So far, it seems that Trump takes a strong political view of "free trade" vs. free trade, which will benefit only certain special interests and not the US or any other country as a whole: https://mises.org/blog/free-trade-versus-free-trade
You have never shown any understanding yourself; . . . . --just confusion laced with partisan garbage. The fact is that this country (and some others) have used trade and even foreign aid as a wedge to pillage and plunder other countries for the benefit of major U.S. corporations. You show no understanding of this fact and continually seek to obscure and bury it.
OH!! THAT'S RIGHT!!! I forgot! . . . Republicans are never to blame for anything bad. So even now when the Republican congress has for 8 years blocked Obama from accomplishing anything they could block, which was plenty, although it's a similar situation of congress being contrary to the President but reversed, again the Republicans are innocent because they can do no wrong. Got it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You're still spinning this BS even though I've corrected you many times. Here it is again: FLAT-TO-DOWN since 1972: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...rs-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
Bush has some blame. But it was Clinton and his interpretation of the CRA which resulted in the housing bubble. Your link has nothing to do with the real median household income which has increased in non recessionary years. - - - Updated - - - Which countries have been pillaged ??
Where did you find that drivel filled website: So the US stood idle and allowed the other nations at war to destroy each other ?? Come'on man !!
gleaned from this: You have, of course, misread the above commentary. that bit is certainly 'poetic licence' so to speak, no doubt relating to British concerns over initial American reticence to enter the war. But the rest of that quote is factual - which I have pointed out before. Ofcourse the design of the IMF and World Bank adopted by American negotiators at the Bretton Woods conference (1944) served American interests, in opposition to Keynes vision for a new international monetary system which would have enabled mutually beneficial trade between all nations, taking into account the differing resources and levels of development of all nations. (Of course Keynes had concerns for the severely damaged and indebted post-war British economy; I think he referred to his proposals in part as a 'grand bargain' between the US and Britain). The US did indeed emerge (post war) as the dominant economic power and main creditor nation, hence US self-interest directed that Keynes proposals be rejected. Fast forward 70 years. The US is now the world's largest debtor nation - and Trump is attempting to deal with the international trade realities of that untenable situation as best he can. As a successful businessman (if we grant him that title) he knows there is no such thing as pure free trade that benefits everyone. I think his latest term is "smart trade". [As has been pointed out, third world wages result in destruction of first world industry, in a pure free-trade environment] Not that I would expect Keynes' Bretton Woods proposals to interest Trump, who at heart is an exclusionist, a separatist. But at least the Americans might benefit from his unorthodox presidency, we will see.
TransPacific Trade Pact (TTP) explained? According to John Walsh, the TTP trade agreement that President Trump rejected with a stroke of the pen wasn't about free trade as advertised, but was a provocative neocon plan to isolate and weaken China, which was excluded from the 12-nation pact. https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/01/...h/djt-tpp-rip/
All this points to the contradictions inherent in free-trade, and in unregulated capitalism itself. For example, the idea contained in the TPP that corporations should be be able to over-ride national government regulation re the sale of harmful substances (eg tobacco) is in itself repugnant. And the idea that Trump has unwittingly aided China (since TPP was a neocon plot designed to isolate China) - by quashing the TPP - is amusing, I suppose. Back to the original OP, in defence of free-trade: Here's that "there's no such thing as society, only individuals" nonsense again. Obviously wrong: some benefit from free-trade, some don't. Yet the loss of formerly well-paying manufacturing jobs, to be replaced - in aggregate - by low-paying service jobs, is a disaster for the workers involved. More gems: Perhaps the general public can be forgiven for not understanding such basic 'economic truths'. Etc, and other 'black is white' arguments.
From back in the days when cave dwellers living near good flint sources specialized in flint-knapping and traded arrowheads to hunters until now haven't humans benefited from specialization and trade? Isn't it more efficient that we don't all have to produce our own matches, cars, food, clothing, etc. which allows us more time for leisure?
Ofcourse, all correct. But changing technology allows for new systems in managing trade in a globalised world, systems that can eliminate poverty.
This "free" trade is protectionism. As soon as the author through his nationalistic flag into the ring. He gave up on the trade. A pity. He almost had a point. Good luck next time.
