Thread: The American Worker should be Protected!

Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland

The American worker cannot and should not have to compete with impoverished third world laborers willing to work for survival level wages!

I have no problem with free trade with another country, but only when it has similar living standards and environmental protection laws.

I know Reaver is going to jump into this thread and complain that protectionism prevents the economy from expanding and would start trade wars. What will really prevent the economy from expanding is if the wages of the American worker decline even more. Yes, trade with China is lowering prices of many consumer goods, but it is driving down wages much more.

American exports to China are insignificant when compared to imports. The USA would have far more to gain than to lose in a trade war with China. Trade with Mexico is somewhat different. I do not like it, for several good reasons, but it is far better than more unemployed Mexicans illegally entering the USA to work, so one cannot begin to argue against trade with Mexico until the problem of illegal immigration into the USA has been delt with.

The USA is a huge country with enough natural resources and a huge, specialized, labor force, and diversified industries. It could get along completely fine without any trade with outside world, with the possible exception of its insatiable addiction to petroleum. Lack of free trade certainly is not, and would not be, a real cause of lower living standards.

agreed, when we find oil we actually let foreign companies own it.. like BP, drill baby drill seems to be foreign companies drill baby drill and then sell us our own oil

Originally Posted by FreshAir

agreed, when we find oil we actually let foreign companies own it.. like BP, drill baby drill seems to be foreign companies drill baby drill and then sell us our own oil

Sounds like you want a Stalinist economy. Very strange!

lets continue right down the road to serfdom woo too

Originally Posted by Mr. Swedish Guy

Completely unrestrained capitalism might have some negative impacts on the environment, I'll give you that. Thus I'm willing to force some evnironmental regulation on trade. and about this sentence "The unconcerned countries allow children and poor people to work endless hours with no protections" remember that these people only have a bad choice and a worse choice, either in a factory for 1 USD per hour with no safety regulations or break your back working as a draft animal on a farm or work as a prostitute. If we simply do not buy these cheap goods that come from such factories we are making both parties worse of. We have to pay more, they will have to change occupation to something worse.

Perfectly good point, that is why there has to be a ratio that does not reward too much bad behavior sending our unwashed into being draft animals or prostitutes. We just cannot have unrestrained capitalism and unrestrained free trade without hurting our side.

If we cannot figure a way to use tariffs, and the ratio work out, then we use something else, like I asked before:

"If the agency costs 'can usually be best spent on providing proper material incentives (such as performance bonuses and stock options).' Then what would be wrong with we make stuff here too, at their costs, and basically pay material incentives; our jobs protected for strategic economic advantage, or whatever would apply, we make it here by paying the same wages the Chinese...get paid, and cover the difference between that and minimum wage with the incentives from redistribution from taxes on the wealthy (agent) who make more than their (management) compatriots in China?

We simply cannot get away from our need for a minimum wage and let all manufacturing of some things be done in one regional basket, especially when that basket can never be considered a safe bet.

Some items that are manufactured have no real strategic value, we can survive without them, but when the thing is a necessity we must be able to make a certain ratio of it here in the West in stable baskets so we can ramp up production on a moment's notice.

None of it is so simple that we can just say, "Trade has been shown to increase wages and therefore reduce poverty." Or "The fear of free trade is based on an ignorance of economics, nothing more." {And stop with a period on either one.}

In response to the latter one this was unanswered:

"As the other guy's economy improves, can our economy survive if they have all the high tech factories, better energy production, and common sense?" The American Worker should be Protected!

Free trade, globalisation, and international competition is a race to the bottom in terms of the value of labor. We can see what has been the result of globalisation. Finite natural resources (oil, metals, land) have increased in price, while wages (in the Western countries at least) have gone down.

Originally Posted by FreshAir

agreed, when we find oil we actually let foreign companies own it.. like BP, drill baby drill seems to be foreign companies drill baby drill and then sell us our own oil

This is just one example of the type of capital drain that can occur when unrestricted free trade is allowed. The country with a trade deficit forfeits the ownership of its natural resources to the country with a trade surplus. This may be good for those individual persons directly involved in the exchange, but obviously it can be a bad thing for everyone else in the country with the trade deficit. Since the owners are now in a different country, all the future profits from this capital will be sent abroad. So I suppose its really a matter of rights and ownership. If you believe the people of a country should have some rights or special entittlements to the natural resources within their country, even if these natural resources are privately owned, then you would be very much against this type of thing.

Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland

Free trade, globalisation, and international competition is a race to the bottom in terms of the value of labor.

Rubbish! Trade increases productivity and that, in turn, will generate higher wage

Originally Posted by Reiver

Rubbish! Trade increases productivity and that, in turn, will generate higher wage

His statement "free trade, globalisation, and international competition is a race to the bottom in terms of the value of labor," cannot be separated from the two sentences which follow, "we can see what has been the result of globalisation," and "finite natural resources (oil, metals, land) have increased in price, while wages (in the Western countries at least) have gone down."

You have created rubbish from taking a sentence out of context of the paragraph. The admonition in most cases of saying, "learn how to read," historically gets moderator action, so I will refrain from saying it, even though it is appropriate.

Few are arguing that trade does not increase "productivity and that, in turn, will generate higher wage." Obviously if we trade our manufacturing for their manufacturing their productivity and wages increase. If we do not want to lose our ability to manufacture certain items of strategic value we have to increase our productivity with technology and that increases wages for a few; but technology always leaks out, and if they get it, and have the lower cost monkeys that can do the things robots cannot do (such as distinguish between FOD and an bolt) they win both the technology and the race to the top.

The rubbish argument says that we cannot afford the internal trade of Obamacare because we do not have enough doctors. Trade in Obamacare does not though mean that "trade increases productivity and that, in turn, will generate higher wage," as increased doctor productivity may increase their wages but does not increase wages of the worker that is needed to pay them except to what small extent the worker is not out sick. You could claim the trade of taxes on the rich to the doctors increases productivity and wages of the doctors, but then the rich claim that they have less to trickle down to workers.

Originally Posted by DivineComedy

You have created rubbish from taking a sentence out of context of the paragraph.

It cannot be taken out of context. It was drivel. The problem is that you fellows are typing witout any knowledge of the economics. It continues to be tiresome. Rather than typing a lot without saying anything, why don't you help to put that right?

Originally Posted by Reiver

It cannot be taken out of context. It was drivel. The problem is that you fellows are typing witout any knowledge of the economics. It continues to be tiresome. Rather than typing a lot without saying anything, why don't you help to put that right?

It was taken out of context.

If a huge segment of monkeys are no longer working, that is a loss our robots would need; for a very long time robots are going to need monkeys that simply know no more than to push and pull, and you can call them "push-pull men" if "monkey" is offensive. The increase in technology productivity has to be sufficient to offset the subsidy of the monkeys; and we must subsidize our monkeys and put them to work. You cannot offset the subsidy of the monkeys by a loss in higher education spending that Bill Gates the other day on C-Span was talking about. And if a huge segment of monkeys are no longer working, but being parasites, that is a loss in revenue for higher education spending.

If we could trust to let all the manufacturing be done by other monkeys there would be no problem, but because the other guy (nation) has potential to be offensive (see China, Oil, and "running out of villages to burn"), and robots cannot do everything, we simply cannot have parasites and not "mostly bags of water" worker monkeys.

Originally Posted by DivineComedy

It was taken out of context.

Nope, it was non-economic drivel