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To: B-Chan
Karl Marx loved the idea of Free trade. Anything Marx was for, I'm against.

Communists view economics as a zero-sum game (nobody gets wealthy except at the expense of others) which is precisely the same view that protectionists have.

14 posted on 04/18/2005 7:24:35 AM PDT by Strategerist
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To: Strategerist
Communists view economics as a zero-sum game (nobody gets wealthy except at the expense of others) which is precisely the same view that protectionists have.

Alexander Hamilton rose up from his grave, read your post, scratched his head, and scowled, "what's wrong with you, son?"  :-)

The founding pops were mercantilists, remember?  Nor were the early American economists to follow believers in tariff-free trade.

20 posted on 04/18/2005 7:46:24 AM PDT by Racehorse (Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.)
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To: Strategerist
Kudos to the honest Marxist who offered the following lament: "The misery of being exploited by wealthy capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all."
29 posted on 04/18/2005 8:03:57 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (I ain't got a dime, but what I got is mine. I ain't rich, but lord I'm free.)
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To: Strategerist

Well, we're still waiting for the RedChinese consumer marketplace to emerge.

Might take another 50-100 years, but THEN the US will prosper, right?

Except by 50 years out, the knowledge of tool and die making will have completely evaporated in the US.


100 posted on 04/18/2005 9:53:10 AM PDT by ninenot (Minister of Membership, TomasTorquemadaGentlemen'sClub)
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To: Strategerist
Communists view economics as a zero-sum game (nobody gets wealthy except at the expense of others) which is precisely the same view that protectionists have.

Free trade dogma insists that everyone benefits from it in the long run, but history does not agree. In history there are winners and there are losers. Protectionism creates winners (pre 1870 England, Wilhelmine Germany, pre 1945 America, China, India, and Japan) and free trade creates losers (Spain, Holland, post 1900 England, post 1970 America).

Free trade, like Marxism, is a textbook theory that just plain does not work in the real world because nations are no more altruistic than people. When pushed to extremes it creates economic distortions that benefit people who live off of investments at the direct expense of people who live off of paychecks as the economy stops making things.

145 posted on 04/18/2005 11:39:15 AM PDT by Sam the Sham
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To: Strategerist
Karl Marx loved the idea of Free trade. Anything Marx was for, I'm against.

Communists view economics as a zero-sum game (nobody gets wealthy except at the expense of others) which is precisely the same view that protectionists have.

I am sorry, but you do not know what you are talking about! Concepts like added value, accumulation of capital, advancement of means of production are critical elements of Marxist theory. Marx wanted capitalism to go on the path of global free trade, because he thought that it will bring the victory of socialism.

Radical Marxists (like Bolsheviks) despised and hated the trade unionism, labor laws, Church social doctrine, solidarism, redistribution of wealth, socialdemocracy, welfare and similar reformist compromises. They wanted unequalities and class struggle to intensify and to end in the violent revolution.

231 posted on 04/18/2005 6:39:52 PM PDT by A. Pole (George Orwell: "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.")
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