewhere. "The results of this analysis show that NZ products compare favourably with lower energy and emissions per tonne of product delivered to the UK compared to other UK sources. In the case of dairy NZ is at least twice as efficient; and for sheep meat four times as efficient. "
At some point, we've got to start calling out "Buy American"
Walmart did that. It used to be that Walmart advertized "Buy American", now China is a big supplier. Of course Walmart is opening stores in China now too.
The idea of American competition is a total sham. We have been hearing for 50 years that opening our markets to the world would improve our standard of living, and induce the world to do the same, and neither has happened. Instead, the world is more protectionist than ever, makes every excuse to avoid reciprocating imports.
Yea, like we do a lot less trade now than we did 50 years ago and the world is less free.
Keep in mind that over the last 40 years GM has been paying for the health care of a MILLION of its retirees, and in doing so, basically subsidizes the health care of everyone else in the country.
GM signed those contracts and no one held a gun to their head to make them sign them.
One could make the argument that until the USA does have some sort of nationalized medicine and protectionist policy, every manufacturing center in the USA will fail.
Yea, let's reenact the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Then other nations will follow the US's lead and pass protectionist laws as well.
True I linked to the abstract not the article itself, which I did read. I have that issue of the "Spectrum" and I saved the online article on my computer.
Capitalism abolishing force?! I would list you all the wars that were instigated by, and fought for profit of the military-industrial complex or some other capitalist entity
Yes capitalism and free markets. They are predicated on voluntary exchanges. If force is used there is neither capitalism nor a free market. What you describe is fascism, mercantilism, or something else.
If cities would allow no-holds-bared competition, every city would end up looking as if it were overrun by a herd of rabid gophers. It is simply not feasible to have 20 companies run wires/fibre/what-not all over the place.
You mean like these: 1, 2, 3, or 4? Or these: 5, 6? Darn, I wish I had those links, last week another/.er posted links to city views with a bunch more cables.
A saner idea, which some cities have implemented, is to place a whole network of city-owned conduits (essentially weather-proof empty pipes) which then can be leased for a nominal fee by anyone who wishes to run a fibre or some other wiring through them to a customer. Probably even more efficient would be for a city to run optical fibre to all households and simply lease that fiber to whatever competing businesses the residents wishes to be connected to.
It is better than what we have now. A Broadband Utopia does like you say, run fiber to homes and businesses then leases access. Here's the link to TFA.
I think GP should have said the natural consequence of capitalism, is that it easily lends itself to abuse in the end.
As does communism, socialism, religion(ism), and other "isms".
Once a few or a single company owns a market, there are no market forces keeping them in check. The free market doesn't account for that scenario, despite desperately repeated talking points.
But one or a few companies more than likely wouldn't "own" a market in a free market system. I wouldn't say all, because there may be cases that are exceptions but I can't think of any right though you might, but I bet most economic sectors where one or a few companies dominate it it's because government allows it. Like cable and phone service. Governments, in the US, gave one provider a monopoly in the use of rights of way for each service. Radio is the same but different. Originally in the US radio frequencies were homesteaded.
The first person to broadcast in an area on a specific frequency had the right to use that frequency. If someone else in the same area started broadcasting on the same frequency or interferred with the broadcasting courts were ruling that the first person to broadcast had the right to that frequency. This all changed when the big radio businesses pressured congress to create the Federal Radio Commission and to license the airwaves. The excuse being that the airwaves were a scarce resource. But the real reason was that big broadcasters didn't want competition.
So yeah, capitalism doesn't own corruption, but without some kind of system of fair rules, coupled with enforcement, it does lend itself to corruption quite easily.
