Why?
Posted on 04/15/2005 6:38:06 AM PDT by LowCountryJoe
“Xenophobia and Politics”—the headline got my attention. And the subhead convinced me I would get honorable mention: “Why Protectionism is a Lot Like Racism.”
I was not mistaken. But the main target of Steven Landsburg’s “On My Mind” column in Forbes magazine was the neo-racist ideas he had ferreted out—on John Kerry’s website.
Kerry had proposed, “Federal contracts, wherever possible, should be performed by American workers.” Landsburg was morally offended that anyone would argue that American workers should be given preference over Asian or African workers.
“It’s not just Kerry,” wrote the professor from the University of Rochester. “Both major parties (and most of the minor ones) are infested with protectionist fellow travelers who would discriminate on the basis of national origin no less virulently than David Duke or any other overt racist would discriminate on the basis of skin color. But if racism is morally repugnant—and it is—then so is xenophobia…”
Declares Landsburg: “I hold this truth to be self-evident: It is just plain ugly to care more about total strangers in Detroit than about total strangers in Juarez. ... Even if Kerry-style (or Nader-style or Buchanan-style) protectionism could improve Americans’ well-being at the expense of foreigners, it would still be wrong.”
Now I do not know what parents pay to send their kids to the University of Rochester. But if the philosophical imbecility of Landsburg is representative of the faculty, it is too much.
To be more concerned about the well-being of one’s fellow Americans is not “xenophobia,” which means a fear or hatred or foreigners. It is patriotism, which entails a special love for one’s own country and countrymen, not a hatred of any other country or people. Preferring Americans no more means hating other peoples than preferring one’s family means hating all other families. An icy indifference as to whether one’s countrymen are winning—be it in a competition for jobs or Olympic medals—is moral treason and the mark of a dead soul.
We are all born into families, clans, tribes, neighborhoods, countries, all of which—as well as the friends we make, the schools that nurture us, the churches at which we worship—have a claim upon our love and loyalty.
But the professor equates “Buy American” and “Hire Americans” programs with aggressive war. “After all, if it’s okay to enrich ourselves by denying foreigners the right to earn a living, why not enrich ourselves by invading peaceful countries and seizing their assets. ... Stealing assets is wrong, and so is stealing the right to earn a living, no matter where the victim was born.”
The professor’s piece testifies to another truth. Free-trade fanatics are running out of statistical proofs so fast they must defend their position on the grounds that, no matter if it fails America, it is a morally superior position. For look at what a soaring dependency on imports is doing to our country.
Last year’s trade deficit topped $617 billion. In January, it hit $58.3 billion, portending a deficit in 2005 of $700 billion. U.S. trade and budget deficits combined are 10 percent of GDP. We are borrowing $2 billion a day abroad to subsidize our lifestyle. The American consumer has never been more indebted—in credit cards, auto loans, mortgages.
The dollar has lost a third of its value against the euro in three years. Gold is back close to $450 an ounce, a run-up of 70 percent. Oil is bumping up against $55 a barrel. When South Korea and then Japan’s Koizumi hinted their treasuries might diversify reserves and hold a lesser share in dollars, the Dow experienced what pilots call, as you grab the arm rests and hold on for dear life, “a little choppiness.” The last fruits of free-trade globalism may be financial collapse.
Under Bush, 2.8 million manufacturing jobs, one in six, have been lost. Real wages of working Americans are stagnant. Two-thirds of a million textile and apparel workers face wipeout from Chinese imports that are now unrestricted. As Paul Craig Roberts writes, the jobs being created pay less and demand less in education and training than the jobs being outsourced. Our workers are being sacrificed on the altar of globalism. Says Landsburg: tough luck!
If economics professors are so fanatic about free trade, why not eliminate their tenure and import English-speaking economics professors from India at half the pay? For as Landsburg instructs us, “It is plain ugly to care more” about him than a total stranger.
