Lost Or Unrecognized Multi-National Economic Principles And Slavery

Robert L. Kocher ^ | October 27, 2002 | Robert L. Kocher

[Mortimer Snavely]

Bless you, x, for the Helper link. You have no idea how long I've been looking for that volume.

[Mortimer Snavely]

You may want to download the Helper volume so kindly linked by x. It's a classic.

[RLK]

he could continue to match or slightly exceed the quality of their products, but given that they had no equivelent overhead, they could and would simply slash their prices until he was out of business.

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That's a problem. Their personnel costs are what they say they are, and their prices are what they say they are. The artificialities of the rate of exchange don't correct the situation. Cincinatti tool, who made rugged mills for many decades is now importing machinery from China to be resold here. If you go to an older facility you see magnificent machinery with names such as Dean, Grace, Lodge, Cincinatti, LeBlond, Pratt and Whitney, Palmgren and so forth on it. Most of those companies are now probably no longer in business. The last time I looked, Van Norman had moved to Scandanavia and I don't know if they still produce much. A Van Norman #12 from the '20s or '30s is one of the most useful machines I ever worked with.

[RLK]

Helper had written that slaves 'in nine cases out of ten, would be delighted with an opportunity to cut their master's throats'.[32] Helper's book combined with Brown's raid to create a 'state of siege' mentality in the South. Memories of Santo Domingo, where at the end of the eighteenth century the blacks revolted and exterminated the 'entire white population', came flooding back into Southern minds.

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I hadn't read Helper.

[RLK]

" Many poor white Southerners and most slaves were illiterate. The Slave power actively discouraged education amongst its poor white white community in order to preserve the status quo.

[RLK]

" Many poor white Southerners and most slaves were illiterate. The Slave power actively discouraged education amongst its poor white community in order to preserve the status quo."

[RLK]

In 1850, the products of manufactures, mining and the mechanic arts in Massachusetts, amounted to $151,137,145; those of North Carolina, to only $9,111,245. In 1856, the products of these industrial pursuits in Massachusetts had increased to something over $288,000,000, a sum more than twice the value of the entire cotton crop of all the Southern States!

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This is a very useful source of information that I wasn't previously aware existed.

[lelio]

bump for later reading. Thanks for the post.

[Red Jones]

this article is an excellent analysis of how american policy seeks lower standards of living for its citizens.

[Uncle Bill]

Hello sarcasm. Hope all is well.

[A. Pole]

[...] Now, somewhere in the evolution of a finite healthy free enterprise market economy a close to optimum equilibrium of worker salaries develops, or should develop, vis-a-vis other groups. Anything that is destructive to that equilibrium is destructive to the economy in the entirety. A destructive action upon that equilibrium may have a sequential cascading effect that will eventually maul much of the entire economy over time. What that means is that exporting industries to nations where there is slave, semi-slave, or cheap labor is likely to produce recession or worse. Importing large amounts of cheap labor will result in the same thing. The consequences can be long term or permanent.

It doesn't make any difference if you get something cheaper as a result of destroying that equilibrium. Deterioration of the greater long term economy is the realistic result. That's the way the economy works. But, people selling economic theories that will create that deterioration will focus upon what you get cheap or for free. That's the way economic sophistry works.[...]

Briliant text from 2002 by Robert L. Kocher, to be read again and remembered.

[stylin19a]

Who is John Galt ?

[bvw]

Thanks for this fine essay! Long, but deep and insightful.

[harpseal]

It is excellent therefor i have put it on my economic ping list which has been idle for a couple of weeks now but I am recovering from my illness.

Ping


On or off let me know

[harpseal]

Question: Just who do you think will constitute the majority of these "engineers and designers?"

I tend to agree with you, that's why I ask Given the H1b programs and offshoring to places like India and China they will be either Indian nationals or Chinese nationals

[adam_az]

bump

[sixmil]

Glad to hear you are starting to feel better, and thanks for bumping this. I forgot about this post, and it's an even better read the second time through.

It's interesting what we have seen the last year an a half, but really it is just more of the club for unilateral free trade and open borders moving the goal posts back everytime they are proven wrong by reality. Here is my brief history of the unilateral free trade / open borders movement:

• We are not losing manufacturing jobs
• OK, we are losing manufacturing jobs, but they are being replaced by better IT jobs
• The theory of free trade says that workers will be put to use in more advantageous industries, but gov't will have to retrain them. So much for the free market and small government.
• These better jobs pay too much, so we will have to bring in foreigners. Oops, was that out loud? I meant to say that there is a shortage of qualified engineers, which will slow our economic growth.
• Well, maybe there wasn't really a shortage, but we abandoned supply and demand already, and we are going to go ahead and move those jobs offshore with all the corporate home offices.
• Remember that this is all for your benfit, we are doing all this for you so that you can afford to buy lettuce and software with the next jobs of the future, which will not ever come around unless you keep voting Republican.
• We do not have a growing trade deficit, but if we do it doesn't matter.
• OK, we have a growing trade deficit, but it still doesn't matter since we are just giving useless dollars in exchange for goods.
• Maybe the deficit is a problem, but nothing that can not be fixed with a weak dollar.
• OK, China is pegged to our weak dollar, so that won't work, but they are sending over a trade commision to sign some big deals. Move along, the deficit does not matter since me and my grocer have trade deficits too.
• And the final stage is what I heard King Greenspan say yesterday in front of congress - we need to spend more on education to make sure that income is distributed more equally.

There it is - vote for the corporate republicans, and you can have the democrats' dream world without the guilt of raising taxes.

[William Terrell]

But to market it to the masses it needs to be re-written in a very shortened form.

It would need to be musical comdey, actually.

[William Terrell]

Excellent in all except offering some pathway out of our impending economic doom.

I believe that was implied in the conditons he gave for the movement to and from free market and socialism. American businesses, mainly the big ones, must make the choice to stay in America, produce in America using American workers.

On second thought, that's no pathway. The only why it could happen at this point, in my opinion, is at gunpoint.

[William Terrell]

I've been waiting for someone to put it into words in an organized and detailed article. I can see it get to the point that many can't buy even the cheap foreign products. Then we wouldn't be secure as a cash cow anymore in a world of ugly Americans.

This is from another article on FR.

On November 7, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the conference report on the 2004 Defense Authorization bill (H.R. 1588) with a much weakened version of its "buy American" program. Under the original proposal as crafted by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-CA), all critical components in a weapon system would have had to be American-made and the overall system had to be 65 percent American. Those two requirements were eliminated under intense pressure from the Bush Administration, whose commitment to the recovery of American manufacturing has now been clearly shown to be phony.

One of these days, one or several of those new manufacturing countries which provide our defense requirements may just decide it or they might like to live in America. All of America. If there's an America left after reading your logic.