That may not be the whole story, but even if it were I don't agree that Japanese tax'n'spending/state control could possibly justify American tax'n'spending/state control.
You’re an example of why I no longer find the “free trade” argument even remotely persuasive any more.
Even when I go to the authoritative source of trade policy, you still won’t believe that it’s a lopsided deal. You free trade guys are like the university PhD’s who advocate socialism. Sure, it’s never been a success anywhere. Sure, Stalin and Mao starved 10’s of millions to their deaths. Sure, those of us who have been opponents of socialism can point to piles of bodies and pyramids of skulls.
But socialism would work “if only we implemented it correctly.”
Same deal with “free trade.” Sure, we’re obliterating entire industries. Suuuure, we’re shipping boatloads of cash offshore in the world’s largest and longest trade deficits, which economists have no ideas on when, how or how badly it will end. Sure, there’s been no average household income growth in the last 10 years. Sure, we’re funding communists, who are not our friends, to the point where they can expand their military to become a regional superpower. Sure, we’ve put ourselves in a ridiculous position where we’re now putting our tactical military data traffic on ChiCom satellites.
http://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-signed-10m-deal-chinese-satellite-support-u-113030799.html
But “free trade” is the sexy idea you’re going to ride into the ground. Just like those university PhD’s and students who wear stupid t-shirts with Che’s picture emblazoned on it have been riding the dead horse of socialism into the ground.
For my part, I used to be a “free trade” advocate. I was a big “free trade” advocate in the 90’s. Wrote letters to Congress, championed the idea, blah, blah, blah. But I’m not an ideologue; when new data shows me that an idea isn’t working, I change my mind. I now liken “free trade” people to pilots who will fly an aircraft into terrain because they put their trust in some moving map GPS system with a beautiful LCD display and blinky lights... while refusing to look out the window and noticing that the rocks and mountain goats are getting rather large.
The data are now pretty unequivocal: “free trade” has enriched lots of people... but very few of them are here in the US.
I’m an American first. I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about whether people off-shore get richer, or whether they’re eating dirt. It’s really Not My Problem. We have enough problems of our own. For example, the economic well being of my countrymen is now my direct problem. The reason why the Fed is punishing savers, the reason why we’re running a trillion-dollar welfare state, is because the US economy has been hollowed out and exported to other countries. In an additional fit of stupidity, our political “leaders” are seeking to import millions of dumb-as-rocks immigrants into the US, when we couldn’t employ them all even if we melted down every backhoe and excavator in the land and turned them into shovels to create jobs digging ditches.
I’m no longer a free trader because I can see the writing on the wall. The nation’s economy isn’t able to produce jobs any more, because the “new economy” model of passing around bits of paper has a very marginal economic multiplier. People who don’t have the brains to trade “paper wealth” are going to fall further and further behind, and those who will never be smart enough to navigate the modern fetid swamp of finance will likely fall so far behind that they’re *permanent* welfare cases.
As a result, politicians will tax or outright confiscate the assets of those of us who have any assets left, to keep the poor from rioting as they are now doing in Europe where the money has truly run out. “Free traders” should wake up and study of Cypriot banking issue much more closely... because that’s an example of what happens when the rubber truly hits the road in the “free trade” endgame.
Europe is a wonderful example of “free trade” failure writ most large. They created a “free trade” zone (the EU), then they decided to remove any currency arb or friction from the trade (by creating the Euro) so that they could become a “United States of Europe” (without the patriotism of a united set of states, naturally) and now they’re augering into the ground with the throttles to the firewall. I just did a month-end review of economic data and the data out of Europe are almost uniformly horrible, even in Germany. If “free trade” were all it were cracked up to be, then Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and others wouldn’t be in for-real depression levels of unemployment.