Moreover, the stranger might come to love America and even prefer America, which some deracinated academics find so racist a sentiment.
I suspect in a few years the proposal will be floated to turn the 8 hour work day into a 12 hour work day.
Some of us already work 12 hours a day. If you want to make sure you're one of the "lords" instead of the "serfs," I've got a suggestion for you -- the 8-hour day ain't doing you much good.
Declares Landsburg: “I hold this truth to be self-evident: It is just plain ugly to care more about total strangers in Detroit than about total strangers in Juarez. ... Even if Kerry-style (or Nader-style or Buchanan-style) protectionism could improve Americans’ well-being at the expense of foreigners, it would still be wrong.”
Let's put this proposition to a FR vote. Who here thinks this a legitimate American position, that necessarily requires that we have no national-favoring concerns whatsoever?
Well? [ sound of crickets chirping]
I call this newest evolution of the pseudo-free-traders the "Neo-Globalist" position. Buchanan is right, catching the shift by these guys. The nation state they seek to subvert, however, is the one whose constitution guarantees our rights...including economic. A global world government construct will be totally unprotective of any individual rights whatsoever, other than the power of the Government. And there will be no individual nations with any power to oppose such a government...so that such a tyrannical government will have a free hand...with no checks and balances whatsoever to try and preserve individual liberty.
LCJ: Griswold's apology for trade deficits is simply laughable. We should have had a huge economic boost from all these trade deficits we have been running non-stop now...by his reckoning. Well where is it? The Reagan era protected manufactures, and saw a dramatic decline in the trade deficit towards the end of his administration...with manufacturing in the U.S. soaring as we indeed found new things to make. Today, by contrast, ALL manufacturing of new consumer products is promptly sent over to China. No U.S.-production interim step. Hence, no possibility even, of a U.S. reduction of the trade deficit until a complete collapse of our credit-worthiness...a result which you appear to be all-too-eager for. Hence, the previous models that Griswold uses are misunderstood by him...and grossly misapplied. His conclusions are complete poppycock, misunderstanding causes and effects.
China, however, is not losing its jobs to other countries. It's purported declines are a result of the influx of Western technology-induced productivity increases. They consequently are drastically increasing their actual manufacturing. The U.S., unfortunately, and unlike during the Reagan era, is now finding it more 'productive' to outsource...than to spend the money to increase domestic productivity. Gambling that they will be able to prevent China from co-opting all that is being transferred. Bad bet.
May not be as rosy as you think:
"Over the past ten years, bloated state-owned enterprises and “collectives” (most of them in effect also state-owned) have shed much of their excess labour. Many have been simply closed. Between 1998 and 2002, such closures resulted in job losses for a staggering 24m workers, or about 10% of the urban labour force, by government reckoning."
"The closures continue. Official newspapers reported this month that more big layoffs are imminent at some of the country's state-owned commercial banks, which have already shed some 250,000 staff and closed 45,000 offices since the late 1990s. The government says some 2,500 state-owned mines and large enterprises with a total staff of 5.1m are due to be shut in the coming four years."
"China ignores rural areas when calculating unemployment figures in the belief that, since villagers enjoy land-use rights, they can make a living. Even so, 150m or so rural-dwellers have little or nothing to do and in the coming years may move to urban areas. This vast reservoir will add to urban employment pressures just as China faces a baby-boom surge in the labour force and, thanks to heavy investment in capital-intensive production, diminishing employment gains from growth. “Socialist” China will have its work cut out."
This is also appropriate for those who think all is well in China:
"There are other serious effects thus far, for example, CHINA is financing its agenda largely through the largesse of one william jefferson clinton, who granted MFN to our enemy.......how many American jobs, factories, and technologies was THAT alone?"
Cut the crap. 104th Congress helped usher that in. Clinton signed the deal that was passed through Congress. You better mention Clintons bedfellow: House Speaker Newt Gingrich. There is enough blame to go along.
