This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Free Trade Benefits Vs. Fears Of Foreign Goods
Submitted by Richrd Ebeling via Epic Times blog,
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke before a joint session of the U.S. Congress on April 29, 2015 and offered his “eternal condolences to the souls of all American people that were lost during World War II,” but never directly said that he was sorry for Imperial Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
The real purpose for his visit to Washington, D.C. and his address before Congress was to push for Congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) between the U.S., Japan and 10 other nations (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam).
Meant to extend and widen trade and related commercial relationships between the participating countries, it is also been presented as a way for the U.S. to maintain his economic and political power in East Asia in the face of the rising influence of China in that part of the world.
TPP is a “Managed Trade” Agreement – Not Free Trade
With negotiations among the twelve governments going on “behind closed doors,” proponents and critics have offered alternative accounts of what is being negotiated and whose benefit will be served in the final agreement.
What should be most clear is that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not a free trade agreement. Parts of it may, no doubt, lower some trade barriers, thus making easier the production, sale and purchase of a wider variety of imports and exports. However, TPP, like all other trade agreements in the post-World War II era is a managed trade agreement.
That is, governments of the respective participating nations negotiate on the terms, limits and particular conditions under which goods and services will be produced and then bought and sold in each other’s countries. The Japanese government, for instance, is determined to maintain a degree of trade protectionism for the benefit of Japan’s rice producers, who are fearful of open competition from their American rivals.
The U.S. government is under pressure from the American auto industry, for example, to continue limiting greater competition from the Japanese automobile industry. American labor unions want to restrict the importing of goods produced at lower labor costs abroad than U.S. manufactured goods, because American consumers might prefer to buy the lower priced foreign products and thus risking the loss of some of their union members’ jobs.
Free Trade Can be Simple and Unilateral
A real free trade agreement, on the other hand, can be a very simple matter. Congress would pass and the President then sign a short piece of legislation stating something to the affect:
“The United States government herewith eliminates all existing barriers, restrictions, and prohibitions on the free and unrestricted importing and exporting, buying and selling of all goods and services between the United States and any and all nations in the world. The U.S. government declares that all forms of peaceful and non-fraudulent trade, commerce and exchange is the private matter of the individual citizens of the United States and any and all others situated in another country. This law takes affect immediately upon passage.”
Indeed, the United States does not even need the mutual agreement of any other nation to implement free trade. The U.S., with just such a piece of legislation, can establish free trade unilaterally; even if other nations kept some or all of their own trade-restricting barriers in place, America would still be better off.
Let us remember why people trade with one another. Each of us has limited skills, abilities and resources. And there is only so much time in a day to do all the things we might wish to do to produce the goods and services we desire to have.
Division of Labor and Gains from Trade
Furthermore, some of us are better at doing some things than others. The noted Scottish economist, Adam Smith (1723-1790), in fact, began his famous book on The Wealth of Nations (1776) with explaining the benefits from a division of labor. In a small group of tribesmen, one of them sees that a fellow tribe member is better at making a bow and arrows than himself, and in less time than when he employs his own labor to make such a weapon for hunting.
On the other hand, he is quite talented and efficient at tanning animal hides, and offers to trade such a tanned animal hide (that can serve as the covering of a small tent, for instance) in exchange for a set of bow and arrows from the other tribesman who is not very adept at such tanning activities.
Others may offer the bow and arrows “expert” some product that they are relatively good at producing – one who may be good at producing primitive hatchets or knives, another who has superior cooking skills, etc. – in trade for one of his weapons.
Over time, Adam Smith argued, each would find that they could improve the quantities and the qualities of the goods that could be in their possession if instead of trying to self-sufficiently manufacture these things on their own, they were to specialize in what they could do better than their fellow tribesmen and trade their specialized good for the similarly specialized products of their neighbors.
Through a division of labor, productivity is increased far above what individual men in economic isolation can ever hope to attain. It also acts as a stimulus for industry, since now the variety and quality of goods than can be obtained through the exchange of specialized productions work as incentives for each to increase his own output of tradable wares as the means of acquiring what others may have for sale.
And the more extensive the market becomes on which goods can be sold, the greater now the potential benefits from a more intensive development of the division of labor.