Now this is where I disagree with some Libertarians, capital and small "l", I do support some regulating but only after the market has not been able to work out the problems. Such as a big radio broadcasting business entering into a market some one else is already using. Even that can be dealt with by the courts as it was in the beginning. Another area I disagree with some is in the ownership of infrastructure such as cable and phone. I believe it would be better if the entity that owns the infrastructure didn't sale the services directly to consumers so that they wouldn't have a monopoly on it. Instead I'd have them allow open access so others could offer said services. An example of this is northeastern Utah where a group of communities got together to build a broadband utopia. Private businesses can use the infrastructure to provide broadband, cable TV, and or phone access to consumers. This mixes a free market with socialism, if the government owns the system. However as was done with the Rural Electrification Act to electrify rural communities during the mid to later 1930s. The act paid for the erection of wind generators, the Jacobs wind turbines were considered the best and even today people seek out Jacobs to use themselves. When erected many of them were owned by coops where those who used the electricity and wanted to be a member of the coop could be.
I'll also note that capitalism does some things quite a bit more efficiently (and therefor maybe better) than the other economic systems - but each economic system, like each political system, has it's benefits, and I don't see why we constantly feel the need to apply one system to everything in an ideologically pure way.
Though I consider myself pro free market capitalism and a libertarian, as I state above I agree with this. Though I want liber
There's a huge difference between not advertising bandwidth caps and not having any.
There's also a huge difference between offering an "unlimited plan" and capping services. A lot of companies offered that unlimited service. Now they're crying about it. If they didn't want users to use all they can eat, they should not have offered it.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, American workers have been doing worse, not better, since free trade came in. Real wages have gone down
Citation needed.
Did you go check out the link I provided?
That link says nothing about real wages, it does not even have the word "real" in it.
Do some research.
I have done research.
I don't have time, I'm (supposed to be) studying.
What are you studying? Economics? Since you seem to believe "real wages" have gone down since free trade has started I seriously doubt it. There is NO free trade! If you studied economics you should know that.
Where are the good, middle class income jobs now? Can you get one without a post-grad degree? Even getting a bachelor's degree doesn't guarantee a decent income: try getting a good job with just a degree in English, and be sure to practice up your slurpee-slinging skills.
I knew people, knew because I had to leave my friends behind when I moved to get therapy, who only had a high school education who had good middle income paying jobs. The best paying job I had was in construction, and I was low on the totem pole. Other than the military it was also the only one where I had health insurance. I certainly didn't have any special skills or talents, just the will to work.
you've conveniently forgotten the current economic crisis and the collapse of the debt bubble In western societies
No I didn't, I didn't think it was relevant to whether people's lives were better before free trade, which does not exist today, than they are now.
we've been living on debt for a while now, whether it's easy credit card and loan terms, or living off the increasing property values of our houses. (did the value of your house go up this year? Mine didn't.)
Oh, I totally agree. I've complained a number of tymes about people living beyond their means, and have said people who made bad decisions shouldn't be bailed out. As for my house, I rent and not own so obviously it didn't go up. I'm expecting the economy to bottom out not earlier than fall so I'd like to start looking for a home then.
Falcon
I didn't equate immigration with protectionism. What I did say was that immigrants help make the US more prosperous.
Immigration is a good thing for the USA because we tap into the best and brightest of the world and bring them to the USA.
As I've posted previously I agree. I oppose all this anti-immigrant hysteria going on today in the US. However it's nothing new. No less than than a Founding Father of the USA, Benjamin Franklin, wanted to bar some immigrants. He sought to have a bill past barring Dutch, Germans, barred from settling in Pennsylvania. The Know Nothings was a movement in the 1840s and '50s that sought to ban Irish Catholics from the US. The Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese in the 1880s.
The problem is our policies are stacked in favor of third world countries as a sort of welfare
These welfare programs are what's bad. While some immigrants use taxpayer funded social programs they are actually a benefit to tax collection, even the unskilled immigrants.
Falcon
When you make yourself too dependent on others, you have more instability than if you're self sufficient. That's actually an argument against free trade.
Are you self sufficient? I seriously doubt it. I doubt you went to medical college and became an MD, you farm and or hunt with a box and arrow you made and gather, and built your own home. Unless you did these yourself, you're not self sufficient either. As a matter of fact I bet you didn't manufacture the computer you used to write your response, from designing and fabricating the CPU to laying out out the motherboard. No, if you didn't buy a compleat system at most you bought the components off the self and assembled it.
