Posted on 10/04/2007 7:07:18 AM PDT by SJackson
I've seen a lot of opinion polling, but my jaw dropped when I saw this result from our special NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll of Republicans in advance of next week's presidential candidate debate sponsored by CNBC, MSNBC and the WSJ. By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president.
Six in 10 Republicans in the poll agreed with a statement that free trade has been bad for the U.S. and said they would agree with a Republican candidate who favored tougher regulations to limit foreign imports. That represents a challenge for Republican candidates who generally echo Mr. Bush’s calls for continued trade expansion, and reflects a substantial shift in sentiment from eight years ago.
"It’s a lot harder to sell the free-trade message to Republicans," said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with Democratic counterpart Peter Hart.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
linkest link — Weakest Link
For the nonce, try looking up and then reading on the actual production costs of mass-produced items (including processed foodstuffs), and the mark-ups along the way for transport, shipping, middlemen, and the like.
The savings from going overseas are the lower wage scales, lack of environmental regulations, and the like; the physics and chemistry of the production processes are identical.
Cheers!
Will88 was challenging the implicit assumption that since Friedman was so well known / fabulously successful as an economist, that the usual strictures against "argument from authority" could be relaxed.
Which is what I mentioned in the post you are replying to; please re-read it, the text did not scurry off of the page. :-)
Cheers!
And then, ironically, you committed what appeared to be pretty much the same thing, later in post 318.
Your original comment was:
It's allowed Americans to keep more of their money. Maybe that's why about 60% of all American workers today are invested in the stock market while only 25% of them were invested in 1980.
My reply to you was suggesting that the difference in the percentage of US workers, households, what have you, who have significant investments in the stock market, between (say) 1980 and today, is not necessarily due to the wonders of free trade increasing disposable income.
There have been a number of societal, legal, technical, and business-related changes during that time, all of which helped to encourage stock investments too.
Societal -- baby boomers grow up and look for ways to save for retirement.
Legal -- 401(k) laws passed.
Technical -- rise of the internet
Business-related -- rise of internet brokerages, megagrowth of Cisco, Dell, Microsoft which (at first) provided greater returns than 'traditional' blue-chip stocks, thus encouraging mass participation in the stock market.
Oh, one other point -- why did you happen to choose 1980 as the starting point?
That was at the end of the Carter Presidency and before the 1st Reagan - Volcker inspired recession, induced to help shock stagflation into going away. Not too many middle-class folks had money to invest; and the reason for that was the Carter economy, and NOT that the domestically-produced goods had so high a cost-basis that they were overpriced.
Cheers!
Please explain what *you* mean by the words, "sham ownership crisis"? Recall that a great deal of the inflation (say in Nevada and Phoenix) was due to people buying 2nd homes as investments Ü la Robert Kiyosaki ("Rich Dad, Poor Dad")
These people still need housing. There will always be a housing shortage under the prevailing policies WRT immigration. We cannot ever catch up without a change in policy, and any change in policy has the potential to bring about an extreme disconnect between available jobs and existing skills in the labor force.
Details please? In particular, I read in the Wall Street Journal or somesuch, within the last 48 hours, that some cities in the United States have a supply of houses (at current rate of sales) for 7 1/2 months...!
Sorry, I'm not trying to sound that disagreeable, I am genuinely curious.
Cheers!
Heck, a free marketer would want the mines open and operating here . . . why can't a protectionist act the same way?
Without your parenthetical caveat, the above would be quite remarkable, no?
The current rate of sales is mostly attributable to the exit from the mortgage market of several formerly active players, coupled with a significant elevating of net worth standards in qualifying for loans, no?
That's what we have been doing . . . take Peru, Panama, and Columbia, for example. Yet the usualy suspects (not speaking of you, specifically) still complain.
Just observing that there is no apparent preference for bilateral deals over multilateral, on the other side of the argument. The deals are just "bad," as the sloganeering suggests.
I don’t care how multi-lateral it is if it is made by our elected representatives, can be revoked and or enforced or modified by our representatives, and does not give away these authorities to any other body. In other words, if europe wants to complain about Boeing, they come to us and complain. And we decide if they have validity, not any other body.
The other caveats are that we the people insist to our elected officials that they do not offer anything resembling free trade to our enemies, and are quick to punish malfeasance.
The Boeing/Airbus case is an excellent example. We got tired of complaining to the Europeans and getting nowhere, so we took the case to the WTO.
