A:) Active anti- communism was a consensus position in American politics since Truman, not the special province of the Right;
B:) Western Europe was prosperous without participation in a ground war, why should anyone have believed that Vietnam was an economic necessity?;
C:) Since free trade is one of the few things that most economists agree on as a policy prescription, why are you insistent that support of it is suspect?;
D:) Mercantilism imposed an artificial version of specialization to benefit the Mother Country, instead of allowing investment to pursue the maximum of economic efficiency. As I have stated before, in many instances, without the wage differential, there would be no investment, and everybody would be even poorer. Economic development has to start somewhere. As China is discovering, eventually countries begin to catch up with the developed nations;
We are not magicians, able to control all of our neighbors and their policies, and thus raise them to advanced status. Do you know that before Peronism, Argentina had nearly the per capita income of the United States? It faltered because of bad economic policies. As long as the Institutional Revolutionary Party controls Mexico, it will remain stagnant. Etc.etc.etc. |
