Politics

Sitting in Doha waiting for next flight to Joburg and I jump into the politics thread.....how stupid is that?

Saul / markm,
I'll disagree somewhat with you both. It is bullshit that we "can't" make products that compete on quality with anyone else. It's about the business model and how they decide to make money. Doubt it, my Tundra was manufactured in San Antonio. Camry's I think are made in Kentucky. Honda and BMW also have plants here.

But it's not about putting America first and unfortunately I never see where capitalism will ever put a geography first. It's about profits. You increase profit by reducing cost typically.

Nike, HQ'd up there in the liberal paradise of Oregon pays pennies in labor cost for sneakers that someone dumb suburban kid will pay well over $100 for.

So Nike could never bring back manufacturing to the U.S. in the face of such higher labor costs right? Wrong, you just have to compete better on other costs : taxes, land, infrastructure etc.

And on this example, this is the perfect one in my opinion on liberal / Democrat hypocrisy. Nike.....Asian sweatshops.....HQ'd in Portland........you should see the Nike palace. Built on damn near slave labor, and at least a certain amount of money from kids who don't have it to spend.

Damn!!!!! I'll be hunting in 24 hours or so in Africa, screw this shinola.


You should be in the Al Jazeera studio's explaining macroeconomics.;)

Have a great hunt and forget politics. Say hi to J for me!
 


Good Luck Phil!
 
Awhile back I remember Trump saying remove all tariffs. He hasn't had one country take him up on it. They know with our brainpower, manpower and technology, we would eat them alive on the world market and their PROTECTED industries would collapse. Our trading partners talk the talk but won't walk the walk. Like my ol' man used to say, "Talk is cheap".
 
Spot on. I’m in favor of free trade but that means no tariffs or subsidies in either direction. We’ve been getting screwed by our trading partners long enough.
 
I am as much a proponent for freemarkets as anyone on this forum. The problem is America hasn't been in a freemarket in decades. Basically we have subsidized other countries with our low tariffs and those countries have ex-filtrated our wealth. If we had freemarkets, trade would balance out over time. That has not been happening. If you go to the WTO website, you will see that America's average tariff is 3.54% for most favored nation trade. Look at China where it is over 12%. We have never had balanced trade with China since Nixon reset our relationship with them.

Yes, I realize the US Chamber of Commerce and the main stream media say we have free markets. I drank that koolaid for the majority of my life. Their interests are completely at odds with main street America and the average American. Trump knows and understands this. Trump assembled the most amazing group of people in Wilbur Ross, Steven Mnuchin, Robert Lighthizer and Peter Navaro. They are renegotiating with countries we do business with and they won't accept a better deal. It has to be a fair deal.

The media pushes the agenda that tariffs will kill Americans consumers. I understand where they are coming from but lets do some simple math. American GDP is apx. $20T. Trump just put a 25% tariff on $200B of Chinese goods coming into America with the threat of a tariff on all $500B of imports. A 25% tariff on $200B of goods is $50B. $50B divided by $20T equals .0025% increase in the cost of goods that Americans buy. This means that for every $100 you spend at the store, your cost has gone up a quarter! That is the total of what Trump's tariffs are costing you. Yes, it is more complicated than that but those are fairly easy numbers to understand without crawling through so many weeds that no one will read the post.

Trump knows how tariffs work extremely well. That is why he is using them. When Trump took office, the only countries that had lower tariffs according to the WTO than America were Australia, New Zealand,Peru, and a fourth country in eastern Europe that I don't recall off hand. Trump knows that he can use tariffs against all the countries of the world except those four and help the average American. Our low cost tariffs is a main culprit to the offshoring of American manufacturing jobs.



Now to respond to your post that was in response to my post regarding Trump putting a 5% tariff on products coming out of Mexico that will rise to 25% if Mexico doesn't stop illegal immigration into America. This has nothing to do with trade. It has everything to do with politics. While campaigning last year, Obrador pushed open borders with America and said migration "is a human right we will defend". Trump has asked Obrador to help close down the border. Obrador has not done this, probably due to the income stream going to the cartels that run northern Mexico.

Last year I talked to about a dozen illegal hispanics from Mexico and Central America and asked them what the cartels charge to get them into America. $4,000 was the lowest number I heard. The others gave numbers between $6,000 and $8,000 for a one way trip. Illegals do not bypass the cartels or they are killed. People with green cards have no issue as they cross at the border crossings. Lets just say the average cost is $5,000 and a million illegals cross per year. That is $5B to the northern Mexican economy, without getting into the remitances that come back to Mexico.

Trump knows all of this. He is fighting congress, both Democrats and Republicans with their hands in the swamp, along with Obama appointed judges. Frustrated with Obrador not doing anything to help, Trump announces the tariff. Obrador immediately blasts Trump, but then guess what? Obrador asks for an emergency meeting today!

Trump is using tariff's as a hammer, to protect the southern border from illegal aliens coming into the country. Oh, by the way. Approximately 50% of illegals go immediately into the American welfare system. This costs America between $135-$160B per year. Yet congress can't find $5B for the wall.

