Posted on 12/29/2010 6:13:39 PM PST by BfloGuy
I normally respect Walter Williams. but he is clueless on this subject
I've often wondered why American Unions are unique in the world that as a parasite they will destroy the host corporation. The rest of the world's unions won't do that.
Fair for Walter, he has a job, he needs to be in the unemployment line to get some perspective. When you buy a car made in America you are helping american families pay their bills. Henry Ford doubled his workers wages so they could afford to buy the cars they made, which had exponential positive effects throughout the US economy.
A)The role of unions in the decline of American industry is greatly exaggerated here.
B) Where unions are strongest, they are in very homogenous countries (Japan, Germany, Scandanavia) that have a more natural inclination towards collective cooperation,less low IQ populaces and more nationalistic trade policies.
Henry Ford doubled wages to get better quality workers. Higher wages allowed him to recruit workers who were more reliable and productive, more Christian even. We’re talking home inspections to figure out what sort of people he was hiring.
Other than that I agree with you. Keeping the money in country helps your own economy rather than someone elses.
manufacturer of what?
Pieces of paper, preferrably green, of course...
oh, I think the Bernanke has that market cornered. You can thank Bush for that nitwit.
Williams and too many in this thread really don’t understand the concept of Fair Trade.
Fair Trade means nations competing on even terms in producing materials. Pick any product - a flat screen TV or a blue dress.
An American company must first pay a minimum wage, and then for competitive labor a fair and living wage. It must follow all environmental and safety laws. It must pay all local, state, and federal taxes. It can not hire child labor. It has to fund unemployment insurance, workman’s compensation insurance, product liability insurance,worker health insurance, and Social Security taxes.
The Chinese competitor he must deal with pays his workers a pittance, and cans them when they complain or get sick. It dumps all its waste chemicals and waters out in the back or in a nearby river, without treatment. Peasant children work in his factories. The state will handle what little unemployment, healthcare or retiremnt benefits are available. He doesn’t worry about lawsuits - they don’t exist in China. The government subsidizes his exports while penalizing an American competitor’s imports with taxes and unacceptable legal restraints.
Williams and his followers ahve two choices:
1. Make all import products be manufactured to the same wage, environmental, and social insurance standards that our government forces on the American producer.
2. Assess tariffs equal to the difference in the cost of production due to the burdens placed on American producers.
It is hypocritical for these elites to demand we do everything here to save the environment, the social contract, and the health and well being of the American workers, but ignore the slave-holding foreign polluters who are supplying the American market place.
Even some Mafia dons had issues with making profits based on the drug addiction proclivities of people.
Funny, becuase there has not been any major free-trade legislation passed in 15 years.
The opposite has happened.
So goes the economy.
There is all kind of “fair trade” bs players and pundits.
But it is not important what you say it is what you do.
You have simply replaced the “Soviet Man” with the “Chinese Man”. I assume you have faith in free markets, or am I mistaken? If you do, how can you possibly believe that an unfree market can out-compete a free market? China can only keep up its fake growth for so much longer, the government and the technocrats just aren’t smart enough, and never will be. I know you feel that government just gets in the way in America, how is China’s some magic all knowing/all seeing gathing of wonderful Obamas?
Meant to say, how is an all powerful government full of Obamas going to outdo a free society?
You must be replying to another post.
Suggest you reread my post 50.
Trade is not “free” if it is not “fair”.
Only the United States is practicing “free” trade, to its detriment.
Its competitors restrict and prohibit reciprocal trade.
When all the other trading nations live up to the same rules as the US, or the US rescinds its own rules, will there be free and fair trade. Tell me if you think the US should allow child labor, stop all worker wage and benefits improvements, waive all environmental laws, stop all taxation, permit unconstrained pollution, arbitrarily set the exchange rate of its currency, and stop defending the rest of the free world, because that is what it will take to compete with China.
For too many Republicans, libertarians, and sadly, Freepers, “Free” trade is a mantra that they really don’t understand.
I don’t care what you call it. The idea that a centrally controlled economy will outperform a free economy is just silly. These arguments always come to nothing, because the totalitarians, well, they collapse. The danger to our country does not come from outside our borders, it is of our own making. And China, they will collapse from their own weight.
Keep thinking that about China. But make sure your grandkids learn Mandarin.
In about two generations we will be the exhausted Britain paying tribute to a triumphant China. China does not have to do a thing against us; we are surrendering voluntarily.
With the exception of the United States in the 20th century and England in the nineteenth, it has been the despots and tyrannies that have ruled the world, not the democracies.
And even Britain was not a very good democracy.
And I am just as certain that there are any number of websites out there dedicated to the aggrandizement and glorification of the State at the expense of all else, especially Liberty.
And I am also certain that Free Republic is not one of them.
BTW, where on Earth do you get the idea that I favor the "dissolution of the nation". There is a vast distance between a "diet" and "dissolution".
Let's put this to bed with a simple question then. Do you believe the United States can function as a unified entity with a national government budget of 26 billion a year?
Yes or no will suffice.
That's because it's now handled by executive branch regulations, just like 95% of the rest of the federal government. Just another abdication of congress' powers.
Surely you haven't missed the trend as there are articles posted on FR daily talking about executive branch law making.
The opposite has happened.
And this is one of those cases where correlation isn't causation.
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