patrick.net

YesYNot says

1) The premise is that by using free markets, we can make products more efficiently. If this is correct, then by stopping free trade in our country, we will all lose when the rest of the world keeps on going in a more efficient manner. Free markets used to be a basic republican idea.

Only way to compete with China is to return to 19th Century living conditions.

We of course will have to open up Teaching to H1-Bs and cut pay and pensions 50% because the tax base would be devastated.

You couldn't have Americans working 16 hours a day in a textile mill for $2/hr while teachers are making $50k/yr + benefits.

tatupu70 says

IMO-this is complete bullshit. It's along the lines of comparative advantage. Being able to pay lower wages is not a comparative advantage. It's not more efficient.

If you and I run companies making run of the mill paper clips, and I pay Chinese $4 / hr, while you pay US citizens $12 / hr, I have a comparative advantage. If we are the only paper clip companies, I can run you out of business or I can keep the bigger profits for myself. In any case, this is so basic and obvious, I look forward to your explanation about how this is not a comparative advantage.

If you buy your steel from US companies making steel produced from scratch (ore and coal) in the US and I buy my steel from Chinese companies, I have another competitive advantage.

thunderlips11 says

Only way to compete with China is to return to 19th Century living conditions.

Technology is making things cheaper. However, as more people in the world have risen out of poverty and as even more will, we have more and more people competing for the same resources. This is obviously going to produce cost issues for resource limited activities and products. There is no way out of this fact.

The issue of wealth disparity is huge, but I'm not sure that isolationist trade policies are a solution or are good for the country. It is a debate that should happen (not sure if it will), especially with Drumpf doing so well.

YesYNot says

If you and I run companies making run of the mill paper clips, and I pay Chinese $4 / hr, while you pay US citizens $12 / hr, I have a comparative advantage. If we are the only paper clip companies, I can run you out of business or I can keep the bigger profits for myself. In any case, this is so basic and obvious, I look forward to your explanation about how this is not a comparative advantage.

If you buy your steel from US companies making steel produced from scratch (ore and coal) in the US and I buy my steel from Chinese companies, I have another competitive advantage.

That's not comparative advantage. It's exploitation. It's not more efficient--likely it's less efficient because there's very little incentive to increase efficiency.

I would be happy if we shared the benefits of free trade and open borders.

I salute NYC in trying to open teacher licensing to Illegal Migrants. It's silly that millions of manufacturing jobs are lost, but we continue to shelter teachers, government workers, etc. from healthy competition with Filipina and Jamaican and Kenya Educators, Clerks, etc.

It's racist and economically inefficient to deny a visa-overstaying Jamaican the chance to teach school in NYC, esp. if she undercuts a 35-year old JAP or Italian-American Teacher by 50%.

CEO pay at world levels is a stetch, but we can start by opening up USAJobs and CA Teaching Licenses to foreigners, get rid of job protection schemes Tenure and Contract Negotiations.

If nobody is scratching the back of working class White America, they need to stop scratching others. They might as well say fuck you to everybody if everybody else says fuck you to them.

I look forward to $25k a year, no benefit no pension DMW workers, State College Employees, Teachers, Firefighters, Cops etc. and fighting World Poverty by opening them up to Syrian refugees and others.

Oh! And government contractors should also have all American worker protections stripped, starting with Lockheed-Martin, etc.

Nothing unites like Class Warfare in the name of Free Trade to benefit some!

tatupu70 says

That's not comparative advantage. It's exploitation.

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

YesYNot says

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Including the ability to pay slave wages or pollute the environment as a comparative advantage renders the term useless.

If you and I run companies making run of the mill paper clips, and I pay Chinese $4 / hr, while you pay US citizens $12 / hr, I have a comparative advantage. If we are the only paper clip companies, I can run you out of business or I can keep the bigger profits for myself.

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For every action, there is a reaction

Ship manufacturing off to china sight unseen, sure the corporation saves a piss boat on labor, but the layers of implications run deep.

The paper clip no longer travels 120 miles from SE PA down to Reston on the 18 wheeler of well paid American middleclassman. It now has an energy intensive journey around the globe.
From a factory with questionable pollution monitoring
Made by people in slave like conditions for slave wages
Shipped cross land to sea
Loaded into containers
Containers loaded onto shipping carriers
Cargo ships pay a crew, fuel, maintenance, 500k canal fees, booku insurance
Arrive at US port
Pay big fees
Crane operators
And soon you'll be at the point in the supply chain where you would have been domestically

But you spent a shit ton of fossil fuel energy, and greased all the hands of the politically privileged along the way, just to avoid paying joe shlep a living wage to work the factory in our backyard. Any purported labor cost savings never go to the consumer anyways, it all goes to the very too. Corporate profits all the way up. Taxes down

That doesnt begin to factor the cost of joe shleps idle hands here stateside. at this point were no longer a free market capitalist democracy republic anymore, anyways. So if tariffs are unAmerican and paperclips go up a couple cents, id survive.

Also, the only reason the Chinese can sell paper clips in volumes enough to be profitable is because of the already developed markets in the US and elsewhere.

I'm back bitches.....

I'm back bitches.....