People Trade, Not Governments – For the Benefit of Imports
From these insights, economists like Adam Smith and who came after him demonstrated that trade among nations is mutually beneficial, and in no way harmful to any nation’s “interest.” Why? Because “nations” do not trade, individuals do. And no individual enters into and participates in any exchange unless at the time of the transaction they view themselves being made better off from what they receive in a trade than what they have to give up to get it.
Furthermore, the advantage from all forms of trade, whether between two immediate neighbors, or between people living in two different states such as California and Ohio, or between those residing and working in two different countries separated by thousands of miles, comes not from the ability to “export” but from the opportunity to “import.”
Though I certainly enjoy my job as a professor of economics in an institution of higher learning, the reason I work is to earn a salary that then enables me to buy all the various goods and services that I wish to use and consume. In other words, I “export” my teaching services to others who are willing to pay me for services rendered so I can have the financial wherewithal to “import” all the other goods I wish to buy.
Exports are only the means through which people in one nation can acquire from those in other nations the products that they cannot produce at home, or cannot produce at a cost less than the prices at which others offer them in another country. Trade among nations offers the consumers of each participating country more goods, and different and less expensive goods than if the demanders of those desired commodities were limited to the production possibilities in their own land.
The final demonstration of the mutual benefit from trade among nations came with the development of the theory of comparative advantage by economists inspired by Adam Smith. That trade is beneficial is seen clearly enough if each nation can produce some product that its trading partners cannot produce at all, or if each nation can produce some product at a lower cost that none of their trading partners can match.
Trading Benefits Among the More and the Less Productive
But what was now shown was that trade was mutually beneficial even if one of these nations was absolutely more cost-efficient in producing every product in comparison to its potential trading partners.
Suppose I hire a housekeeper to clean my cloths and cook by food even if I can do both of these tasks better and in less time than they can, but if by paying them to do so, they free my time to do things in the market place that generates a higher income that may more than compensates for what I pay them.
For instance, suppose that I could do these two activities for myself in four hours of time each day, while the professional housekeeper will take six hours to complete these same tasks and for which they will charge me $10 an hour for a total cost of $60.
But suppose that by freeing me from four hours of household chores, I can produce and sell a product or offer some labor service, myself, which would earn me the equivalent of an income of $25 per hour, or a total of $100. By hiring the housekeeper, I net an extra $40 ($100 earned minus $60 paid to the housekeeper), that otherwise would not be available to me to buy things I might desire.
If I value more highly what that extra $40 of net income will enable to be buy more than staying home and making a tastier meal for myself and folding my cleaned clothes a little neater, then I will hire the less efficient housekeeper to free up my time so I can do those things for which the market places a higher value than the housekeeper’s abilities.
Specializing at What You are Relatively Most Productive
The same logic explains the trade among nations.
Suppose that the people in the nation of Superioristan can produce a yard of cloth in four hours and can harvest a bushel of wheat in one hour, while the people in the nation of Inferioristan take, respectively, twelve and two hours to perform the same two tasks.
Clearly Superioristan is a lower-cost producer than Inferioristan in both cloth and wheat production. Superioristan is three times more productive at cloth manufacturing (four hours instead of twelve) and twice as productive at wheat harvesting (one hour instead of two).
But it is equally as clear that Superioristan is comparatively more cost-efficient in cloth manufacturing. That is, if the people of Superioristan forego the manufacture of one yard of cloth (four hours of work) they can harvest four bushels of wheat (each harvested bushel taking one hour) with the time that has been freed up. But when the people of Inferioristan forego the manufacture of a yard of cloth (twelve hours of work) they can harvest six bushels of wheat (each harvested bushel taking two hours).
If Superioristan and Inferioristan were to trade cloth for wheat at a price ratio of, say, one yard of cloth for five bushels of wheat, the people of both nations would be better off, with Superioristan specializing in cloth manufacturing and Inferioristan in wheat harvesting.
Superioristan would now receive five bushels of wheat for a yard of cloth in trade, rather than the four bushels if it harvested at home all the wheat consumed. And Inferioristan would receive a yard of cloth for only giving up in trade five bushels of wheat, rather than the six bushels if it manufactured at home all the cloth needed and used.
The people of every nation can find a place at the table of global trade, even if they are less productive and efficient than many or all their trading partners, by producing something for which they have a comparative advantage that enables some one or more of their trading partners to specialize in those activities for which they are most productive.