The problem comes in if we were trading Cats for bags of wheat, now the market for heavy equipment dries up, we get no more wheat.
Actually the US is the biggest exporter of wheat. And with Australia the second largest but drought devastating agriculture there there will be more demand for US wheat.
You're assuming that the economy is largely dependent on foreign trade
It is. Take just oil. Most of the oil the US uses is imported. During the 1970s the US imported 1/2 of it's oil, now we import more. The US uses a quarter of the world's oil production. And it's not just wheat the US is the biggest exporter of, the US is one of the biggest exporters of other food produce as well. With the subsidies US agricultural businesses, the government gives hundreds of billions in subsidies, this drives third world farmers off their farms. Now that is bad, now only does it make others dependent on the US for food, it also gives large businesses billions of taxpayer dollars. I firmly believe in food security but this has nothing to do with it.
SHOULD we be if the result is more instability
Whereas lack of trade can cause instability trade can inprove it.
Also, can you explain why buying a foreign product in the hope that the foreigner will eventually buy a domestic product is even rational? When you have the power to ensure a 100% of the domestic product being bought by buying it yourself?
And every nation has all the minerals and other natural resources to make everything themselves? Yea, right. NOT!!! OIL!
The food subsidy issue goes back to what I was really asking about. At what point do you accept "economic inefficiency" (in terms of comparative advantage) for the sake of security? To me, the global food crisis demonstrated that food security is a real concern. Countries that depended on cheap foreign food imports got totally boned.
As stated above I totally agree. Every nation should have food security but there can still be trade in food after food security is met. Oranges don't grow everywhere, neither do bananas, or coffee? Are you willing to give up a cup of joe? Trade in food add spice to people's diet. That coffee originally came from Ethiopia in Africa. Yet it's drunk all over the world. A shortage of potatoes caused by late bligh, used to make vodka as well, caused the Irish Potato Famine. However potatoes are not native of Ireland.
International trade has made man people's lives better.
Falcon
I do think, however, that a nationalized health/pension plan would be a good idea. The big problem with private industries picking up those costs, is that, as their need for labor shrinks (as it did when we moved toward automation) their pension/healthcare funds became unsupportable because there are so many fewer workers paying in.
Health care could be dealt with by allowing a freer market, which would help private industries. Currently only employers who offer employees health insurance gets a tax writeoff. However if everyone who bought insurance got the same writeoff then there'd be more competition for insurance. Competition would reduce the cost of the insurance. This goes back to World War II. Back then congress passed a law barring employees from paying employers more, however congress allowed the employers to pay for health insurance for employees and if they did then they got a tax deduction. But if individuals buy insurance themselves they do not get the tax writeoff. That was the one good thing I think McCain offered during the campaign, he proposed everyone get the tax writeoff.
Let me take it further. For those who were denied or who couldn't afford insurance I'd have insurance issuers pay into a fund that would then cover them.
Exactly. What other company do you know that got bailed out _twice_ ?
Chrysler. Ronald Reagan bailed out Chrysler.
Falcon
China could improve the working conditions and the well being of it's citizens, but it chooses not to in order to maintain it's competitive advantage over the US.
China executed Zheng Xiaoyu for corruption and possibly tainted products. How many has the US executed for the same thing? The Chinese are trying to let a freer market improve the well being of it's citizens.
Purposely "investing" money in the US that would normally go to improve the lives and working conditions of the Chinese people.
While Chinese have a ways to go still, their lives have improved. I knew someone who escaped from the Chinese mainland who now regularly leads trips there. At one tyme he could have been imprisoned for returning.
Falcon
BTW notice I said "freer market" not free market.
Actually, American workers have been doing worse, not better, since free trade came in. Real wages have gone down
Citation needed.
Second, there is no free trade, but for now just say there is. Before free trade how many people could afford a computer? TV? A car? Fact is discounting the recession we're in American workers are doing better not worse. For instance through 2007 homeownership had increased. In 1996 65.4% of Americans owned a home but in 2007 68.1% did. So instead of renting and paying someone else's mortgage people could build capital, something of value.
