In The USA: the Next Revolution

[Dayuhan]

we need a new kind of Revolution to Tax Corporations oversees profits that out source American jobs.

There is no such thing as an "American job". A job is only yours, as an individual or as a nation, if you can perform the function more efficiently than the other guy. If you penalize American enterprises by forcing them to hire less efficient labor, the enterprise goes out of business and produces no jobs at all.

Sure, you can force American corporations to produce at home. The product will be too expensive to sell, nobody will buy it, and the jobs disappear anyway. Not a solution. Protectionism never is.

[slapout9]

There is no such thing as an "American job". A job is only yours, as an individual or as a nation, if you can perform the function more efficiently than the other guy. If you penalize American enterprises by forcing them to hire less efficient labor, the enterprise goes out of business and produces no jobs at all.

Sure, you can force American corporations to produce at home. The product will be too expensive to sell, nobody will buy it, and the jobs disappear anyway. Not a solution. Protectionism never is.

Pure Gobbsmackery, why is it every other country is allowed to engage in protectionism but we can't? China has a nationalized banking system that will provide any amount of money needed to allow it's industries to produce at below market rates in order for it to maintain a competitive advantage, and it also has a government policy of slave labor. You cannot defend against that without counter policies to protect our jobs (USA) and industries.

[slapout9]

Link to Real News Network interview.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcCf9mzuLd4&feature=sub

[Seabee]

Sure, you can force American corporations to produce at home. The product will be too expensive to sell, nobody will buy it, and the jobs disappear anyway. Not a solution. Protectionism never is.

Sure it is... tax imports... and make imports cost the same as locally made... then let the buyer choose.

My mother in law uses paint brushes once, its cheaper and easier to buy new ones from China each time. My kid gets more toys a year than i had in my life, because they are all so cheap....

We have become quantity consumers, not quality consumers.

If prices became higher due to protectionism, I would be forced to look after my stuff more...

Last week i went to the gym and forgot my Gym shoes. Instead of driving home to get them i bought a cheap pair at a shop next to the gym... Blush...

20 Years ago shoes were worth something, kids did not discard toys after a week... and you cleaned paintbrushes... cheap imports change a lot...

[Joske]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dayuhan

Sure, you can force American corporations to produce at home. The product will be too expensive to sell, nobody will buy it, and the jobs disappear anyway. Not a solution. Protectionism never is.
Sure it is... tax imports... and make imports cost the same as locally made... then let the buyer choose.

My mother in law uses paint brushes once, its cheaper and easier to buy new ones from China each time. My kid gets more toys a year than i had in my life, because they are all so cheap....

We have become quantity consumers, not quality consumers.

If prices became higher due to protectionism, I would be forced to look after my stuff more...

Last week i went to the gym and forgot my Gym shoes. Instead of driving home to get them i bought a cheap pair at a shop next to the gym... Blush...

20 Years ago shoes were worth something, kids did not discard toys after a week... and you cleaned paintbrushes... cheap imports change a lot...

Yes but these protectionist measures will then simply be followed by retaliation protectionist measures by countries who are subject to your measures, leading to a collapse of your export sector and by extension international trade.
also only producing for an internal market could lead to a massively reduced demand of your products and this will result in economic recession/downgrading and although this effect could be limited in large countries who have large internal markets, small and export aimed countries dont have such large internal markets and this would cause an even bigger economic recession in those countries.
And then we are not yet speaking about the political/social consequences of such a recession.

[Seabee]

Yes but these protectionist measures will then simply be followed by retaliation protectionist measures by countries who are subject to your measures, leading to a collapse of your export sector and by extension international trade.

I am missing something here...... If AMERICANS cannot afford to buy US products and buy from China.... who is buying the US products?

From what I see, other countires only buy what they cannot make themselves... China may buy steel or wood... and will continue to buy... but they are not going to buy made in USA cheap transistors or kiddies toys....

The USA does not NEED Chinese Ghetto blasters and kids toys, they buy them because they are cheap... china however NEEDS raw products from other countries?

I am no economist, so Imay be a bit ahead of myself here...

[Joske]

I am missing something here...... If AMERICANS cannot afford to buy US products and buy from China.... who is buying the US products?

From what I see, other countires only buy what they cannot make themselves... China may buy steel or wood... and will continue to buy... but they are not going to buy made in USA cheap transistors or kiddies toys....

The USA does not NEED Chinese Ghetto blasters and kids toys, they buy them because they are cheap... china however NEEDS raw products from other countries?

I am no economist, so Imay be a bit ahead of myself here...

Ok im not an expert on what the US exports and imports as im from Belgium so i cant really think of any examples to support my claim, anyways lets start.

consumers in a somewhat capitalist country dont only choose which products they are gonna buy acording to what they can afford what they cant, competition and thus the fact they can choose between several somewhat similar products.
So US consumers buy chinese kiddy toys because they have the best quality/price ratio.
On the other hand US producers might be able to produce and export another product at a better price/quality ratio then chinese producers and thus will be exporting to China.
This will then lead to specialisation of certain countries in certain sectors and will eventually lead to an increased production, employment and more economical activity (its called the law of ricardo i think).