The Errors in Various Trade Fallacies
Let us briefly review some of the objections sometimes raised against freedom of trade.
1. Unfair Trading Practices. Many other nations directly or indirectly subsidize the exports of some of their producers to the United States at prices below their actual costs of production. To the extent that this is actually done, this means that American consumers are given a bargain.
Suppose that a product that would, otherwise have cost $10 to buy now can be purchased from the subsidized foreign supplier for $6. Americans now have the desired commodity for $6 instead of $10, plus have the $4 difference left in their pocket to spend on something they otherwise would not have been able to afford. American standards of living are increased due to the foreign export subsidy.
Who should view themselves as having been taken advantage of? Surely, it should be the citizens in the foreign exporting nation, who have been forced to pay higher taxes to cover the cost of the subsidy given to a privileged producer in their own country. They have been taxed so American consumers may purchase something below market-based costs to the benefit of a special interest in their own land.
2. Foreign-Made Goods Cause Jobs Losses at Home. Whether subsidized or not, the charge is often made that foreign imports result in lost business and jobs for Americans. It is true that American firms that cannot successfully compete against their foreign competitors may lose business and may even in some cases go out of business.
But foreign exporters do not give us their goods for free. They desire to earn revenues and income for the same reason that we do, to have the financial wherewithal to buy other goods we desire to buy as income-earning consumers.
Thus, the dollars earned by foreign exporters are spent in one way or another on American goods and services that these foreign dollar-earners find attractive and desirable to buy. Thus, part of the business and jobs “lost” due to foreign competition are made up in the American the export trades as the means for supplying the goods that serve as the ultimate payment for the goods imported.
At the same time, the dollars saved on purchasing less expensive foreign imports, leaves dollars in the pockets of American consumers that enables them to demand other goods here at home that they previously could not afford. This, in turn, creates part of the alternative business and employment that may have been lost as a result of those foreign imports.
What changes is the composition of the types of products produced in America and the types and location of some of the jobs performed by American workers. But as long as markets in America are relatively competitive and adaptive to change, there need be no net loss of jobs. There is always work to be done as long as people have unsatisfied wants. And in this way, there is work for all who are willing to work at market-determined prices and wages, and with higher standards of living due to more and better goods at lower costs.
3. Foreign Trade Barriers to American Goods. Suppose America unilaterally, lowers its trade barriers but the governments of other countries now selling more exports to the Unite States keep their trade barriers in place, not allowing their own citizens to import more American goods?
Then the dollars earned by the foreign exporters either will be sold on the foreign exchange market to those interested and willing to buy American-made goods, or dollars earned from selling goods in the U.S. will remain in America and used for either direct or indirect investments in the American economy. If the latter, this increases the pool of savings and investable resources to finance capital formation in the United States, therefore assisting in enhancing America’s future productive capabilities in the global market.
Suppose that the dollars earned by the foreign exporters were to be “hoarded” in that foreign nation, neither spent on American goods nor saved and invested in the American economy. To the extent this was to be done, the foreign exporters and their governments are giving Americans an implicit “interest-free loan.”
That is, they have given us their goods and not demanded any goods as payment for them. In other words, it is as if they have given us their goods “on credit” and indefinitely delayed when they insist upon being paid back in the form of the goods they could demand from us by offering to trade their earned dollars for actual goods and services on the American market.
For as long as, hypothetically, those dollars were to be hoarded in those foreign countries the resources and labor that would have had to be, otherwise, devoted to manufacture the exports to pay from what we had imported are freed up to be used to make other goods that Americans would like to have.
4. Trade Makes Our Rivals Stronger, and Can Lead to Conflict and Possible War. The greater and more intensive our trading relationships with other nations, the more interdependent we become with them. That very interdependency can serve to reduce the likelihood of war by increasing the its cost.
I sometimes explain to my students, imagine it is the year 2030. China has grown in economic and military power, and the Chinese and American governments have gotten into a political conflict with both sides rattling their sabers and threatening war.
