Presidential seal... this is pretty funny

spat

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Willjr75 said:
No. It has nothing to do with the government thinking the American is dumb or forcing them to do the right thing. It’s the government fucking China back since they fuck us. Fair is fair.

You want to gouge us? No more. You will lose your biggest customer.
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That's closer to what tariffs are properly used for. A weapon of economic warfare, not a bonus for American business.

A lot of people are saying that a tariff on Chinese wrenches is to help American wrench makers.

That is like saying bombing the Taliban was to help American bomb manufacturers. It's a beneficial side effect, sure, but it should not be a factor when you decide to deploy that weapon.

The only real reason to deploy a tariff is to achieve a geopolitical goal, not economic protectionism.
 
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spat said:
That's closer to what tariffs are properly used for. A weapon of economic warfare, not a bonus for American business.

A lot of people are saying that a tariff on Chinese wrenches is to help American wrench makers.

That is like saying bombing the Taliban was to help American bomb manufacturers. It's a beneficial side effect, sure, but it should not be a factor when you decide to deploy that weapon.

The only real reason to deploy a tariff is to achieve a geopolitical goal, not economic protectionism.
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It does both.
 
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The problem which no one seems to notice, is that the two systems are completely different. One is free market and the other isn't. Its not an apples to apples comparison. The Chinese government can price fix at a loss . The Chineese workers do not have to pay for insurance, and get subsidized fixed price housing. They do not have to have the same safety standards, or regulations
The Chinese worker does not require the same amount of pay to get by as the American worker.
The Chinese don't have free markets and competition .

In order for the US to compete with the communists, we have to become communists, or it wont work. There is no way a free market can compete with a state government on even ground . Free trade was not allowed during the cold war because of this. American workers cannot compete with 10 cent an hour slave labor from North Korea . America will fail if we continue on this path. Its evident when you look at the outsourced auto industry or clothing industry. It cannot continue and survive as is ,with these policy's. And it isn't. Its failing everywhere , The industry of the US has been outsourced over seas, to countries we cannot compete with . The living standards of the average citizen has been dropping yearly because of this.

One answer to this is inflation. Yes you still get your 15 dollars an hour , but the buying power has dropped immensely , the sheep don't notice they are being fleeced because their pay has'nt changed.
 
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BDinPutnam

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Last I checked- we won the cold war. So I am fairly confident in capitalism's ability to work out just fine without having to capitulate and become communists.
 
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Statist, communist, clown, or unicyclist. Whatever label makes anyone feel happy. I don’t care. The only thing that concerns me are facts. And the fact of the matter is this. China charges us so that we can’t import products into their country that that will compete with theirs and undercut them. Yet they undercut us.

If we continue on this path, the end result is disaster for us. It’s already happening. So we can take a moral high ground and continue to degrade our economy to our own demise or we can do something about it.

The world is not fair. The world economy is not capitalist. The world will not conform to our ideals. We are part of the world economy. We can adapt to it or we can sit back and continue to get the short end of the stick until eventually, we don’t produce anything. Look at our auto industry. What has our sitting back and getting the shaft gotten us? Where are our factories? Where are our workers in those factories?

But hey...Ideals. Ideals will not keep us working.
 
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holdover said:
In order for the US to compete with the communists, we have to become communists, or it wont work. There is no way a free market can compete with a state government on even ground .
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Who is the "we" you speak of? People who sell goods and services are individual corporations or even individual people. I don't see this as a "collective" thing.

If it was me, as an individual, I would choose to not do business there and wouldn't be asking for the state to have my back via coercion of others in order to allow me to be more successful. That's not the role of the state. Actually, I've yet to find a role where they actually help.
 
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Curmudgeon said:
Who is the "we" you speak of? People who sell goods and services are individual corporations or even individual people. I don't see this as a "collective" thing.

If it was me, as an individual, I would choose to not do business there and wouldn't be asking for the state to have my back via coercion of others in order to allow me to be more successful. That's not the role of the state. Actually, I've yet to find a role where they actually help.
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But that wouldn’t be what would be happening. What coercion would the government be doing to you? The only coercion going on will be to China by matching the import fees they charge us when we ship our goods over there. By charging them what they charge us, it’s back to zero. The field will be balanced.
 
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Coercing him to pick one supplier over another by artificially manipulating the price (and availability) of the materials he needs to make whatever widgets it is he makes, perhaps?
 
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Willjr75 said:
But that wouldn’t be what would be happening. What coercion would the government be doing to you? The only coercion going on will be to China by matching the import fees they charge us when we ship our goods over there. By charging them what they charge us, it’s back to zero. The field will be balanced.
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Correct. I dont believe in coercion or violence to accomplish business goals.
 
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Curmudgeon said:
Who is the "we" you speak of? People who sell goods and services are individual corporations or even individual people. I don't see this as a "collective" thing.
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Thats the problem right there. The WE is the free market of the US vs the collective state market of the communists.

