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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: craig crawford who wrote (26177)	5/16/2002 12:36:19 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 59480

they can be raised too high. i'm not arguing for "high tariffs", i am arguing for reasonable tariffs like our founders intended. I think a reasonable rate for any tax is one that has a minimal impact on people's lives and on the economy. Do you want tariffs that are so low that they do almost nothing to effect trade? The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises,...To regulate commerce with foreign nations I never argued that congress did not have the constitutional power to put in place trade barriers, I have only questioned the wisdom of it actually doing so. Congress has the power to do a lot of stupid things, that doesn't mean it should actually go ahead and do them. congress should regulate commerce with foreign nations, not the president with fast track authority, and not a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in the wto. Congresses power includes the power to make treaties in this area. The president can only get fast track authority if congress gives it to him and then when the treaty is ready for ratification the congress can always reject it so it is congress who is still regulating commerce with foreign nations. help our economy? you mean help pad the coffers of corporate multinational scalawags who buy off our politicians? No I mean help our economy, both overall and the majority of individuals rich or poor in the US. some downside! you kind of threw it in there like it was some kind of afterthought. this is a very important problem with unilateral free trade. I threw it out casually because even with this downside we are better off if we drop trade barriers. However we would be even better off if other countries did as well so if we can convince them to do so by offering the carrot of access to our markets then I would hold off on unilateral free trade. When this matter is not a consideration (if other countries offer free trade or if we realize that they never will) then I am all for unilateral free trade. When the ability to pry trade concessions from other countries is an issue then whether or not I would support unilateral free trade depends on the specifics of the situation. hah! wealth for bill gates, phil knight and jack welch? and a billions of other people around the world. 10% of americans control around 3/4 of our national wealth. And it would be even easier for them to exercise more control if they did not face competition from other countries. also, americans have traded freedoms away for greater material pleasures Free trade is itself an example of freedom. If you try to prevent someone from buying foreign goods you limit their freedom. our increasing wealth has destroyed our culture as well. I don't think it has, but it is a seperate issue unless you are attacking free trade on basis that it increases our wealth and thus contributes to the destruction of our culture. >> Companies and industries shutting down are just part of the "creative destruction" of capitalism. << uh huh. wasn't it lenin and the bolsheviks who employed your logic when they said you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette? Lenin and the bolsheviks where talking about imprisoning and shooting and starving and tortureing people to impose an ideology by force. The creative destruction of capitalism is simply letting people freely buy or sell things and things that they don't demand no longer get produced. This might cause a company to go out of business or a worker to lose his job, so something is in a sense destroyed, but the resources are freed to go to places where they more efficently satisfy the needs and desires of people. Abscent this "creative destruction" you would still have the majority of Americans working on farms, and there would be few people available to produce the modern goods and services that we want today. Instead 1 or 2% of Americans can feed the US and a big chunk of the rest of the world. If you try to stop this process you won't completly succede even if you are a powerful dictator and the attempt would result in a horrible tragedy not only from the measures that would be needed to enforce the idea but also from the fact that an unresponsive, inflexible economy will result in a great amount of poverty. i don't disagree with this. what is wrong with that? do you believe the government should not exert any control on the economy? if so, you are on the wrong thread. this is the right wing extremist thread, not the libertarian anarchist thread. I think that the government should have almost no control over the economy. They should support the systems that let the economy develop (property rights, courts to settle disputes, roads, police protection, ect.) and they have a role in banning trades of things like nuclear weapons (but its a strech in my opinion to call that an issue of economic regulation) and perhaps they have a legitimate role in trying to protect the environment, but for the most part they should stay out of the way. i believe when we consider important issues such as trade we should view the arguments in light of the historical context of our founding. our founding fathers didn't buy into this radical liberal utopian trade mantra, for good reason. First of all I don't believe in any radical liberal utopia. Secondly your whole point here is just a way to make an argument from authority. I have respect for the founders of our country buy I don't always agree with them, and I don't consider a statement about their opinion to be an effective argument. Of course you can find arguments from them and you have posted some, but the strength of the argument is the argument itself not who made it. I am not proposing that you should accept any argument from authority from Milton Friedman either. If I do quote him, or Hayek or someone like that it would only be to show you their argument and let it stand on its own merits, not to push the idea that their point must somehow be right just because of who they are. In any case I submit that they have a much better understanding of economics then at least most, if not all, of the founders of our country, but I would not support the idea that this greater level of knowledge and understanding means they are inveriably right or that you have to agree with them. that is the problem with the current generation. academically minded intellectuals are always looking for some new-fangled theory that is going to deliver us to the promised land. they think that some complex mathematical equation applied to trade is going to overcome human nature and lead to not only economic nirvana, but some kind of utopian heaven on earth. it's all a bunch of liberal babble, which fails to understand the fallen nature of man, not unlike communism which sounded so good on paper. Capitalism and free trade are not new ideas. Nor are they attempts to impose a utopian vision on society. They are rather ideas that allow people to be free to make their own choices, and they contain the understanding that this freedom will also result in greater wealth. They don't require any complex mathematical equations in fact the utopian vision and complex equations are more often used by people who want to claim that free trade will not work at least not in the particular area they want "protected". Tim