Posted on 01/27/2014 8:13:38 AM PST by cotton1706
China’s on the verge of revolution because of the middle class demanding higher wages. Poor people who make nice things for rich people eventually develop an appetite for the things they make.
Friedman was right, and Japan and the Asian Tigers were only the latest evidence of how the market always seeks to balance an imbalance.
Used to be Japanese labor was cheap. Used to be that Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Malaysian labor was cheap. Used to be you could move your back office to India and save money without losing quality (yeah, right).
What happened? Only the very thing Friedman was talking about.
Get this correct - Americans are out of work because US companies cannot repatriate foreign profits without losing their shirts.
We have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.
That, and only that, is the reason why the jobs aren’t coming back, because there are a lot of jobs that left the US in the 90’s that are beating down the door because of the hammering those companies took shipping them over in the first place.
Fast, good, or cheap - you can pick only two. Introduce a disruptive technological improvement and you can have all three, but only until the patent expires, or you sell the rights for others to use it.
"(T)he supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number -- for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs -- jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume."
--Milton Friedman
ping
Incentive/Disincentive effects aside, I'd rather pay somebody to have free time or jobs search time, than pay them for make work.
But we are not talking about make work. We are talking about productive jobs and productive industries. We are talking about America's strength in terms of productive capacity and independence from foreign nations. And we are talking about putting Americans to work vs putting Chinese to work.
No kidding. We dropped tariffs after WWII, when income tax rates topped out at 90%, and when Reagan left office, the top income tax rate was 28%.
I blame falling tariffs.
basically a cover charge to get into the American market. Say, 5-10%
You want Americans to pay your cover charge? But we're already here.
If the union worker isn't 100 times more productive than some joker making 32 cents an hour in Dumputzistan, he must be working for GM.
George Washington said a tariff should be at least the cost of shipping an item from a foreign country to here, so that like products (foreign and domestic) could compete equally.
He said that? Where?
He wanted the $5 shipping charge to have a $5 tax slapped on as well? Sounds like an extra $10 would not make the like products compete equally.
Sounds like something you pulled out of your ass. I'm sure Washington was much better at math than you. LOL!
“Sounds like something you pulled out of your ass. I’m sure Washington was much better at math than you. LOL!”
I can’t find the quote. I haven’t read this book in years. But the Tariff Act of 1789 was the second bill signed by Washington as president, a protective tariff, to protect and encourage domestic manufacture by making foreign goods of equal price or more expensive.
We did the same in the 18 teens, when Europe tried to flood the American market with goods. Have you read any trade history?
Yes, tariffs can protect infant industry by making foreign goods more expensive. Tariffs cannot reduce the impact of shipping costs.
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