In Beijing, a young man knocks on the door of one of the top Chinese generals and enters his office. The young man says: “Pop, what are you doing? Are you going to ‘nuke’ San Francisco? Don’t you know I’m heavily invested in Silicon Valley, and your daughter-in-law and grandchildren are vacationing at our new condo near Fisherman’s Wharf looking out over the Golden Gate Bridge?”
Countries have and no doubt will continue to go to war for various reasons. And trade does not guarantee that it does not happen. But strong and deeply interconnected trade relations raise the costs of conflict. You rarely improve your own economic wellbeing by killing your customers and destroying your own resource supplies and capital investments.
Long ago, the famous Scottish philosopher, historian and economist, David Hume (1711-1776) explained the benefits from international trade and division of labor. In a well-known essay of his, “Of the Jealousy of Trade” (1758), Hume pointed that international trade offers opportunities to discover and learn about new technologies, new methods of production and new varieties of products that otherwise might never be known and taken advantage of if nations attempted to economically close themselves off from commercial interaction with their neighbors.
He argued that if a domestic industry found it difficult to meet the competition of their foreign rivals, “they ought to blame their own idleness, or bad government, not the industry of their neighbor.”
The fear of lost business and jobs from foreign trade, Hume said, was misplaced. “If the spirit of industry be preserved, [production] may easily be diverted from one branch to another” if markets are kept open, competitive and not hampered by the heavy hand of government regulation, control and burdensome taxes.
All who participate gain from international trade, and all are made poorer to the extent that governments interfere or prohibit the freedom of trade among the peoples of the world.
To slightly paraphrase from the closing paragraph of this essay of Hume’s, “I shall therefore venture to acknowledge that, not only as a man (benevolently wishing the best for all of mankind), but as an American citizen (desiring the prosperity of my own country), I pray for the flourishing commerce of Germany, Japan, Great Britain, France, and even China, Russia and Iran themselves. I am certain, that America, and all those nations, would flourish more, did their governments and political leaders adopt such enlarged and benevolent free trade sentiments towards each other.”
»
- 10329 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
It wasn't a "sneak attack"...
It was a hired hit.
English paid the Japs to bomb Pearl Harbor, to ensure that their "colonies" would enter the war on their side.
I freelance over th? internet and earn about 80-85$ an hour. I was without a job for 7 months but last month my paycheck with big fat bonus was $15000 just working on my computer from my home for 5-6 hours. Here's what i have been doing... www.jobs-review.com
Not many muttonheads buying this article...
maybe cause he forgot the investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS)
http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2015/january/tradoc_153046.pdf
(very short and nice explanation on youtube;) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SbO2zDDpDA
in short:
corporations can sue states, the judges are the lawyers of the companies, no way to regress, all far out any constitution, intransparent....just to name a few problems.
companies only act for their benefit and profit. we need transparent institutions, lookin and watching over what the society needs, wants. corporations are too large to give them so much more power, they wont use it for the good, only for their own.
its a societal dilemma.
corporations often act like parasites, let the parasites loose and you kill the host.
we are too many now to follow teachings from the 19th century. we live in the 21th century now, new problems, dear teacher. catch up, u need an update. read bruce schneier "liars and outliers".
how to say it short? maybe like this: in cartraffic you wouldnt leave the right to the stronger, wouldnt you? (ps dont forget, you grow old too...)
So we're just going to ignore that free trade with nations that have wages a fraction of ours is detrimental to the us? Remember NAFTA? An economist wrote this drivel? I guess I'm not surprised.
This is complete bullshit. Americans buying cheaper foreign goods puts money in foreign hands that they, in theory, could spend on American goods.....but they obviously do not. If they spend US dollars it is to buy up our assets, our raw materials, our stocks and corporations, all of which ONLY BENEFIT THE HOLDERS OF THOSE ASSETS not you or me. Meanwhile we watch as our employment bases erodes, either going off shore, or through importation of cheap foreign labor or automation.
Economists have gotten us here and if ANYONE deserves hanging it I'd they, for they have provided the "science" that the hucksters and thrives needed to fuck everyone royally.
Now all we need after giving a our jobs away for "free trade" is to give everything our forefathers created away through climate change initiatives.
There is NOTHING to be gained by these treaties. Coming from strength we can only lose ground. We surrendered our liberty to the State, and then discovered we had actually capitulated to the federal government to which we had no power to control. Now we find that what little liberty we have left is being handed over to globalists who will rule absolute. We won't even have the ILLUSION of democracy left. All to the glory of progressives, too stupid to care for themselves, but absolutely convinced that our elite leaders will deliver us from evil.
