> I believe the only public lands in the US are the nation's parks and such , unlike Canada where a vast amount of the land is owned by the public, with the Gov't as its keeper.
I suspect you are from the eastern U.S.
Most logging in the western U.S. takes place in National Forests, which are publicly owned (i.e. by the federal government). The lands are leased to timber companies, ranchers, miners and oil&gas operators for resource extraction, but the caretaking is done by Uncle Sam. These lands make up much of the territory of the western states. Surprise!
The most important point from an economic perspective is that IT DOESN'T MATTER if someone else subsidizes a particular industry. Let them. They will only limit their own economic growth by bleeding all other sectors of the economy to pay for it. It would not hurt the U.S. if Canada decided to put all lumber producers on the public payroll and then give the lumber away to the U.S. It would mean U.S. loggers would not be able to compete, but their temporary unemployment is a small price to pay for cheap lumber. The current approach of applying 'punitive' duties to protect a given industry is just plain stupid from an economic science perspective. This is especially true of materials such as lumber and steel which employ a few thousand but provide materials for millions of jobs.
Can you imagine how much better off farmers would be if food production was not subsidized and there were therefor only as many farmers as the market could support? Can you imagine the difference it would have made to the third world, where agriculture is still a majority of the economy?
The U.S. prospered and grew to superpower status because of its farmland. Up until the New Deal, food was valuable. Since then, food production has been so heavily subsidized that the inefficient farmers in the third world cannot produce much that they can sell. If we eliminated aid to farmers and stopped building irrigation dams to water semi-dessert, many of our farms on marginal lands would disappear. If other countries did not eliminate their subsidies, even more of our farmers would go broke, but the net advantage would still be ours. The foreign governments would be subsidizing our food bill at the expense of their standard of living. Of course, that would only happen temporarily, as they realize how stupid they are being.
The only thing that is important from an economic fairness perspective is that foreign and domestic lumber companies should be treated the same - i.e., pay stumpage and taxes according to the same schedules, etc.
I still have hope that subjects such as comparative advantage and the rationale for free trade will someday be taught in our schools, so that future voters and politicians will consider protectionism to be as anachronistic as witch burning.
-g |
