Quote from mgookin:The US attained great wealth when it was an EXPORT nation. Today it is an IMPORT nation because of TRADE POLICY.
And you think you can turn a net import nation into a net export nation by simply shutting down the borders one way?
Great wealth is achieved when a company, an industry, a region or a nation can produce something more technically advanced, safer, healthier, tastier, cheaper or otherwise better than others. You can't export unless you have a competitive advantage on a global scale. How will imposing tariffs make currently existing inferior US jobs and US products competitive on world markets?
Quote from mgookin:
If we keep importing all this shit from Asia we are destined for financial failure.
I will say it again, since it doesn't see be to understood by you. By importing stuff from Asia, Americans will not have to waste their precious time by sewing T-Shirts and sneakers or producing plastic toys for children and planting soy beans. Americans instead can spend more time developing higher complexity products such as Hollywood movies, jet airplanes, iPhones or (cough) collaterized debt obligations. Stuff that can not (yet) be made in Asia. And once it eventually is made cheaper and better in Asia, Americans will have to move somewhere else. Maybe green energy technology? Maybe nano technology? Mobile computing and entertainment? We can only guess but that's how the game is played.
Don't like it? Leave: I hear Venezuela is happy to accept immigrants. All Venezuelans are perfectly shielded from the evil world of international competition and trade. And I can guarantee you their children will be worse off in 30 years than their parents are today.
If your underlying theory was correct, Americans could still be producing leather shoes (now made in South America or Asia), or low-priced furniture (now China) or sewing T-Shirts (now in Vietnam) simply by blocking others to import them into the US, and still be as wealthy as they are today. That's a major fallacy.
Those jobs were very far down in the value chain and offered very low pay to workers in the US in the 50s, 60s and 70s. You have to thank millions of Asians that are happy working in these garbage jobs for low salaries and a generation later Americans (
on average) can work in better jobs instead, buying cheap products from Asia that their own parents used to produce in the US for a low salary.
Now tell me, is the average wealth of the middle class worker in the US better today or a generation (30 years) ago? Is today's 30 year old family man better off or was his father better off in 1978?