@Oldwood.
It depends on what you call money. If we're talking fiat, then we get real goods in exchange for ink and paper or 1's and 0's on a computer screen while restricting foreign ownership of productive assets can be easily achieved by taxing the piss out of foreigners investing in them. In fact the first part is how we have been doing it since we became the reserve currency anyway. Your scenario is more likely if we had real money, but either way, full free trade is just not a recipe for an individual country to succeede.
That was just in response to the first paragraph, the rest of your post is spot on.
Let's put TLDR in short perspective.
All of these treaties and partnerships are called ring-fencing the population.
The stockades are growing.
A bigger prison is a worse prison because it gives you a false sense of freedom.
They are counting on that for the common man.
Oh cool, no visa needed to go wait tables in San Francisco. One big salary crushing family.
Off-set, perhaps the most "felt" piece in my sequences: 19
https://youtu.be/wzESrhRrkTI
free trade is for the rich who have surplus capital and goods and time.
99.9% of people don't have the luxury to trade as they are born with debt and can barely feed their family.
It's the elimination of legal protections that nations have against plundering by the global financial elite who create money out of thin air that this trade deal is about.
That's why they don't want you to look at it until 5 years after it's passes.
It's a stinker.
So people who want nations to exist that then can be plundered by the elite are the problem.
Meat puppets - the first cause.
(Insert Ringo Starr quote here.)
That is why the Wall Street Journal really went after Pat Buchanan when he ran for President, Pat was for the average American one of the FEW GOP...
The GOP And The Trans-Pacific Partnership: On a Fast Track to National Ruin
By Patrick J. Buchanan May 7, 2015
No Moron, the Pearl Harbor attack was because of the Roosevelt's oil embargo on Japan.
And you probably think the American Civil War was about slavery, douchebag.
Secret Deal Could Contain a Myriad of Gun Restrictions, Ammo Bans! 07 May 2015
DICK MORRIS: Obama Sneaking in 'Unrestricted Immigration' in Trade Deal
Obama’s Republican Collaborators
By Patrick J. Buchanan April 21, 2015
SESSIONS: Trade deal opens immigration floodgates
'Living Agreement' can be changed after Congress approves
McConnell vows to move Obama 'fast-track' authority 'very soon'; 'I want to compliment the President'
Trump: 'A Bad, Bad Deal'
Sessions demands deal be made public
Senator Jeff Sessions Sends Letter to Obama on Trade Pact: Make ‘Living Agreement’ Provision Public before ‘Fast-Track’ Vote, May 6, 2015
This text sounds like a college lecture in economics. What happens now if the company due to cheap labor in Malaysia, imports a product for 6 Dollars as you write in the text but instead of selling it for 6 Dollars sells it for 7 Dollars so the American can still save 3 Dollars, but profits for corporations rise thanks to the TPP?
It would be much more interesting to talk about the positive consequences for multinationals that these agreements hold than the marginal reudction in living costs for the average American that is subsequently faced with job losses.
All that fiat paper backed by the ether of binary digits means that corporations and governments are free to offshore responsibilities to their citizens, while jiggering their currencies to debase labor and cannibalize the assets of individuals.
You get 0.10% on savings while paying 4.5%-29% in interest and paying 50% or more in: up front taxes, shadow taxes, and unaffordable insurance premiums.
The leeches, ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, and tapeworms of the Kleptoligarchy shall not be denied their blood!
Another blah blah rah rah . aint free trade GRAND hit piece.. .. ever read those things .. they pick winner and losers of entire industries... BIG ag wins, BIG banks and financials WIN and with MFN for China especially they buy or steal US taxpayer funded tech in many cases .. we get cheap machine stamped plastic dolls or flip flops . they buy US treasuries.. in the nd the price of free trade as presently conjured in NAFTA > GATT . CAFTA .. or MFN for China is a blatant screw job of the entire US economic model.. WE are the only industrialized high tech country other than our poodle the UK who have bought into this shit .. Germans did not . they hung onto their high tech manufacturing . machine tooling .. and are ahead of the game.. in the hands of the plutocrats and oligarchs. .the notion of 'free trade' is just one more step toward fuedalism.