OUR COLOSSAL UPPER-INCOME TAXATION RIP-OFF Permit me to insist that it's just a saying, and it is amusingly naive. As if to say, the sole purpose of life is to enrich oneself and thus maximize corporate profits that are shared-out to a select group of families. Let's get back-to-basics. We live in a "collective" of people, all of which constitute a "market-economy". As I keep asking, without answers, "How many of our past and present rich made their millions on a deserted island?" None, nada, niente, zip, nichts, rien, tipota! They all made their wealth because they inhabited a market-economy, one in which upper-income taxation rates are grossly unfair. Our relative richness depends upon the collective rules by which we live, which rules are made by governments. And one of the key regulatory-regimes of our present times is Unfair Taxation that has led to Unjust Income-that-becomes-Wealth for a select class of people. Which means what? That a very small group of individuals are able to gather nearly limitless amounts of money, whilst at the other end, nearly 15% of the population (nearly 40 million American men, women and children) must eke out a living below the Poverty Threshold ($24K for a family of four). Flat-rate upper-income taxation in the US is a rip-off devised by the Plutocrat Class of Reckless Ronnie's administration in the early 1980s that continued the idiocy of JFK/LBJ to reduce income taxation from confiscatory to their present day levels of effectively 20%. Let's not forget that Romney admitted paying very low taxes back in 2012. See here: What You Need to Know About Mitt Romney's 2011 Tax Return - excerpt: And if Romney could benefit from the "scam" of low taxation schedules of capîtal gains (that looks like this infographic), we can only imagine how much wealth other Plutocrats in the stratosphere of income earnings net after taxation. (See that pie-chart here. Wow! The top-20% of American families possess 89% of the Nation's Net Worth!) We can imagine, but research shows us that the sharing of resulting income taxation looks like this: MY POINT? Anyone looking at that infographic above must understand what a colossal "rip-off" upper-income taxation is in the US of A ...
Btw, wanna guess why Donald Dork does not want to show his Income Tax declarations? From here (May 21, 2016): Trump once revealed his income tax returns. They showed he didn’t pay a cent. Excerpt: My Point: And this will continue to be the bane of our existence until we adopt a progressive taxation at the top, which replaces the flat-rate taxation that exists presently at the upper-income levels! The above is from the Tax Foundation. Yeah, right, about the "the rich pay the highest rates": They pay a whopping 20% on millions upon millions of dollars of income because the US has the lowest tax-rate collections of any developed nation on earth - see here ...
Your comment that new systems of managed trade are better than free trade remind me of the time on the Sean Hannity show when Rudy Giuliani commented that the new Al-Sisi military dictatorship in Egypt is "even better than democracy." I'm skeptical.
TPP THROWN OUT THE WINDOW -A GREAT ERROR Rather turgid assessment of "Free Trade", that. In fact, there is no such thing as FreeTrade. Trade is not free, and if it were, it would cost nothing. And, since there are always "barriers" of some kind, it is never truly "free, gratis and for nothing". However, what we should understand (in an economics forum such as this one) is that trade can be regulated in such a fashion as to be "fair". Now "fair trade" is an altogether different animal. It means that trade exists between nations but is equitable because there is a convention regarding import duties, amongst other pertinent objectives. Typically this is an arduous process under the regulatory environment of the World Trade Organization. In the latest round of trade negotiations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership was the best attempt at furthering the diminution of trade barriers. Foremost of which, for the US, were not trade-tariffs. Far, far more important was a TPP agreement that instituted the full protection amongst signatories of Patent Rights - and the judiciary process for protecting said rights. Why was this aspect crucially important? Key reasons: *China has patent protection, but an unacceptable condition for the protection of patents is full disclosure of the patent and of what it consists. Meaning the code of any patented product containing software could be copied by all and sundry - a purloining of intellectual-content at which the Chinese are veritable "artists". *China was not a member of the TPP negotiations, and for a purpose. Once established, if they wanted membership, they had to accept the regulations of TPP regarding patents. Which would have shut-down the practice that has led to a great many copycat products issuing from China. *Meaning that China would have to buy patented product-technology in order to employ it in products they produced. Which it was prepared to do! *No more copycat Chinese product competition for American multinationals! Donald Dork just threw TPP, which China was in fact prepared to sign, out the window. Wakey, wakey, America! When are you going to realize what a Colossal MIstake you have made by electing this PotUS ... ?
My point is none of these proposed new systems of global trade and finance have yet been implemented, which is why the world still finds itself en-meshed in currency wars, trade disputes and protectionism (the idiocy of which most of us are agreed on). But people continue to work on real solutions, in the hope that sanity might eventually break out in human affairs, at least in the realm of macro-economics. For example: http://www.skidelskyr.com/site/arti...nces-and-international-monetary-reform-today/ Ofcourse, the internal arrangements within nations are also problematic, as LafayetteBis has pointed out.