Also you should not group all the products a country produces, there is no single market of "all products", similar products from all over the world are grouped in markets that have vastly different dynamics according to production proccesses and competition from other markets.
Also of note is that capitalistic systems work along a system of offer and demand, so if there is no demand for a product then there will be no offer.
And off course the fact that "countries" in general dont import or export, private citizens do it and they can only be "coached" by governements by using taxes and subsidies, but these private citizens still work for the acquirement of profit.

Also of note is that protectionist measures to strengthen your domestic economy is not something that only involves China, it involves every country that the US imports to or exports from, now a change in the export/import dynamics could not be that bad in the case of one country, but it might be devestating if done between other countries, say Europe and US.

So that was my little rant about international trade, i am also not an economist but in middle school i specialized in economics and this was practicly what i understood from that course, so if somebody who contrary to me actually knows what he is talking about, and sees im wrong please correct me.

[Fuchs]

I am missing something here...... If AMERICANS cannot afford to buy US products and buy from China.... who is buying the US products?

The competitiveness varies between sectors and even between corporations and products.

Part of the problem is that not enough foreigners buy U.S. products, though.
The trade balance deficit (services balance included) is on the order of $ 30-60 billion per month. That's by how much the U.S. lives beyond its means.
A even more grave view would add to this the monthly loss of capital stock.

In the end, U.S. consumers need either to learn to live with about 4/5th of the goods consumption or U.S. industry output needs to grow by about 25%.

More consumption is certainly not the way to go, more savings = investment and moderate consumption is the way to go. The U.S. is in a similar situation as after 1945; it needs a time of hardships to get back on track for there's no easy way out of the economic mess.
The top income tax bracket in the 50's had a tax rate of about 90% (during the Republican presidency of Eisenhower!).

[Dayuhan]

Sure it is... tax imports... and make imports cost the same as locally made... then let the buyer choose.

My mother in law uses paint brushes once, its cheaper and easier to buy new ones from China each time. My kid gets more toys a year than i had in my life, because they are all so cheap....

Last week i went to the gym and forgot my Gym shoes. Instead of driving home to get them i bought a cheap pair at a shop next to the gym... Blush...

You can't tax imported toys and shoes until they cost as much as local products, because there aren't any local products. These manufacturing lines moved out of the US decades ago, and nobody ever really missed them. It's really not possible to do low-skill labor-intensive manufacturing at US wages... the products would cost more than anybody would pay for them and the people making them would go out of business. People with lower incomes would also kick up a bit of a fuss if prices of items like clothes and children's toys suddenly quadrupled.

Protection is best understood as a subsidy, paid by the consumer. In an emerging economy it can be an effective way to shelter an industry that has the potential to be competitive but needs space to get established and achieve an economy of scale. Very hard to justify protection in a mature economy, unless we decide that we want consumers to perpetually subsidize non-competitive industries.

The problem, of course, is that everybody thinks their job and their industry is important enough to be subsidized... but if we subsidize everybody there's nobody left to pay the subsidy.

Treating non-competitiveness with protection is like treating malaria with paracetamol. You may push that fever down briefly, but you're not treating the cause. Why are we not competitive? Start with an education system that thinks competition is evil and produces more liberal arts graduates than the economy can possibly absorb, while even at close to 10% unemployment we have severe shortages of machinists, precision welders, and other skilled trades. Finish with an entitlement culture that has us convinced that wages should not be proportional to cost of a middle class lifestyle, not to the value of the product or service being produced. Fill in the space in between.

Our problem isn't them furriners. Our problem is us. We need to compete.

The trade deficit comes largely down to two issues. First is energy imports, which is not likely to change in the immediate future. Second, and more important, is a currency that has held an artificially inflated value, sometimes wildly inflated, for most of the time since WW2. That has been to some extent corrected, though IMO the dollar should still fall a bit more. It will take some time for that correction to show any material effect on the economy, though: the impact of 6 decades of distortion isn't reversed overnight.

[slapout9]

Part 2 of the interview "The Collapse Of Liberalism" or how to deconstruct the system.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nelGtSOimwQ

[slapout9]

This is an informal interview/lecture by Paul Jay of the Real News Network from 2008! done in the country of Estonia. Interesting stuff especially about what President Obama really stands for as opposed to the manufactured media image. Also has some points about the source of Terrorism being Saudi Arabia and dating back to WW2. Interesting to see how accurate he was of what was to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIeS3FlK1R4

[Pete]

Now that we've agreed that an armed revolution in the U.S. is unlikely to be happening any time soon, what does this thread have to do with military affairs?

[slapout9]

Now that we've agreed that an armed revolution in the U.S. is unlikely to be happening any time soon, what does this thread have to do with military affairs?

It dosen't that is why it is posted under "The Whole News" section.

"The Whole News Post and debate the news; good, bad and ugly. News ignored by the mainstream media especially welcomed here."