It really depends on how you define an "economic boost." It's easy to focus on specific statistics or indicators and find a crisis at any given time, but let's step back and look at the big picture here. Can you think of any measure by which the standard of living in the U.S. has declined since the end of Reagan's second term in 1988?
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Yes, China's productivity has risen dramatically in recent years. It's interesting to note that: "With China starting at a much lower productivity level than the developed world, it is able to grow productivity much faster. Restructuring activity is also expected to lead to more productivity increases."
"Joint U.S.-, European- and Japanese-Chinese ventures were seven times as productive as state-owned companies in 2002."
How much longer can the state prop up their state owned and joint stock firms before they have to privatize more industry?
"China's increase in service jobs and decline in manufacturing jobs is not only part of its economic development but also fits in with domestic and global demand, the study said. Services made up 33.5 percent of China's gross domestic product in 2002, up from 30.7 percent in 1995. In the United States, there are five service-providing jobs for every goods-producing job."
McGuckin noted that 12-15 percent of U.S. jobs are created and destroyed every year as its economy evolves. Now, China is experiencing this "creative destruction" as well, he said.
bttt...
Put in a global evolutionary context, the loss of 2.6 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. since the start of 2001 looks far less ominous -- at least to folks not seeking elective office. Facts about the extent of the decline in global manufacturing jobs would demolish the economic (not the political) argument for protectionist measures. Both houses of Congress have proposed legislation that would impose stiff tariffs on Chinese imports.
"Facts about human capital's decreasing relevance in the manufacturing process would expose the silliness of appointing a manufacturing czar, an initiative announced recently by President George W. Bush. They would upend the misplaced notion that China's undervalued currency -- the yuan has been pegged at 8.3 to the dollar for almost a decade -- is giving the country's manufacturers' a competitive edge and ballooning its trade surplus with the U.S. to $103 billion in 2002."
"No reasonable degree of yuan appreciation could offset the labor-cost differential between the two countries. U.S. manufacturing workers make about 25 times what an average Chinese factory worker earns, according to statistical agencies in the U.S. and China."
The fact that China is losing factory jobs at a faster rate than the countries from which it is supposedly stealing them just might put to rest the notion of China, job thievery nation.
I never put much faith in the belief that unpegging the yuan would be a panacea for the American worker.
Now, go ahead and tell the moderator - as you usually do - that I'm picking on you so that this post can be removed.
It really depends on how you define an "economic boost." It's easy to focus on specific statistics or indicators and find a crisis at any given time, but let's step back and look at the big picture here. Can you think of any measure by which the standard of living in the U.S. has declined since the end of Reagan's second term in 1988?
Obviously by the time I checked there were no replies, just crickets! Why is that?
Scenario #2 began to disappear under FDR's New Deal -- when the U.S. started getting an internal "level playing field" that took away the economic advantages associated with manufacturing in certain regions of the country. The greatest enemies of a robust manufacturing sector are all those things that are supposed to elimiate economic distinctions across the nation -- Federal minimum wage laws, Social Security, Medicare, etc.
Same to you, Bud.
Why?
Buchanan was correct about the Rust Belt and the trememdous loss of mfg. jobs in the 70's and 80's. What most folks don't realize is that when many companie's sent mfg. jobs overseas they eliminated a lot of white collar positions such as engineering, management, supervisory, accounting, etc. Add to that the impact on service sectors in the community that depended on business from the local factory workers and the effects were pretty devastating.......Buchanan's mistake was delivering the truth in a somewhat disingenuous manner.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/larrykudlow/lk20050414.shtml
Larry Kudlow has a pretty convincing argument against you.
Nissan has been employing 6,000 auto workers at its plant in Smyrna, Tennessee since 1983.
I think you forgot about the maquiladora plants in Mexico that landed a lot of work that used to be done in the Midwest and although many southern states did lure in auto plants the fact is many communities were devastated after the factories left. That's why there was such a signifiicant exodus of people south from states like Ohio, Pa., Ill., etc.
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