Cheap Products vs. High Wages... Americans Want BOTH!

[mgookin]

Quote from makloda:

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?
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?

I see where the misunderstandings are originating from. You're on the understanding those who disagree with you are asking for trade barriers, tarriffs, etc.

It's not the future I'm bitching about. It's the treasonous actions of Washington in the intended interest of big business putting in place what exists today.

In the past 30 years we gave away the farm in trade policy. That's what I'm bitching about. American towns, cities, states and families being taken to the cleaners because of assholes in Washington giving away the farm. Then our local tax money is spent trying to lure it back. It's a loose- loose situation.

Washington does not give one rat's ass about an individual or a region. They only care about big business. I would rather see the DJIA go to zero with full employment and better distribution of wealth then see the DJIA go to 25,000 with 10% unemployment and the 90% who are working having to compete with slave labor in China.

You ask about the last 30 years. What has happened to distribution of wealth in the past 30 years? The money is all taken from working class people and ends up in the hands of the upper-upper class and foreign companies/ soverign funds.

 

[Robert Weinstein]

Quote from mgookin:

And why don't we export?
The jobs were outsourced because of new Trade Policy.

Actually we do export. I would guess that you know that as well.

I think what you meant to say is Why don't we export as much as we import?

But your answer to that question doesn't actually relate to the question. Its kinda like asking whats 1+ 1 and you giving an answer "blue"

As nice as it sounds to have more government control in our lives by restricting choices I think I will pass thank you.

The US manufactures many products and actually just about any product you can think of we either do make or could make. The US even makes many products that most countries are not unable to produce as well as the US. (aerospace, technology, entertainment, software, food, ect...)

The answer is that the consumers in the other countries do not find that American products are as good of a value to them overall (when considered as a whole in terms of dollars)

For example we have free trade agreements with both Canada and Mexico and yet you will see products from countries that do not have the luxury of being imported duty free as our products do. Consumers will buy what they perceive to be the best value to them.

Instead of trying to encourage more government control over our lives and greater restrictions on our freedom, how about thinking in terms of how we can make American business more competitive and produce products that not only we would want to buy but also what others will want to buy.

 

[Robert Weinstein]

Quote from mgookin:

I would rather see the DJIA go to zero with full employment and better distribution of wealth then see the DJIA go to 25,000 with 10% unemployment and the 90% who are working having to compete with slave labor in China.

You ask about the last 30 years. What has happened to distribution of wealth in the past 30 years? The money is all taken from working class people and ends up in the hands of the upper-upper class and foreign companies/ soverign funds.

With all due respect you may want to study history a little better. You can very clearly see what happens when you get what your asking for.

The DJIA goes to zero? Take a look at the shanghai exchange in 1947. It went to zero and you had a better distribution of wealth. There wasnt much left to distribute.

Speaking of China and other countries, we WILL have to compete with them and others for the limited resources in the world. Some may want to bury their heads in the sand and hope they give up the free market and dwidle away. I tend to think we better gear up and get ready to compete if we want our children to have the best they can have.

Is our standard of living better than it was 30 years ago?? You bet it is.

We have better cars, cell phones, computers, AC, lower cost of just about anything you can think of, more and saver job opportunities, bigger homes, better medicine, longer life expediency, greater wealth on average. our lakes and rivers are cleaner. The only thing I can think of that is not better is the govt has spent and obligated us into huge debts.(mostly SS, medicare, and medicaid)

Who in their right mind would give up what we have now to trade what we had 30 years ago

 

[makloda]

Income distribution has never in history ever made a working class richer over the long term. This illusion only exists in the minds of socialist dreamers.

The only type of wealth that is sticky over the long term is one that is achieved through the erection of sustainable technological and competitive advantages. You don't create national wealth by moving money from the pockets of the rich to the pockets of the poor.

a) AFAIK the 20% top earners in the US (call them 'rich' if you like') pay approx. two thirds (66%) of all income taxes. The rich are subsidizing the poor.
b) How will taxing the rich more make the poor man any richer over the long term? Why would the rich guy keep working 80 hours a week? Just so he gets 75% of his income taxed away?