I could continue for hours but need to get some work done. If you read all of this, I know you are thankful to be done with my blathering.:D

Foreign countries imposing import tariffs on US goods hurts THEIR citizens. Trying to get our government to do the same is like complaining that the school yard bully is only picking on the other kids, not on you.

Free trade, even unilateral free trade, creates wealth wherever it is tried. After WWII, both Hong Kong and Singapore were economic backwaters devastated by war. After 6 or 7 decades of *unilateral* free trade, look at them. I expect I have more natural resources in my back yard than both of those places combined. Uninhibited free trade benefits all; barriers to trade harm all, but most especially those who have to ultimately pay higher prices, and frequently for inferior products. Lastly, tariffs are a form of protectionism. It permits domestic businesses to raise the price on their goods without having to go to the trouble of actually making their products more valuable and worth the higher price tag. If the competitive price for my widget is $100, and a tariff is imposed on their widgets which would drive their sell price to $150, I can raise my price to $145 and still beat them. This situation benefits most those businessmen who are politically connected, to the detriment of all the rest of us.

But all of this talk of tariffs looks right past one of the real causes of economic hardship domestically, and that is the tax and regulatory morass which is imposed by all levels of government anymore, but particularly the federal government. What do you suppose would happen to our economy if the corporate income tax were eliminated? Every business in the world would domicile itself in the US. What impact would that have on the GDP? What impact would that have on job growth? On salaries?

Without any exception, every *voluntary* commercial transaction produces a win-win. When government injects itself into the equation in any fashion at all, it increases the cost of the transaction

Read about The Chicken Tax and then decide if you still think a "trade war" is a good idea.
 
Milton Friedman on Free Trade

 
Heritage Foundation, a right wing think tank, on NAFTA, written in 1993!!!!

The North American free trade area that the agreement creates will produce 25 percent more goods and services than the European Community, giving North America enough economic muscle to challenge the emerging unified market in Europe and an East Asia market dominated by Japan. The NAFTA also will offer Americans cheaper goods, and increase U.S. exports by making them more affordable for the rest of the world. Moreover, it will create an estimated 200,000 new jobs for Americans, reduce illegal immigration from Mexico, help tackle drug trafficking, strengthen Mexican democracy and human rights, and serve as a model for the rest of the world.

Gotta love the eggheads that actually believed this tripe. HP
 
I do tire of people poking arguments at Prof. Friedman, or anyone for that matter, who is no longer present to respond.
The concept of trade and government interference is fairly simple. The adjustments to that interference are affected by start-up and maintenance costs.
Monetarily the government can support a local industry with a subsidy. This means the citizens of a country pay some of the production costs of a local industry so that the industry can sell its products for less than the actual cost, thereby competing with "cheap foreign imports". So the citizens pay increased taxes, so while they can buy the local product for the same price as the import, they are actually paying the higher price through pre-payment of taxes. The other aspect is for the local producer to export the product. so then the foreigners can pay less for the imported product than their local product, because a portion of the price is being paid by the taxpayers of the exporters country.

Tariffs are the opposite of subsidies- The government charges it's citizens a tax on the imported item, to increase the price to make a local product competitive.

So when governments get involved it can really help their bottom lines. Say Country X starts building automobiles and they want to sell them in the United States. there are a lot of costs involved in doing this, so the Country X government tells the citizens that it will really be a good deal in the long run to export cars to the US, so we should help the industry by giving them a subsidy. This would result in X cars being competitive with US cars. the US government sees this and so they tell their citizens that what the X government is doing is bad and to correct the inequity, the US government puts a tariff on the imported cars.

So we are back where we started. the X car costs what it cost to build and market it, but the Xs paid taxes for each car sold and the US citizens each paid the tariff amount. So while the car companies had an even balance sheet, bot governments got rich- exploiting the taxpayers and the consumers.
 
I do tire of people poking arguments at Prof. Friedman, or anyone for that matter, who is no longer present to respond.
The concept of trade and government interference is fairly simple. The adjustments to that interference are affected by start-up and maintenance costs.
Monetarily the government can support a local industry with a subsidy. This means the citizens of a country pay some of the production costs of a local industry so that the industry can sell its products for less than the actual cost, thereby competing with "cheap foreign imports". So the citizens pay increased taxes, so while they can buy the local product for the same price as the import, they are actually paying the higher price through pre-payment of taxes. The other aspect is for the local producer to export the product. so then the foreigners can pay less for the imported product than their local product, because a portion of the price is being paid by the taxpayers of the exporters country.

Tariffs are the opposite of subsidies- The government charges it's citizens a tax on the imported item, to increase the price to make a local product competitive.

So when governments get involved it can really help their bottom lines. Say Country X starts building automobiles and they want to sell them in the United States. there are a lot of costs involved in doing this, so the Country X government tells the citizens that it will really be a good deal in the long run to export cars to the US, so we should help the industry by giving them a subsidy. This would result in X cars being competitive with US cars. the US government sees this and so they tell their citizens that what the X government is doing is bad and to correct the inequity, the US government puts a tariff on the imported cars.

