Still Hating America.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Adder
Overall, trade creates more jobs than it "steals."

I agree with you, but that's not responsive to my question.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I take it then that you would be in favor of repealing that tariff even where it's effect would be to hurt more people than it helped, even if in the aggregate the effects were beneficial. I mean, it's a choice: You could leave things alone, and not hurt the 60%.

Your obsession with this hypo is bizarre. Why don't you want to talk about reality? I would not repeal a tariff if I thought it would hurt the country as a whole in the long run, but I have never heard of a tariff that was beneficial to the country. It is like talking about a hypothetical bullet that cures cancer, why talk about one if it doesn't exist? You discover such a bullet, then we can discuss it, until then, talking about how such a bullet would effect policy is just a waste of time.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Do you disagree that free trade tends to steal more jobs from the poor and middle class than from the upper class?

I completely disagree. Steal jobs? Jobs aren't stolen, maybe they are lost but they are definitely not stolen. I would say that the negative impacts of free trade effect the poor the least. Second would come the lower middle class. Many wealthy people also lose their jobs because of free trade. The bottom lines, is Free trade benefits all quintiles of society more than it negatively effects them.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop I agree that jobs at McDonald's tend not to be moved overseas, except in the case of the people who take the drive-in orders. But even the U.S. workers in those jobs will find that their wages are impacted if unskilled workers in other countries can compete for some -- though not all -- unskilled jobs. That's just basic economics. When the factory in town closes down, wages at the McDonald's will go down.

Your scope is too limited. For every factory that closes because of free trade, three new places of employment, that create twice as many jobs, that pay hire wages are opened. Their wages are impacted, because jobs from exports are created, with the resulting demand,pushing up their wages, and the jobs created by the captial freed up by the efficiencies created by free trade also exert upward pressure on their wages. So yes, free trade puts a lot of upward pressure on their wages.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Your obsession with this hypo is bizarre.

In other words, you refuse to answer because you don't want to admit that you would screw (e.g.) 90% of the country if it made the richest 10% even better off.

I would not repeal a tariff if I thought it would hurt the country as a whole in the long run, but I have never heard of a tariff that was beneficial to the country.

Or maybe you just have problems with reading comprehension. My hypo was a tariff that is good for the country in the aggregate -- a net plus of $40,000,000. But the majority of the people in the country -- 60% -- are hurt by it.

I completely disagree. Steal jobs? Jobs aren't stolen, maybe they are lost but they are definitely not stolen.

A semantic quibble, but whatever. OK.

I would say that the negative impacts of free trade effect the poor the least. Second would come the lower middle class. Many wealthy people also lose their jobs because of free trade.

Why do you think all of this? Who are the wealthy people who lose their jobs because of free trade? (And in my world, what makes the wealthy wealthy is capital, not good jobs.)

Your scope is too limited. For every factory that closes because of free trade, three new places of employment, that create twice as many jobs, that pay hire wages are opened. Their wages are impacted, because jobs from exports are created, with the resulting demand,pushing up their wages, and the jobs created by the captial freed up by the efficiencies created by free trade also exert upward pressure on their wages. So yes, free trade puts a lot of upward pressure on their wages.

There are jobs created by free trade, doubtless, but I'm not sure why you believe that in the United States those jobs are going to the unskilled. The United States has a comparative advantage in various areas that benefit skilled workers, not unskilled workers.

[Adder]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
(And in my world, what makes the wealthy wealthy is capital, not good jobs.)

Good of you to adopt the Sebby definition of rich. Are you middle class too?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by ironweed

Hell that's nothing. clinton slackered his way into staying out of BOTH, despite reason to go to both. AND Afghanistan? That's 3!!!

[Adder]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Hell that's nothing. clinton slackered his way into staying out of BOTH, despite reason to go to both. AND Afghanistan? That's 3!!!

They don't call him Slick Willie for nothin'.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Adder
Good of you to adopt the Sebby definition of rich.

Free trade is good for capital.

Originally posted by Adder
Are you middle class too?

I have to work for a living, but I'm better off than most people.

[SlaveNoMore]

ironweed

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
workers who were making $28/hour at Delphi and now are making $10 somewhere might say "thanks" now that they are poor, but question whether some home cooking might have kept them middle class instead of becoming poor.

Yes, but can the loss of their job be blamed on "free trade"? My guess is, but for free trade, the $28 an hour job, probably wouldn't have existed. So these people had no problem with free trade, as long as they were benefitting, but once one of the priviledges of free trade is lost, all of sudden the system is the problem.

If there was no free trade, they would never had a 28$ an hour job, and a typical run to the grocery stay would cost them ninety percent of their meager take home pay. Just ask any peasant in India how well "restrited trade" to protect domestic jobs and industry did for the average Indian from from 1946 to 1989.

It is like the family grocer blaming capitalism because competition from Safeway forced him to close his store. If it weren't for capitalism (and free markets) he would never had the store in the first place. His only option would have been apply for a job at a grocery store owned by the government.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
In other words, you refuse to answer because you don't want to admit that you would screw (e.g.) 90% of the country if it made the richest 10% even better off.

Oooh. You got me.... You have trapped me into admitting I want to screw the poor to benefit the rich. Your wizardry with your hypos trapped me so I had to admit my true Scroogian colors. Give me a break. I already said that if something benefited the poorer forty percent of the people at the expense of the wealthier sixty percent I might support it. So what are you trying to get at? I didn't answer your hypo because it was so simplistic as to be absurd. What single tariff could effect the entire population? What tariff or combination of tariffs could significantly benefit or hurt even ten percent of the population? Why not use a real world example instead of a hypo?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Or maybe you just have problems with reading comprehension. My hypo was a tariff that is good for the country in the aggregate -- a net plus of $40,000,000. But the majority of the people in the country -- 60% -- are hurt by it.