 

[Cesko]

Quote from gnome:

I never said, implied nor even hinted that I thought trade barriers were good. How did you draw that ridiculous conclusion?

In your own words:
I've never studied anything about "trade barriers"... but America's "great prosperity years" are largely due our effectively having them.... not "official policy" ones but rather practical, economic ones.

 

[gnome]

Quote from Cesko:

In your own words:
I've never studied anything about "trade barriers"... but America's "great prosperity years" are largely due our effectively having them.... not "official policy" ones but rather practical, economic ones.

OK.. It's clear you don't have a clue what is meant by "practical, economic trade barriers"... All you care to do is CONTEST.. You've demonstrated that you are illogical and argumentative without substance.. (Just as in the episode where the Shelliac Captain tells Piccard, "you don't argue, you jibber"... What you gonna say next, "My dad can beat up your dad", or "Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah"?)... you're going on my ignore list. Please place me on yours.

 

[mgookin]

Quote from gnome:

OK.. It's clear you don't have a clue what is meant by "practical, economic trade barriers"... All you care to do is CONTEST.. You've demonstrated that you are illogical and argumentative without substance.. (Just as in the episode where the Shelliac Captain tells Piccard, "you don't argue, you jibber"... What you gonna say next, "My dad can beat up your dad", or "Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah"?)... you're going on my ignore list. Please place me on yours.

Same experience here Gnome. There are a few on this thread who we just can't communicate with.

Demonstrating that our prosperity was best when we were an export nation seems to translate to "lock the borders, throw out all the illegal aliens, 300% tarriffs in everything, blah blah blah rhetoric rhetoric rhetoric ..." I gave up a few days ago.

 

[indexer]

The way the global economy has evolved, the middle and lower classes in the US have seen their median income drop during this decade. As with compound interest, when you lose the compounding of wage growth over a decade it will have a dramatic effect over time.

The price of some goods is lower but that savings has been offset by higher oil and commodity prices caused by increased consumption in developing countries.

80% of Americans are scratching their heads and saying – what is in it for me?

Business has flooded the labor supply to their advantage which has pushed income growth down. Unlawful workers, offshoring and reimportation by American companies and outsourcing visa policies have jammed the job market.

Ironically, the developing countries that benefit by all this do not allow unlawful workers, offshoring and reimportation and visa outsourcing in their own home markets. Add to this currency manipulation, non-tariff barriers and one-way trade agreements that only benefit multinationals and big agribusiness. American business is encouraged by the corporate tax code to reinvest ALL foreign profits overseas, building more factories to offshore jobs. They do not have to pay corporate tax until they repatriate the earnings. For their US earnings they have to pay the tax when earned leaving less money for reinvestment in the US.

Losing out to a better competitor is one thing - but that is not what is happening here.

China and India ripped the facade off the free trade consensus when they scuttled the Doha agreement. They said their farmers could be hurt, but they could have given the farmers trade displacement payments. They did not want to make the payments. They want all the benefits and none of the pain of free trade and we are apparently stupid enough to allow this to continue.

 

[gnome]

Quote from mgookin:

"... Demonstrating that our prosperity was best when we were an export nation..."

Well of course. Historically, economic power has been held by countries which "make things and sell them to the world".

America still exports, but our imports are much larger... so we are not the force we were 50-100 years ago.

Chindia has the power now... and we VOLUNTARILY SURRENDERED much of our economic mojo to them in order to buy cheap goods from Wal Mart... tsk, tsk.

 

[gnome]

Quote from makloda:

Income distribution has never in history ever made a working class richer... How will taxing the rich more make the poor man any richer over the long term?..."

I received an email over this weekend.. it's about a quote from Charles Barkely... NBA star notwithstanding, he's politically astute.... even fancies himself as a candidate for Governor of Alabama some day...

_________________________________

"Poor people have been voting for Democrats for the last 75 years, and they're still poor" -- Charles Barkley