So we are back where we started. the X car costs what it cost to build and market it, but the Xs paid taxes for each car sold and the US citizens each paid the tariff amount. So while the car companies had an even balance sheet, bot governments got rich- exploiting the taxpayers and the consumers.

Exactly this.

Henry Hazlitt also pounded home this point in "Economics in One Lesson," with the seen vs the unseen. It's a point that is easily inferred from John Pugsley's "The Alpha Strategy."

Beyond a few basic functions, most of what governments do is a confidence game, a grift; except unlike con-men and grifters, the scale is enormous.
 
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Frederic Bastiat’s treatise ‘The Law’ does an outstanding job of laying out the appropriate role of government in society. It is as relevant today as it was then.
 
@WAB - those are the first 3 books I recommend (incl. The Law) to folks who are interested in economics. There are plenty of others, but those 3 are short, to the point, and easy to digest. IMO, they provide the context and foundation for understanding more thorough study. Jumping into Hayek, von Mises, Friedman, et al is like trying to study the calculus without first learning arithmetic and algebra.
 
Agreed, establish a foundation in the power of dispersed vs central control, self interest and property rights, and you quickly grasp the appropriate role of government in society.
 
In 1973 Prof. Friedman gave a talk about the forces that were pushing government to become a "Leviathan". There were (and still are) two reasons people lobby to have action by the government. Reason One is someone (person/group A) wants the government to regulate/curtail/stop actions by someone else (person/group B). This can be as slight as requiring B to keep their dog on a leash, driving less than 55 miles per hour on up to as all encompassing as limiting a persons choices in automobiles or preventing a company from producing a product or becoming economically viable. The lobbyists may even push for the government to extend its influence beyond its borders and interfere with other person/companies/countries.
Reason Two is someone (person/group C) want the government to do something FOR C and have it paid for by person/group D. This can be as individualized as requiring an employer to give an employee a day off on a holiday or as all encompassing as paying for healthcare and college tuition for all.

Whenever you see someone proposing action by the government, ask yourself which group the proposer belongs to. Are they A or C. Answering that will lead you to the motivation and their end goal.
 
60688509_2505646852780018_3910375991372939264_n.jpg
 
The Greatest Generation didn't want their kids, the boomers, to go through what they experienced. They voted for massive defense expenditures and protective social programs. Boomers, the most overindulged generation that every lived, in order to maintain their lifestyle and dump as much personal responsibility for their own actions on the government, voted for debt to pay for it. The next generation, burdened with student loan debt, now expects the same treatment, let us off the hook. We get the government for which we vote. Where it goes from here, no one really knows.
 
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In 1973 Prof. Friedman gave a talk about the forces that were pushing government to become a "Leviathan". There were (and still are) two reasons people lobby to have action by the government. Reason One is someone (person/group A) wants the government to regulate/curtail/stop actions by someone else (person/group B). This can be as slight as requiring B to keep their dog on a leash, driving less than 55 miles per hour on up to as all encompassing as limiting a persons choices in automobiles or preventing a company from producing a product or becoming economically viable. The lobbyists may even push for the government to extend its influence beyond its borders and interfere with other person/companies/countries.
Reason Two is someone (person/group C) want the government to do something FOR C and have it paid for by person/group D. This can be as individualized as requiring an employer to give an employee a day off on a holiday or as all encompassing as paying for healthcare and college tuition for all.

Whenever you see someone proposing action by the government, ask yourself which group the proposer belongs to. Are they A or C. Answering that will lead you to the motivation and their end goal.

The end goal is always control, is it not?

Robert Heinlein said:
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.


C. S. Lewis had a good quote on it, too
C.S. Lewis said:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
 
The Greatest Generation didn't want their kids, the boomers, to go through what they experienced. They voted for massive defense expenditures. Boomers, the most overindulged generation that every lived, in order to maintain their lifestyle and dump as much personal responsibility for their own actions on the government, voted for debt to pay for it. The next generation, burdened with student loan debt, now expects the same treatment, let us off the hook. We get the government for which we vote. Where it goes from here, no one really knows.
Neither of those things could have come to pass without FDR laying the foundation for the USD's destruction. That is where it will inevitably go.
 


The end goal is always control, is it not?



C. S. Lewis had a good quote on it, too

One of the greatest minds of all time. I can only imagine the conversations that he, Tolkien and the rest of their group must have had.
 
Neither of those things could have come to pass without FDR laying the foundation for the USD's destruction. That is where it will inevitably go.

And he was elected three times!
 
Heritage Foundation, a right wing think tank, on NAFTA, written in 1993!!!!

The North American free trade area that the agreement creates will produce 25 percent more goods and services than the European Community, giving North America enough economic muscle to challenge the emerging unified market in Europe and an East Asia market dominated by Japan. The NAFTA also will offer Americans cheaper goods, and increase U.S. exports by making them more affordable for the rest of the world. Moreover, it will create an estimated 200,000 new jobs for Americans, reduce illegal immigration from Mexico, help tackle drug trafficking, strengthen Mexican democracy and human rights, and serve as a model for the rest of the world.

Gotta love the eggheads that actually believed this tripe. HP
Just goes to show you how stupid people really are
 

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