>> So what is your defense for protectionism, other than quoting great men? Fallacy of Authority. <<
protectionism for lack of a better word. i have posted numerous messages and references as support for my assertions. here is yet another:
>> Good for the consumer, <<
this is one of the oldest arguments of free trade and i have debated it ad infinitum. for one thing, the consumer has had it too good, for too long. furthermore, workers are consumers. no job, no consumption. free trade lowers the wages of american workers. so free trade is not wholly beneficial to consumers. definitely not all consumers.
>> good for the health of industry <<
hah! you mean good for powerful and corrupt multinational corporations. explain how free trade is good for the steel industry, the textile industry or farmers and other industries which have had to compete with a flood of cheap foreign imports!
>> Free trade and free competition <<
there is nothing competitive about americans who compete with conscript labor in mexico, china, indonesia, etc that is paid slave wages of 30 cents an hour. you will never hoodwink me into believing that is free competition!
>> ie unfettered Capitalism <<
so you believe in unfettered capitalism? i trust you're in favor of abolishing antitrust laws here in the united states. you are for the repeal of laws against price collusion. you favor repeal of child labor laws, repeal of the laws limiting the numbers of hours worked, etc. of course you are against the sherman and clayton acts. after all, the free market can sort all of this out, correct? what do we need the ftc for? we really don't need that antitrust division of the doj, now do we?
>> means lower prices <<
not always, but it certainly does result in lower wages!
>> greater selection <<
america has the capacity to make all the chopsticks and other imported goods you find down at wal-mart. just what exactly can foreigners make that americans cannot? practically nothing. furthermore, americans can still buy foreign goods. do you think when we had a tariff system for the first century and a half we didn't trade with the world?
>> and healthier business <<
yeah the steel business looks real healthy! nearly three dozen bankruptcies in the last five years and several hundred thousands of jobs lost.
>> Protectionism means higher prices <<
sometimes, but not always. protectionism means higher wages to afford the higher prices.
>> government supported inefficiencies in protected industries <<
free trade means government supported inefficiencies in the protected industries of foreigners! if government has to intervene at all, wouldn't you prefer it support american industry and workers rather than foreign industry and workers?
>> less choice <<
how so? if we put duties on foreign goods coming into the country what will bmw, mercedes, toyota, etc do? they will build plants right here in america and employ american workers to put those fine automobiles together. then they will escape the duties. so you will still be able to buy that fine luxurious german automobile. the only difference is it will be built by americans, not mexicans.
>> and lower quality of goods and services <<
why is a car built in mexico higher quality than a car built here in the united states?
>> Protectionism favors the uncompetitive business and inflexible labor <<
inflexible labor? what do you mean by inflexible labor?? you mean american labor that won't compete with dollar an hour mexicans are inflexible??? obviously you are just in favor of big business which wants to abandon the american worker in favor of exploiting slave labor abroad. more profits for ford, gm, ibm, ge, etc., no job for blue collar americans.
>> free trade favors the consumer and a dynamic, high skill workforce. <<
free trade favors large multinational corporations which abandon their workers here in the US while exploiting women and children around the world, as well as exploiting the environment. free trade doesn't favor consumers who lose their jobs and have no paycheck to consume in the first place!
>> and a dynamic, high skill workforce. <<
ah, finally you tell the truth. free trade favors the cultural elites. extremely well educated, highly intelligent and capable americans who aren't blue-collar and don't have to compete with mexicans and chinese.
Alan Keyes: On GATT and WTO
sandh.com
I also think that a lot of the reasoning, so called, that has gone into the NAFTA/GATT mentality if proving to be very bad. You have folks who stand up on the floor of Congress and they say: "Look, we made this bargain with you that we're going to let all the 'low-tech' jobs go overseas, and we're just going to have the 'high-tech' jobs." It makes me wonder sometimes: Do you think a politicians job is low-tech or high-tech? Because I don't see them suggesting that we ought to export them overseas, but they're pretty low-tech.
So you see, what I'm pointing out is that this so-called distinction -- low-tech/high-tech -- is really nonsense. In our society we're always going to have a diversity of people and interests and aptitudes. Why are we restructuring the economy so that only one kind of job will be here, when we're always going to have many different kinds of people? It doesn't make any sense.
We are in fact preparing ourselves for an economy that is going to cut out the jobs that are needed by the mass of our people, and it's wrong! We're not going to be able to send people to Korea and Taiwan and South America in order to follow the jobs we're exporting.
When jobs started to move from the Northeast part of the United States to the South and the Southwest, what happened? After a few years, people followed the jobs! And it wasn't so hard, you know, because in spite of this and that and the other thing we do speak the same language in New York and Texas and California. The accent sometimes gets in the way, but it's the same language. You can also eat McDonald hamburgers in all three places and know what you're getting. And so the cultural adjustment, moving from one part of the country to another, is not so bad.
After we've exported our jobs to Korea and Taiwan, how many of you think you're gonna be able to go and make that same adjustment. It's not gonna happen!
We're being fooled into believing something that is not true. A bunch of abstract arguments about "free trade" that don't take account of the reality that we are always going to have people with different aptitudes, and we are always going to need jobs to suit all our people.
We can't afford to restructure this economy so that it is monotone, instead of having the ability to satisfy the needs and aptitudes and requirements of all our people. In that sense, the whole free trade argument is just wrong. And I think we have to revise it so that we'll respect the need to keep this economy going for everyone, not just for those who our politicians judge to be the privileged "high-tech" literati and intellectuals. Won't work. |