This basically means that your average person has it tougher than her parents did.
We have it much better than our parents did. At least many of the people I know IRL. Take my family. My dad was enlisted in and retired from the US Air Force and my mom worked her way through a 2 year tech school while raising three children to become a lab tech in a hospital. My older sister went to college after going in the Army where she majored in nursing and she now works as one. My younger sister worked through college to get her Masters. Now she runs her own accounting business and owns some rental property, she has others pay her mortgages. Me, I'm on disability, and receive disability payments. But before the accident that caused my disability I was in college majoring in Computer Engineering. We were the first generation in my family to go to college. My sisters moved from low income to middle income and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the sister who owns her own business becomes wealthy.
With free trade, workers in the US have to compete with workers everywhere else in the world
And those workers are all buyers as well. It's not a zero sum game. As people's income increases they are able to buy more which creates more jobs and invest more which those who create jobs can borrow. Everybody benefits. Now I'm not saying the system isn't flawed, it is, but people's lives have improved.
Falcon
This is something I strongly agree with. We (and, by 'we' I mean the western world, not any specific country) can't keep passing environmental and labour laws, and maintain free trade. The end result will be that everything is produced in places without them.
Studies show that as income increases people's care for the environment also increases. This is part of the Kuznets curve. Partially the way it works is that at first people are just concerned about living, eating, and having a roof over their head without having to work all the tyme. But as people make more they become concerned about their environment as well. Afterall why be concerned about pollution if you don't have enough to eat? This extends to health as well as work conditions.
We should encourage free trade, but only with countries that mandate a minimum level of worker and environmental protection
Many in the Third World see this as a way to keep them from improving their lives.
Falcon
Most of Detroit's problems stem from their inability to make small cars people want, and being forced by congress to make lots of small cars (CAFE requires manufacturers to have a certain fleet average fuel economy and it applies separately to domestic and foreign made cars). So Detroit must build a huge number of small cars that no one wants and sell them at a big loss.
What a laugh. Because Detroit refused to build fuel efficient vehicles back in the '70s Japanese companies ate their lunch. GM spent millions on research for the EV1. What did they do with it? They did not sale it they only offered 3 year leases, in parts of Arizona and California. Yet people were willing to buy them.
Falcon
It reminds me of the talk about protecting 'American' jobs, all the anti-visa and anti-immigration groups calling for protectionism of American worker
My question is this, if you do not feel any sort of loyalty to the fellow citizens of your country, why the heck should they feel any loyalty to you?
By supporting immigrants he is supporting his fellow citizens. Immigrants create jobs. Let's take a look over at Silicon Valley [pdf], many tech businesses are started by immigrants thus creating jobs. Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, is from the Soviet Union. How many jobs has Google created? I think what most scares Americans are the unskilled immigrants from Latin America. However most Americans graduate from high school and acquire some skills. Most of those immigrants though dropped out of school and are unskilled.
Falcon
I agree that there's an appealing aspect to "Buy Local", but the reality is that it's economically inefficient. I think you'd be surprised by the aggregate effect of this on the economy if everyone were to do it.
What about the subjective components of cost? More importantly, what about future costs? I'm sure you're familiar with arguments for protectionism, so what is your response to them?
When one nation enacts protectionist laws other nations follow suit shutting down exports. The protectionist law Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act made the Great Depression worse than it would have been without the law. No matter how it's sliced and diced national economies depend on international trade. As a recent example look at US based Caterpiller, the world's largest heavy equipment manufacturer for construction and mining. Because other countries can't buy Cats they have had to close down factories putting the employees out of work.
Why do you want to limit economic improvement to certain people?
There are a ton of answers for this. The simplest is selfishness -- if I help my physical neighbor, I get more benefit out of that than if I help some random dude across the globe. For instance, maybe he'll find the cash to put in better landscaping so I don't have to look at his ugly brown grass each evening.