Free trade? When? Where? Show me where it exists and how it fails. It has never existed in the era of government, but likely did at forager aggregation sites involving trade.
Things involving freedom of the individual are anathemas to government and cannot be allowed to show their viability. To govern is to control and if free trade were an abject failure then governments would allow it to show that.
Man will never be free until the last government worker is strangled to death with the entrails of the last government lover.
Prof Richard Ebling's assumptions are Breath Taking.
- This piece is written from the perspective of our Blind US President who is black but doesn't see any black misery
Specifically the Professors Errors about Free Trade #1 & #2, the assumption is that we live in a vacuum of fair play, that fraud doesn't exist, Accounting Control Fraud Doesn't Exist, that Slavery & Pirates don't Exist, that Propaganda doesn't exist, that government suppression of information and refusal to collect information doesn't exist, that govt stats are all believable... but what am I saying? To be a Professor of Economics, Ebling has to work around all of these problems. There fore his Article is disingenuous.
Professor, you can never Audit all of the Sweat Shops in the World, if there are worker rights they are not implemented evenly and governments don't audit the shops or the accounting. USA may not have the most expensive Labor in the world, but we can't compete against shrimp processed by slaves and pirates.
Professor, what you think you know or what is expressed in the MSM is sloppy Journalism. Trade aside, we don't even know the cost of war to the Iraqi People in terms of refugee rapes/murders, refugee disease, total refugees, civilians injured, Homes destroyed, businesses destroyed, cultural artifacts lost or destroyed, ethnic people as a whole that disappeared.
Iraqi War II is one the most important, most written about recent events and you as an Economist can't tell us the Cost of War. Perhaps you should feel shame. Too bad you very fair, very noble, very democratic & progressive US Government won't help you with any of the numbers.
What a shame. Economics is Dead.
http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/new-cube-video-al-aqsa-retirement...
This parody will make sense in time.
http://thepeoplescube.com/images/ISIS_Flag_decoded.jpg
Enjoy.
How can somebody know what is in it if nobody can see it. Probably lots of police state provisions for everyone. Becaise of the preparations here we should assume there will be uniform attempts of control during the collapse and that TPP addresses the issue of western globalist security among all bankster occupied nations.
“The United States government herewith eliminates"... the minimum wage, all unions, child labor laws, and environmental and safety standards. If only the gospel of Ayn Rand channeling through econ 101 professors could reach the ears of the masses, they would then see the invisible hand they never knew they had.
Smith observed the obvious that had not been written; he didn't preach it. Capitalism has failed because of its success. Until we have local production for local consumption and refuse to view any growth as good in a different system that encourages harmony with nature, we will continue winning our race to the bottom. Legalize drugs and let the inmates free the guards.
As much as I hate these manipulative lying motherfuckers, it is completely apparent to me that it is we Americans that have had the choice as to whether we would purchase cheap foreign goods and imported labor, but we failed our test. Just as THEY had anticipated, we greedily gobbled up all of those great deals, the something for damned near nothing stuff, even while there were those "crackpots" who were repeatedly warning us of exactly what we now are experiencing.
Sure, as this economists points out, our jobs are in no way at risk. As a matter of fact, to NOT buy imports is just downright unamerican if not simply stupid.
We saw no conflict in demanding higher union wages while going out to buy the new Sony or Toyota. How could we go wrong?
Of course its not just importation now is it? We can hire Mexicans to mow our yards and build our houses. We didn't want our kids to grow up doing that shit anyway, did we. They should all be lawyers and bankers, right?
And while we know the markets are completely fucked and the rampant financialization of our economy will likely burn it to the ground, what the hell, right. Everyone else is trying to make money for nothing, so why not us too, right? I mean, what could go wrong? And given EVERYONE is doing it, at least it's not any of our fault's, I mean personally, right. It's the collectives fault. We "socialize" the losses, right?
Not my fault. Its those fucking lying bankers and politicians, right? They tricked us. They offered us something for nothing. How COULD we have known????
Yeah Bread and Circuses is the trade for Bread and Butter Jobs.
A hell of a thing.
From the perspective of people giving up citizenship or moving abroad for a cheaper lifestyle or less corruption or just for Democratic Principals... you end up faced with the same choice to some degree.