Your are making an assumption that if sixty percent of the people are hurt by something that it still could be considered good "in the aggregate". Doesn't that depend on your definition of "aggregate"? If sixty percent of the people are hurt, especially the bottom sixty percent, no matter how much the wealthy benefit I don't see it as "good in the aggregate". Like I said, if it benefited the bottom forty percent at the expense of the top sixty percent, then it might be considered good in the aggregate but definitely not the other way around.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
A semantic quibble, but whatever. OK.

To say that a job is stolen assumes that someone has an ownership interest in a job. That once they have it they are entitled to keep it. It is that distorted view of employment that causes so much screwed up economic policy. If you run around trying to protect jobs, especially inefficient jobs, or jobs that have become obsolete, you end up screwing the entire society. It is this exact type of thinking, that someone has a right to a certain job that has doomed many economies.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Why do you think all of this? Who are the wealthy people who lose their jobs because of free trade? (And in my world, what makes the wealthy wealthy is capital, not good jobs.)

My uncle was working for a company in Miami, they got bought out by an Australian firm, and he was replaced by an Australian from the home office. My friend worked at a bank that was merged with a foreign bank and his job duplicated a job held by someone in France of all places, so his job was discontinued. When companies go under from competition from oversees, the executives lose their jobs to. Globalization affects everyone.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
There are jobs created by free trade, doubtless, but I'm not sure why you believe that in the United States those jobs are going to the unskilled. The United States has a comparative advantage in various areas that benefit skilled workers, not unskilled workers.

You are not getting it. The demand for low end service jobs is a direct function of disposable income in this country. They are the first jobs to be created in a strong economy and the first jobs to go in a bad economy. When people have less disposable income, they eat out less, cut back on luxuries like landscaping etc. Free trade, through the efficiencies it creates, directly frees up more disposable income in a society, thereby placing more demand for low end service jobs. This in addition, to the new demand created for low end service jobs by new markets opening up overseas.

[SlaveNoMore]

Here's his latest on the Sunni/Shia rifts:

I have met a few very hard-line right-wingers who say: So what? If one lot of Islamists wants to slaughter another, who cares? (Slave - like me!!)It's very important to repudiate this kind of "thinking." Religious warfare is the worst thing that can happen to any society, and it now has the potential to spread to societies that are not directly involved. For the most part, official U.S. policy in Iraq has been sound in this respect, always working for a compromise and recently losing American lives to rescue the moderate Shiite leadership from a murder plot hatched by a messianic Shiite militia. Even where this policy fell short—as in the appalling execution of Saddam Hussein—the American Embassy urged the Maliki government not to conduct the hanging on the day of the Eid ul-Adha holiday that would most humiliate the Sunnis. We cannot flirt, either morally or politically, with divide and rule.

However, the self-generated Islamic civil war does have significance in the wider cultural struggle. All over the non-Muslim world, we hear incessant demands that those who believe in the literal truth of the Quran be granted "respect." We are supposed to watch what we say about Islam, lest by any chance we be considered "offensive." A fair number of authors and academics in the West now have to live under police protection or endure prosecution in the courts for not observing this taboo with sufficient care. A stupid term—Islamophobia—has been put into circulation to try and suggest that a foul prejudice lurks behind any misgivings about Islam's infallible "message."

Well, this idiotic masochism has to be dropped. There may have been a handful of ugly incidents, provoked by lumpen elements, after certain episodes of Muslim terrorism. But no true secularist or even Christian has been involved in anything like the torching of a mosque. (The last time that such a thing did happen on any scale—in Bosnia—the United States and Britain intervened militarily to put a stop to it. We also overthrew the Taliban, which was slaughtering the Hazara Shiite minority in Afghanistan.) But where are the denunciations from centers of Sunni and Shiite authority of the daily murder and torture of Islamic co-religionists? Of the regular desecration of holy sites and holy books? Of the paranoid insults thrown so carelessly and callously by one Muslim group at another? This mounting ghastliness is a bit more worthy of condemnation, surely, than a few Danish cartoons or a false rumor about a profaned copy of the Quran in Guantanamo. The civilized world—yes I do mean to say that—should find its own voice and state firmly to Muslim leaders and citizens that respect is something to be earned and not demanded with menace. A short way of phrasing this would be to say, "See how the Muslims respect each other!"

here is full
article

[Tables R Us]

Originally posted by Spanky
Sometimes you are so pretentious it is nauseating. Why do I need to "focus" on the people who get "screwed"? I have already acknowledged that some people are disadvantaged by free trade.

Spanky, the question I wanted answered is this. Why doesn't a massive increase in the labor force at all skill levels (by eliminating all trade barriers with India, China, and so on and by eliminating all barriers to immigration into the US) radically reduce the returns on labor in the US world and radically increase the returns on capital in the US? And that this effect won't last for at least 20 or 30 years, which is the peak earning years of most current workers. Do you have any empirical evidence this won't happen? If not, why should US workers vote to take these kinds of risks for the benefit of the wealthiest 1% in the US? Most people are risk averse.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Adder
Good of you to adopt the Sebby definition of rich. Are you middle class too?

Actually, that's a universally understood border between the rich and everyone else.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tables R Us
Most people are risk averse.

You get what you pay for.