By helping someone half way around the world you enable him or her to buy what the US exports, which creates jobs thus helping your neighbor. Or don't you have Cat employees next door? What about farmers? The US is the largest food exporter, largely because you the taxpayer gives hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill. If you really want to help your neighbor then tell government not to give his tax dollars to large corporations.
Falcon
Economists have us bailing out our banks, again, to the tune of how many trillions? Whatever they say is efficient, I think, we should be tempted to do the opposite.
Bankers wanted the banks bailed out. Many economists opposed the bank bailout. Economists got together to write the White House opposing the bailout.
Falcon
Why do you buy carrots from a local farmer when you could do the same in your own yard and not have to drive to his market?
But you do (accidentally?) raise an excellent point -- many people have a garden full of more or less useless plants -- some of them are ornamental, but someone somewhere is allergic to most of those. In this economy, gardening is becoming more popular, so indeed you are being silly.
Most people, not everyone because some like me love to garden, would only garden because they feel they need to due to a bad economy. The last tyme a lot of people in the US grew food crop gardens, they grew Victory Gardens during World War II, the first lady, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged people to plant them. That's what I like about the current first lady, Michelle Obama, she recently did the same.
Though I live alone last year I grew enough tomatoes and tomatillos to make sauces and salsas to can so I could have a jar of each every week for a few months. The greens were enough to have salad for lunch every day for a few weeks, as it is I gave most of them to my next doors neighbor. I also gave them a lot of rhubarb. And like the greens, a jar of squash a week could have lasted a few weeks. Other than carrots, Purple Dragons, onions, and peppers, I'm not sure what annuals I'll plant, I've still got about 3 weeks until last frost date here. Besides the rhubarb I also have blue berries and strawberries for perennials.
Falcon
Companies that shift to manuf elsewhere because of lax standards should be penalised . fcuk em
Lax standards? Who's standards?
Falcon
As all you do is distort and criticize, without backing up the criticism with data whereas other do provide some data this is my last response on this thread.
Falcon
Buying products that are made/grown in closer proximity to you has many advantages:
In general I support buy local but local products can be inefficient. A few years ago the "Economist" published a summary of a study on international trade; cost; and efficiency, both economic and energy. One of the examples it gave was with sheep. Despite sheep grown in New Zealand needing to be shipped to Britain for consumption it was more efficient than raising the sheep in Britain. Googling I found study: "Food Miles - Comparative Energy/Emissions Performance of New Zealand's Agriculture Industry [pdf]". It says sheep shipped to England compares favorably with sheep shipped from elsewhere. "The results of this analysis show that NZ products compare favourably with lower energy and emissions per tonne of product delivered to the UK compared to other UK sources. In the case of dairy NZ is at least twice as efficient; and for sheep meat four times as efficient. "
Falcon
At some point, we've got to start calling out "Buy American"
Walmart did that. It used to be that Walmart advertized "Buy American", now China is a big supplier. Of course Walmart is opening stores in China now too.
Falcon
The idea of American competition is a total sham. We have been hearing for 50 years that opening our markets to the world would improve our standard of living, and induce the world to do the same, and neither has happened. Instead, the world is more protectionist than ever, makes every excuse to avoid reciprocating imports.
Yea, like we do a lot less trade now than we did 50 years ago and the world is less free.
Keep in mind that over the last 40 years GM has been paying for the health care of a MILLION of its retirees, and in doing so, basically subsidizes the health care of everyone else in the country.
GM signed those contracts and no one held a gun to their head to make them sign them.
One could make the argument that until the USA does have some sort of nationalized medicine and protectionist policy, every manufacturing center in the USA will fail.
Yea, let's reenact the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Then other nations will follow the US's lead and pass protectionist laws as well.
Falcon
those are not positive examples, you know...
No I don;t know, that's why I ASKED. If they are not examples please provide some.
Falcon
ead the abstract
True I linked to the abstract not the article itself, which I did read. I have that issue of the "Spectrum" and I saved the online article on my computer.
Falcon
Capitalism abolishing force?! I would list you all the wars that were instigated by, and fought for profit of the military-industrial complex or some other capitalist entity
Yes capitalism and free markets. They are predicated on voluntary exchanges. If force is used there is neither capitalism nor a free market. What you describe is fascism, mercantilism, or something else.