You are underestimating the difficulty of any "new trade" deals, most of which are done under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. They take years to implement because the process involves so many nations each with vested interests. Look at TPP, which was not a bad treaty. Now dumped because the US has elected a PotUS who doesn't like it and probably does not even know what the initials stand-for. TPP was a major advance in many respects, including the most important. Which is this: *China has presently patent-protection-lite, meaning that for a nation to patent its product in China it must divulge every aspect of a product - including core-technology and how it works. Thus the technology itself becomes "public domain" long before the patent is actually accorded. *Which is how Chinese companies can copycat the technology. *China now deposits patents at a rate higher than the US, and it welcomed TPP that it was prepared to sign and implement. It understood that Chinese technology development, having become advanced, requires patent protection, so it actually was prepared to sign the TPP agreement. *Until Donald Dork dumped it. Yep, that's the kinda dork YOU, PLURAL, have just voted into office. You got him for four more years. Enjoy the jerk ... !
When it comes to a matter that is not within the purview of a court somewhere, skepticism is the best policy. Until a treaty is signed, no international court can step in to "find a guilty party". In fact, there is a treaty in place between three contiguous countries - Canada, the US, and Mexico. As regards Mexico, there is the "other side of the coin". See here: Mexico’s Potential Weapons if Trump Declares War on Nafta - excerpt: Donald Dork would do better fixating on the difficult task of keeping South American narcotics out of the US, rather than a porous anti-migrant "Wall". Does he think people south of the border do not know how to dig tunnels? Quack, quack, quack ...
From the above quoted site: Which indeed they have become. And retreating from TPP is no way whatsoever to remedy the problem that remains just because Donald Dork said it should be junked. TPP was merely the forerunner of the same treaty with Europe, which never got off the ground because Europeans do not want to treat chemically-treated chicken meat imported from the US. (As if that should be a real problem, the US can still sell its chemically tainted chicken-meat to Canada!) From this week's Economist (28 Jan.): Comments, please ... ?
No comments yet, I see. The topic is vast, more art than science and complicated especially by the impact of unbridled self-interest, and therefore difficult to 'pin down'. That's why my approach is to define what we want, and work out how to get there. "Participation by all, at above poverty level wages". Ofcourse unbridled self-interest lead some to think inequality is sacrosanct, and so they work on inventing the theory necessary to support their assertion. But much can obviously be achieved by the application of man's intelligence, in order to change the economic system from the 'survival of the fittest' paradigm ordained by nature (represented by unregulated capitalism), to the desired goal postulated above.
Finding a taxation system that is Fair & Equitable is not rocket-science. But it does depend upon a nation wanting to do it. Americans have long had a luv-affair with muney. It has long since been a social denominator in our country. So anyone who wants to have a megabuck or two or three thousand should have that opportunity, we think. But, what we Yanks may not understand is that Wealth is obtained from Income, and when you have a flat-rate tax at upper-incomes - then most of that Income is shooting straight up into Wealth. And, what do the rich do with it? It is "managed" to retain value. Anybody who thinks this Wealth is key to developing New Technologies is living in LaLaLand. Most new technologies come out of research done by universities (funded by our taxes). Not necessarily new products, but new technologies. The rich put their money into safe-investments so as to not risk their savings. In Europe, Income is taxed and taxed heavily, thus allowing entire populations to benefit from very low cost National Health Care offerings - which is why perhaps Europeans are living on average three years more than do Americans? Or, their kids get a postsecondary education for a pittance compared to the cost of the same in the US. Really, no kid graduates with a college degree in Europe AND a debt of $35K as happens in the US! Meaning what, in the end? That politics is all a matter of will or trade-offs, or perhaps both. That is, the common desire we have for certain values. The US wants billionaires, so the US has lotsa billionaires. Because money has become a standard-value in our thinking. No doubt, Europeans would like to be immensely rich as well. Who wouldn't? But, they know that such is entirely unlikely to happen - so they settle for just some Social Services as basic advantages to the way they live. (And they willingly pay higher taxation in order to have said services). Also worth mentioning is that Europe was devastated by WW2, so profoundly that it left a National Ethic that is common to most of its people. Thou shalt not want War! Which is why, of the US's "Discretionary Budget", 54% goes to the DoD. (See here.) For $600B a year, are we getting our money's worth? Because half that amount could send a lot of our children into a tertiary education program and from there into better jobs. The manner in which the US seems to go off to war on a whimsy is amazing. I suspect it is because we have people who want willingly to do so; we have so glorified the Armed Services. And perhaps the Armed Services attract kids who cannot afford to go to college/university - which entry promises them (if they get out alive). So, we are asking our kids to risk their lives at war in order to get an education that will offer them eventually a better life-style? Where in heaven's name is the fairness in that option ... ?
Perceptive comments.. Perhaps artistic and cultural traditions, beyond those based on mere personal monetary fortunes, are not so established in the US; eg, Germany subsidises its orchestras, the US lets them go broke. And a large part of the Japanese population is horrified by Trump's suggestion they need to develop their own nuclear deterrence. (Humans are capable of learning, but apparently mostly from personal experience). Sad but true. (I think the term is cannon fodder; educated and self-aware kids don't make good candidates for the role).
