A disgusting vat of filth that no self-respecting intelligent person would wade into.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
We need a Democratic President for that.

It's like Nixon in China.

You're just trying to agitate Spanky now, aren't you?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky
You expect SD to answer your questions yet you dodge mine. Answer the question.

What, your question as to whether the free market has benefited the US? Yes, it clearly has. Didn't prevent the Civil War or the Great Depression, and it hasn't cured the common cold, but it's generally a pretty good thing.

But it is not a panacea and I'm nervous about first world/third world open markets given the obvious economic discontinuities between the two.

Tell me, while you are opening our borders to goods made by little veiled Pakistani girls answering to the cruel yoke of Allah's henchmen, would you open them to people as well? Is there anything so different about people moving freely to their optimal location and goods being manufactured in their optimal location?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Sen. Obama is the shit.

Read this.

Then listen to this.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
See above. You're never going to equalize regulatory playing fields, which is what you want, unless we all join the UN and let them set policy. For that matter, we haven't even equalized the field within the United States. I suspect Massachusetts is still bitching about losing jobs to Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina. Same problem--lower taxes, and lower labor costs. Why should the good citizens of those states be forced to capitulate to the socialist policies of the Commonwealth in the interest of "harmony"?

Why would you even try to equalize regulatory playing fields? That's destroying competition between countries/states to provide cheaper goods/services and gain a foothold in global trade. What other than cheap labor can the third world offer?

I believe in eliminating child labor by avoiding trade with countries aggressively using it. But Spanky's cure - helping those countries grow to the point that they no longer rely on it - is probably more effective than my very Democratic "pass a law to fix things" solution. His is just unpalatable because it rationally recognizes a reality we'd like to avoid supporting even for a brief period of time. Most rational policy leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. Which probably explains why we elect vapid McCandidates in this country.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
BTW, whatever happened to my proposal to increase the gas tax and exempting the first $4k of income from SS (or whatever amount needed to make it revenue neutral)?

I imagine it sank to the bottom of the Potomac, along with my proposal to tax 10-15% of gross income for individuals and gross profits for corporations, with a refundable credit equivalent amount of $25,000 and an additional $5000 per child, up to $15,000.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
What, your question as to whether the free market has benefited the US? Yes, it clearly has. Didn't prevent the Civil War or the Great Depression, and it hasn't cured the common cold, but it's generally a pretty good thing.

But it is not a panacea and I'm nervous about first world/third world open markets given the obvious economic discontinuities between the two.

Tell me, while you are opening our borders to goods made by little veiled Pakistani girls answering to the cruel yoke of Allah's henchmen, would you open them to people as well? Is there anything so different about people moving freely to their optimal location and goods being manufactured in their optimal location?

No the question was should California, if it could, put trade restriction on states that don't have as high a minimum wage as California or who don't have a strong worker safety and protection laws?

I am assuming your answer is no.

So then the obvious question is: If you don't think it would benefit California, and the workers in other states with lower minimum wages and less generous labor laws, for California to use trade restrictions to improve the lot of the workers from Southern States and to protect Californians from unfair labor practices, why do you think it is OK for the United States to use trade restrictions to try and improve the lot of foreign workers and to protect American workers from a foreign unlevel playing field?

I have been on the record on this many times on this board, I don't know if I would open our borders to the whole world, but I would definitely open our border to Canada and to Mexico. The immigration problem is only going to be solved if Mexico's economy improves. That is the sole solution to the border issues. The smaller the world gets the more Mexico's problems become our problems. And the world just keeps getting smaller.

This may seem crazy but the disparity of income between the United States and Mexico is very similar to the disparity between Germany and Poland. It is even greater between Germany and a country like Romania. Yet they are opening their borders.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by taxwonk
I imagine it sank to the bottom of the Potomac, along with my proposal to tax 10-15% of gross income for individuals and gross profits for corporations, with a refundable credit equivalent amount of $25,000 and an additional $5000 per child, up to $15,000.

Wonk, other than people who do what you do losing their jobs, and the hyperrich losing tax breaks, what's the main argument against a flat tax? Why don't liberals want it (other than it would eliminate half their platform of perpetually seeking economic "parity")?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Fringey. The "lost" manufacturing jobs here paid $20 and more an hour to do assembly line work. The same jobs in Mexico pay less per day. How much in China? lots less.