The free market cannot survive .the free market cannot compete with slave wages unless we adopt slave wages,which is impossible under a free market.
The glareing exsample of US industry bears witness to this.
 
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holdover said:
Thats the problem right there. The WE is the free market of the US vs the collective state market of the communists.

The free market cannot survive .the free market cannot compete with slave wages unless we adopt slave wages,which is impossible under a free market.
The glareing exsample of US industry bears witness to this.
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The "free market" is not an individual. It is a group of individuals. Just like the citizens of the USA.
 
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BDinPutnam said:
Last I checked- we won the cold war. So I am fairly confident in capitalism's ability to work out just fine without having to capitulate and become communists.
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Nope.they are two opppsed systems.this country is in a slow motion collaspe because industry has left. Now if we are goingto compete with that,then we have to pay workers an equlievent.Correct? So if Genetal. Motors wants to build here they jave yo pau workers 2 dollars an hour to compete.but they. Cant because mcfonalds id paying 11 an hour. Its that free market thing.nobody is going to work for slave wages . The two systems cannot work together.one will ddedtroy the other.thats just s matter of fact. The US will fall as sure as monday follows sunday .its just a matter of time.
 
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Ill make this simple, NJ is allowed to have slaves,and no taxes ,NY doesnt. Both make computers. How long can NY sell computers at 20 times cost before they have to allow slaves in NY or move to NJ? NY cannot compete.it has no hope of competeing.
 
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Curmudgeon said:
No sweat re: phone typing. Retired from my job as grammar police.

My point being that you cant refer to the market as we. All have different interests and goals. They will never act as a collective unless the state intervenes and forces them.
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understood.For brevitys sake i used we as us free market
 
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They don’t get it Holdover or see it but stubbornly ignore it because free market Merica crap. The problem is that the world isn’t a free market. Free market only works if every country is a free market which it isn’t. So the only way we survive is.....

1. Charge other countries what they charge us in tariffs.

or

2. Close the world off to trade and ban foreign imports and put ourselves in a bubble and only trade with countries that do not charge us tariffs.
 
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Willjr75 said:
They don’t get it Holdover or see it but stubbornly ignore it because free market Merica crap. The problem is that the world isn’t a free market. Free market only works if every country is a free market which it isn’t. So the only way we survive is.....

1. Charge other countries what they charge us in tariffs.

or

2. Close the world off to trade and ban foreign imports and put ourselves in a bubble and only trade with countries that do not charge us tariffs.
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I disagree. Why do you need the state? Your choices are only effective if there is a state in control.
 
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Willjr75 said:
But that wouldn’t be what would be happening. What coercion would the government be doing to you? The only coercion going on will be to China by matching the import fees they charge us when we ship our goods over there. By charging them what they charge us, it’s back to zero. The field will be balanced.
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We can't charge them what they charge us.

There is no tariff we can place on a good that will lower it's price in China.

It's true that you can't pay workers US wages and compete with 3rd world labor costs in some industries.

That just means we aren't competitive in those industries.

Just like you can't farm soybeans in Manhattan because land costs too much there, some labor intensive industries aren't a good fit for the US economy.

The answer isn't for NYC to place a tariff on soybeans that's so high that you can farm them on heavily taxed 10 million dollar an acre land and still turn a profit. The answer is for them to not farm soybeans in NYC, and stick to something they are good at. If they aren't good at anything useful, then they should disappear.

Americans are good at many valuable things, we do not need industries that need protection, we need to charge appropriately for things we are good at.

A good use of tariffs would be to punish any country that allows the import of Chinese goods made with stolen US intellectual property.
 
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spat said:
Americans are good at many valuable things, we do not need industries that need protection, we need to charge appropriately for things we are good at.

QUOTE]

If the industries cannot compete with foreign goods, they will fail in our system. Electronics, auto ,steel industries died. Their death did not make our economy better or stronger or more streamlined , nor did Cars or steel or electronics go down in price. Our national GDP went down and Chinas went up, the wealth has been outsourced to foreign nations.After the last 25 years or so of free trade with communists and third world nations I cant see how it benefited American working class . The standard of living for the average American has been going down for years. Wall st has been going up because it has its money in emerging markets and uses them as a tax shelter.

Ive read that the Chinese have devalued their Yean into order to offset the tariffs , in other words to pay the US in inflated yean. Trump said the Chinese are playing games with their currency and that is what the Fed rate cut is really all about . Why would you cut rates in a growing economy? You raise rates. this is becoming a currency war . The markets are expecting two rate cuts this year and more next year.
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spat said:
It's true that you can't pay workers US wages and compete with 3rd world labor costs in some industries.

That just means we aren't competitive in those industries.
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The only industries we haven't outsourced are the ones they cant .
 
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