Cheap corporate products made in foreign country, bought in a foreign country tend to benefit the wealthy owners not the workers.
In a foreign country often the typical US Products are very expensive. You like Western Clothes or Foods, it can often cost more in a third world country.
Go Local in a third world country and you can cut the budget, but you find odd experiences with quality or unexpected tastes, flavors, textures, durability, etc.
From the waffle of economists to the real world.
How did the US become the super-power it is today?
In the 18th and 19th century the UK was the workshop of the world and the home of the industrial revolution.
How did the US and other Western European nations catch up with the UKs more advanced factories and cheaper products?
Was free trade the answer?
Are you mad, tariffs were the order of the day.
Tariffs made cheap UK products more expensive in the US and Western Europe allowing them to catch up on the UKs industrial advances.
Eventually, the US over-took the UK as the workshop of the world, thanks to tariffs.
In a free trade world, the UK, being the home of the industrial revolution, would have maintained it's advantage forever.
Economist's eh! - 2008 "How did that happen?" - let them theorize behind their desks, but the real world is what you need to look at.
Batman Great Post.
Reminds me of South America. early 1970s they looked like they were getting a middle class through development of factories and industries. I'm thinking they had protectionist policies, Tariffs. Then they were Smacked with Dirty Wars all through the Cone of South America.
Today the dirty wars are gone from South America, but the Industries still struggle to put out good products and attract loyal customers. The Protectionist Policy is still alive, but may have a few countries where you can get cheap electronics. I heard you could go to Columbia to get a good deal but not sure if Gringos have the advantage.
If South America has a Lesson here I think it is the Value of Industrializing to form a Middle Class.
It doesn't make sense to allow destruction of your manufacturing base... unless you have Globalists. Globalists that want to keep a Slave Class (Prisons), Undocumented Class (Blackmarket Labor), Debt Class (easily Controlled), Secret Sweat Shops (Free Trade).
Who let this clown post? Free trade and this Econ 101 garbage wastes our time. There is no empirical evidence to support these arguments. All of these agreements have gutted our manufacturing base killing millions of jobs leaving a wake of human tragedy. Look at what has happened to Detroit and the rust belt.
This is in large part about countering the BRICS and the AIIB.
The Sheeple are collateral (assets or damage), as always.
Forget Keynesian or Austrian Economics. It's worse than that... it's Zi'Borg Economics. Their mantra is "Arguments and Laws are irrelevant. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated."
The only decision you have to make is whether to be and act like a sheep, wolf or shepherd. If you plan to be a Free Man, you have to act like one, by Organizing, or you won't be one for long.
Kirk, important point you just made.
Free Trade Agreements are about Power, World Domination, and World Hegemony at least in part, lots of players. There are corporate winners, and greedy players as well. And probably the Social Engineers think it is about them.
Sort of a Coalition of oddballs in USA. Kissinger & Zbinew Brzezinski included.
To professor Ebeling:
Respectfully sir,
In a parallel universe perhaps...
Where 'trivial' matters like Crony Capitalism, Regulatory Capture, Over-Regulation and just plain 'ole dishonesty, greed & graft, do not allow for yours (nor Adam Smith's) observations of globalism nirvana to materialize. In simple terms - with credit to all of those above me here who have stated it already: Your's ain't the Real World and neither is 'Free Trade', if for nothing else but because there ain't nothing '$free' about 'Free Trade'...
This professor is reading from a Samuleson economics text book from the 1970's. No mention of monetary (interest rate) or FX rate manipulation. No mention of mass illegal immigration being financed politically by the Banksw to racist fascists like Obama and Holder.
Whatever University this economic dunciad professors at, make sure yyou don't send any of your kids there. It's probaby an Ivy league scholl or one of those Universities that want to try to be like an Ivy scholl so they make things like trangender , LGBT, and race politcs the main and overridding theme.
Hey Professor... Hope you get punched in the face, soon.
This will prove to be as bad a deal for american manufacturing as was NAFTA.
Which party is always explaining how they want to replace "dirty manufacturing jobs" with clean bartender .... uhm ..... high tech positions?