The job loss has nothing to do with taxes or burden from enviromental rules- that makes it worse maybe but the price of labor alone clinches it.

edit: from a lefty labor union anti-Nafta diatribe:

• Even the typical $4/day wage in Mexico’s maquiladora manufacturing plants is considered too high by many corporations. Before NAFTA, some 550,000 workers toiled in these plants. After seven years of NAFTA, that number peaked at almost 1.3 million. In mid-2003, the Financial Times reported that almost 500,000 of the 750,000 new maquila jobs that sprouted up after NAFTA had moved on to take advantage of $1/day wages in China, Vietnam and Indonesia. As General Electric’s head of Mexico operations Edmundo Vallejo told The Wall Street Journal in April 2003: “Mexico still has a lot to offer. But two of its advantages--low cost labor and cheap currency--are gone.” Mexican workers’ wages have not risen, rather GE, like so many other corporations, has moved on to countries with even lower wages, labor and environmental standards.

I agree, in theory, that $20/hour is a high wage for assembly work. I also agree that the flight of non-skilled labor is driven by the below-subsistence wages paid overseas, particularly in Asia.

Of course, that then begs the question of whether a tariff set sufficiently high that the cost of importing goods produced at slave wages exceeded the cost of producing those good here at, say, $11.50/hour would bring the jobs back home.

Your thoughts?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You're just trying to agitate Spanky now, aren't you?

:eek2:

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
... Case in point: In most of the EU it is really hard to fire anyone. The result: Massive unemployment because no one wants to hire anyone. You only hire somebody if you absolutely have to because once you have them you can never get rid of them.

So you get all these people trying to emmigrate from Europe to American. leaving behind the "economic s"ecurity for the "economic insecurity". Yet the liberals in this country want to copy the European economic model.

That's not so true any more. Now, the EU countries by and large have "guest worker" programs which allow the EU producers to hire Muslim and Asian immigrants to work for lower wages and almost no benefits, deny them citizenship, and complain about how they are leading to unemployment among the native population.

This then creates racism, religious hatred, social and class strife, and all kinds of other mean, nasty, ugly things.

And we all wonder why the Muslim terrorists find it so easy to export terror to non-Arab state Muslim population centers.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by taxwonk
I agree, in theory, that $20/hour is a high wage for assembly work. I also agree that the flight of non-skilled labor is driven by the below-subsistence wages paid overseas, particularly in Asia.

Of course, that then begs the question of whether a tariff set sufficiently high that the cost of importing goods produced at slave wages exceeded the cost of producing those good here at, say, $11.50/hour would bring the jobs back home.

Your thoughts?

the people who are losing the jobs don't want to pay the higher prices that would require. Catch 22.

I drive an "American" car (made in Windsor). I think our computers are made here, aren't they? I drink California wine.

just as an aside, I don't think $10/hr manufacturing jobs are that rare here- I think you can find them.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Wonk, other than people who do what you do losing their jobs, and the hyperrich losing tax breaks, what's the main argument against a flat tax? Why don't liberals want it (other than it would eliminate half their platform of perpetually seeking economic "parity")?

I think if you google or whatever, you can see what rate the flat tax would have to be at to be revenue-neutral and exclude the first $25,000 to $40,000 of income. It's pretty high, and I think the overall average tax (as a % of total income) paid by people making $40,000 to like $100,000 or so would be higher than it is now. So it's not politically palatable. I think even the flat-tax people dropped it, for the most part, because of the rate it would need to be. Maybe some lunatic fringe people are still pushing it, but they either aren't exempting much from tax or they aren't going for something revenue-neutral.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Sen. Obama is the shit.

Read this.

Then listen to this.

Publicity. Stunt.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Wonk, other than people who do what you do losing their jobs, and the hyperrich losing tax breaks, what's the main argument against a flat tax? Why don't liberals want it (other than it would eliminate half their platform of perpetually seeking economic "parity")?

1) Rich people benefit more from the government than poor people do (how many poor people actually get to use the legal system etc.)

2) Taking ten dollars from a guy with a hundred dollars hurts a lot more than taking hundred dollars a way from a guy with a thousand dollars. Taxing poorer people means they will have less money for nutritional food and for books for their children. Taxing rich people means they will have less money for Gucci watches and second homes.

3) You want to make it easier for people to climb up the lower end of the ladder. The lower rungs are the hardest ones to climb so the government should do everything in its power to make those easier.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Publicity. Stunt.

isn't he an asshole for saying it in the first place?