Falcon
If cities would allow no-holds-bared competition, every city would end up looking as if it were overrun by a herd of rabid gophers. It is simply not feasible to have 20 companies run wires/fibre/what-not all over the place.
You mean like these: 1, 2, 3, or 4? Or these: 5, 6? Darn, I wish I had those links, last week another /.er posted links to city views with a bunch more cables.
A saner idea, which some cities have implemented, is to place a whole network of city-owned conduits (essentially weather-proof empty pipes) which then can be leased for a nominal fee by anyone who wishes to run a fibre or some other wiring through them to a customer. Probably even more efficient would be for a city to run optical fibre to all households and simply lease that fiber to whatever competing businesses the residents wishes to be connected to.
It is better than what we have now. A Broadband Utopia does like you say, run fiber to homes and businesses then leases access. Here's the link to TFA.
Falcon
I think GP should have said the natural consequence of capitalism, is that it easily lends itself to abuse in the end.
As does communism, socialism, religion(ism), and other "isms".
Once a few or a single company owns a market, there are no market forces keeping them in check. The free market doesn't account for that scenario, despite desperately repeated talking points.
But one or a few companies more than likely wouldn't "own" a market in a free market system. I wouldn't say all, because there may be cases that are exceptions but I can't think of any right though you might, but I bet most economic sectors where one or a few companies dominate it it's because government allows it. Like cable and phone service. Governments, in the US, gave one provider a monopoly in the use of rights of way for each service. Radio is the same but different. Originally in the US radio frequencies were homesteaded.
The first person to broadcast in an area on a specific frequency had the right to use that frequency. If someone else in the same area started broadcasting on the same frequency or interferred with the broadcasting courts were ruling that the first person to broadcast had the right to that frequency. This all changed when the big radio businesses pressured congress to create the Federal Radio Commission and to license the airwaves. The excuse being that the airwaves were a scarce resource. But the real reason was that big broadcasters didn't want competition.
So yeah, capitalism doesn't own corruption, but without some kind of system of fair rules, coupled with enforcement, it does lend itself to corruption quite easily.
Now this is where I disagree with some Libertarians, capital and small "l", I do support some regulating but only after the market has not been able to work out the problems. Such as a big radio broadcasting business entering into a market some one else is already using. Even that can be dealt with by the courts as it was in the beginning. Another area I disagree with some is in the ownership of infrastructure such as cable and phone. I believe it would be better if the entity that owns the infrastructure didn't sale the services directly to consumers so that they wouldn't have a monopoly on it. Instead I'd have them allow open access so others could offer said services. An example of this is northeastern Utah where a group of communities got together to build a broadband utopia. Private businesses can use the infrastructure to provide broadband, cable TV, and or phone access to consumers. This mixes a free market with socialism, if the government owns the system. However as was done with the Rural Electrification Act to electrify rural communities during the mid to later 1930s. The act paid for the erection of wind generators, the Jacobs wind turbines were considered the best and even today people seek out Jacobs to use themselves. When erected many of them were owned by coops where those who used the electricity and wanted to be a member of the coop could be.
I'll also note that capitalism does some things quite a bit more efficiently (and therefor maybe better) than the other economic systems - but each economic system, like each political system, has it's benefits, and I don't see why we constantly feel the need to apply one system to everything in an ideologically pure way.
Though I consider myself pro free market capitalism and a libertarian, as I state above I agree with this. Though I want liber
They OWN the state regulators and will almost certainly end up owning the FCC with a Democrat in the White House and Democrats running Congress.
Except telecoms and cablecos give both parties a lot. Phone companies gave politicians "more than $6 million (63 percent to Republicans)".
Falcon
There's a huge difference between not advertising bandwidth caps and not having any.
There's also a huge difference between offering an "unlimited plan" and capping services. A lot of companies offered that unlimited service. Now they're crying about it. If they didn't want users to use all they can eat, they should not have offered it.
Falcon