When workers in other countries only make fifty cents a day they can not buy American made goods. And Americans do not recieve a price benefit from cheap made foreign goods. Fuck "free trade". Fuck every traitor who votes for that shit. Hang them sons of bitches.
The TPP is all about global control of the internet in order to take down alternative sites like ZH exposing the central banker parasites and others exposing the poisoning and handicapping campaigns of fluoride, vaccines and GMOs.
The globalist also want to over-ride anti-GMO laws and keep the public's health disabled and handicapped so they don't threaten their central bank theft scams.
It's a globalist power play to keep the Black Nobility parasite attached to the public host using their Masonic, Zionist and Jesuit agents.
what the poster leaves out is that trade levels down wages. It doesn't export jobs so much
as it eliminates high paying wages. If cable is made in the US by union workers
it can be made in malaysia by peasants. Cheaper cable but you shaft the
working stiffs.
Pearl Harbor was not a sneak attack.
The allies had been reading Japan's mail for years. Japanese cyphers were broken a couple of years before the attack. Roosevelt/Washigton knew how, where, what and when way before it was going to happen. Intel was DELIBERATELY withheld the from Hawaiian forces.
2400 Americans died because of their megalomaniac crippled socialist president.
Richard Ebling makes a rookie mistake here with all respect due. He doesn't Define Terms.
- What kind of Economy Does the USA have?
- What Model allows Corporations Sovereignty to not only ship jobs overseas to slave trade, avoid patriotic duties, but to systematically disassemble US Industries one after another?
- What is the Model of Financialization of Everything?
- What kind of Economy uses Crony Networks to pull power to the Few, the Proud, the VICHY DC, VICHY K Street, VICHY Madison Avenue, and the VICHY Wall Street?
I don't mean to simply repeat a Rant here.
The British Trade Model appears to be what we have in the USA & Probably Europe.
Trade Historically made Kings, Queens, Lords, Shipowners, and Ships captains Rich, but not many others. Dynasties of Old Money and Old Power seem to be at the top like the Junkers of old.
Define for us what it means when a Nation ignores Economic Weakness like Capital Flight, Decapitalization of Industry, Brain Drain from Industry, and a complete shift of Genius moving into Finance. Let the Peons Eat Cake doesn't Ring a Bell, Professor?
Germany came up with something called Historical Economics of which I know nothing. But it sounds like the idea was to measure what was happening in the Economy and to act accordingly to fix trends instead of relying on ideology or political pressure.
Today we have a Do Nothing Congress, a Blind President (If you believe his words), and government Economists that support inequality, looting & hoarding of corporations, high administrative costs for corporations, Corporate Bailouts, Socializing the Losses of Corporations, handing over National Assets in expensive Privatization Schemes, and believe in the Wealthy controlling the USA through swinging doors to Industry, Government capture, and Regulation capture.
I'm pretty sure to start this article correctly you should define our country in broad terms as a Military Republic not a democracy, as a Mixed Economy with Free markets, Controlled Markets, and Institutional Socialism for Corporations and for Welfare. But we are not that sure that we have Free markets any more. The question is in the air, is the USA a capitalist country? Or is it much less. US Capitalism maybe in the Gray-Black area of Racketeering due to money & gift-giving.
What about TARP, LIRP/ZIRP/NIRP, and QE with $4.4 Trillion of the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet? Do you honestly not think this transfer of wealth plays into the concept of free trade and movement of capital from the USA offshore. Do you honestly think USA can be 'called' a Capitalist Country after this Fiasco??
And when US founding documents are in total conflict with US Foreign Policy, US Standing Army, US Superpower Status, US Funding size of MIC & Spy Agencies,... along with the total handouts in contracts and exponential Budget Growth... Well 'can' we call the USA a constitutional republic??
-------------------------------------------------------------------
What Model allows Corporations Sovereignty to not only ship jobs overseas to slave trade, avoid patriotic duties, but to systematically disassemble US Industries one after another?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
** So it seems we are in an Era of Redefining all of our Models, Terms, Political Economic Structures, and we look more like the former USSR than anyone ever thought possible complete with torture, domestic spying, and loss of MSM as Free Press **
So Professor, please, get busy. What do we call a Military Republic that ignores the rise of Welfare to Depression Era levels, then refuses to call it a depression simply because it issues EBT cards??
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, man. It is the "English Way"