Their should be no WTO to complain to. Europe still subsidizes AB and we still complain. Problem now is we do not have permission to retaliate, because the WTO says no. That to me is an egregious assault on our sovereignty, as bad as the idiots on the SCOTUS citing international laws.
Anyone can think of good reasons to pull out of the WTO or the UN . . . but "the ebil globalists can swoop in and take my lunch money (or prevent me from eating my sandwich)" is not one of them.
Nonsense. We have given the WTO great power. We rescinded a Bush tax credit at their demand. that is 100% unacceptable to me. Here is exactly the problem according to Duncan Hunter.
In an article Hunter wrote in a July 1994 opposing the formation of the World Trade Organization, he laid out four reasons it was a very, very bad idea for US sovereignty-—
• “The first of these ``Big 4’’ provisions is in Article IX. It states that decisions by the World Trade Organization ``shall be taken by a majority ... each member of WTO shall have one vote.’’ Folks, this gives Fidel Castro in Cuba the same vote as the United States. It is just like the General Assembly of the United Nations, with one vital difference. There is no Security Council in the WTO to give the U.S. a veto as in the UN.
• “The second of the ``Big 4’’ provisions is also in Article IX. It gives the WTO the ``exclusive authority’’ to interpret the GATT and thus the reach of its own power. As the American Founding Fathers knew, the power to interpret the rules is tantamount to writing the rules. Thus the U.S. Constitution divided power into Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. There is no such division in the WTO. Thus the same Third World super-majority that changes a provisions under Article X, section 4 can then interpret that provision under Article IX, section 13. America’s one little vote won’t even slow the process down.”
• “The third of the ``Big 4’’ provisions in the GATT-WTO is in Article XVI, section 5. It states ``No reservations may be made in respect to provisions of this Agreement.’’ This means that Congress cannot ``fix’’ the agreement. All the plans various members of Congress have drawn up to protect American interests via enabling legislation are prohibited by the WTO.”
• “The last of the ``Big 4’’ provisions is in Article XVI, section 4. ``Each nation will ensure the conformity of its laws, regulations and administrative procedures with its obligations as provided in the (GATT-WTO) agreements.’’ So folks, if you’re looking for Congress’ new role in trade policy, here it is. Our job will be to change American laws to conform to the supreme law of the World Trade Organization. Though the U.S. Constitution grants to Congress the right to regulate foreign commerce, woe be it to any Congress that attempts to insert a little ``American interest’’ into American law!”
Bush tax credit? Are you talking about the Byrd Amendment? It was an abomination. It was about private companies using the government (at our expense) to raise prices (at our expense) and get a refund of our money (at our expense). Man, if you are like some of the others on this thread with that “anti-corporatist” mentality, then you have it exactly backwards.
I had Lunch today with a Friend who brought along two coworkers. One of the of the idiots thought, “it was Wonderful that if Hillery gets elected We get Bill back “
She was not interested on where Hillery stood on any issue!
I can’t Believe how some woman think ,they are nuts.
Well, I’m not sure I EVER heard Byrd call for a tax cut....but this is beyond criminal that we kowtow to these idiots:
U.S. tax breaks illegal, WTO rules: Congress given 3 months to Correct
Chicago Sun-Times, Feb 14, 2006 by Sam Cage
GENEVA — The World Trade Organization on Monday condemned tax breaks for some U.S. companies operating overseas, saying Washington has about three months to bring its legislation into line.
A WTO panel rejected a U.S. appeal, upholding previous judgments that the so-called Foreign Sales Corporation, or FSC, law breached global trade rules by giving illegal subsidies to some U.S. businesses.
“The U.S. now has three months to act to avoid the re-imposition of retaliatory measures in this case. The tax benefits preserved by the Jobs Act have been repeatedly declared in violation of WTO rules,” said European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20060214/ai_n16231686
If the WTO can tell us we cannot have tax exemptions for our exporters and you go along with that, then you and I are a helluva lot farther apart than I assumed.
Oh, that wasn’t the Byrd Amendment, that was the FSC fiasco . . . I’ll have to read up on it when I get the chance.
But we didn't.
Because there aren't hundreds of foreign stock mutual funds and ETFs. LOL!
Why compare them to a grocery store? Maybe show that their profit margin took a big jump since their foreign sourcing increased?
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