Posted on 02/19/2016 6:56:22 AM PST by Kaslin
What was the U-6 unemployment rate 30 years ago?
What is the U-6 unemployment rate today?
What was the real value of a dollar 30 years ago?
What is the real value of a dollar today?
How many industrial manufacturers were there in the US 30 years ago?
How many industrial manufacturers are there in the US today?
Tell me we aren’t going downhill without any brakes.....
Obama places a $10 per barrel tariff on imported oil. Do you change the price you're charging when selling your US oil? Why?/Why not?
Actually, from most “private” analysts, we do not need to import ANY oil...We, according to these private (not government funded) reports, we can be self sustaining for a long, long time..
We can dream. Meanwhile, do you adjust the price of the US oil you're selling?
Do you mean oil that we export?
This is from July, 2014...
The United States exported crude oil on Thursday, effectively ending a half-century ban on selling American oil abroad and opening the door for a radical transformation of the world economy, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The U.S. has large deposits of the kind of rocks that contain oil. The two biggest deposits are located in Eagle Ford, Texas, and Bakken, North Dakota. These fields have helped U.S. oil production grow by nearly 50% in just three years. America is now well on its way to becoming the world’s biggest oil producer, outstripping giants such as Saudi Arabia.
This increase of production could have huge political consequences, as the U.S. becomes less and less dependent on foreign oil and gas, much of which comes from volatile regions where America has few friends — think of Iran, Venezuela, and Russia.
There is no reason to raise the price on the oil we export...In fact, it would probably be better if we did not export and just relied on our own resources.
Obama places a $10 per barrel tariff on imported oil. Do you change the price you're charging when selling your US oil? Why?/Why not?
Great. Then our exports to China get the same treatment so your do gooding punishes both American industry and the American consumer. Your economic illiteracy will be so good for the economy.
Raise costs to consumers? You bet, that's the whole point
Excellent. Now the guy struggling to provide for his family gets even less bang for his buck so he doesn't save as much for retirement or for his kid's college. Bernie's economic ignorance will appeal to this voter. The welfare state marches on. Between you and Bernie, there's a lot of stupidity.
You can always buy from your countrymen.
Because my countrymen won't raise their prices when your beloved big government raises the price of their competitors goods? This is Economics 101. It's a shame they don't teach it in high school any longer. You did finish high school, didn't you?
Some people just have a problem with freedom. You can't have too much of it, and your prescription for what ails us - higher taxes and more government regulation/bureaucracy - will ensure we have a lot less of it. How conservative of you.
I answered in the last paragraph of my last post...
You know our largest export country is Canada and our largest import country is Canada...We basically swap oil with them and it’s because of geography...
You leave the price the same for a couple of thousand barrels? Cool.
What about the other 9 million plus that we don't export?
Nations that provide large subsidies to their industry to protect them from competition are not competitive. They also don't innovate. If other countries want to destroy their industry, why should we stop them?
large pools of relative slave laborers that nobody can compete with
What? The largest and most competitive economy in the world can't compete with slave labor? Good grief, do you think slave labor is productive? What country offering slave labor are we unable to compete with? Remember, slaves don't earn wages.
state sponsored R&D targeting manufacturing and high technology industry,
State sponsored R&D? Yeah, I always look to Russia when I want an example of innovation by state sponsored R&D. Using tax revenue to subsidize and promote industry does not a competitive economy make. Without a competitive economy, there is no innovation or wealth creation.
And his plan is to negotiate using the leverage of doing what they are doing to get this problem rectified.
Creating trade wars isn't going to benefit anyone. Slapping 35% tariffs on Ford autos from Mexico makes no sense. The American people don't need to pay more for their autos, Ford or otherwise. Negotiating good trade deals is important, but a good trade deal is one that lowers barriers. Trump may understand that and is just trying to appeal to those who don't know any better. Time will tell.
“...What about the other 9 million plus that we don’t export?...”
That reflects the domestic market...It would follow the domestic market fluctuations and have nothing at all to do with import/export...
As I said earlier, we should be self sustaining...period.
You would not adjust the price of the oil coming out of the wells you own?
Depends.
He would forego the additional revenue and would be unemployed shortly thereafter. Pollyanna economics can be hard on a guy.
Why?
We exported $116 billion in goods to China. China exported $482 billion worth of goods to us.
And that is a bad thing why? How bad can we be doing if we have enough money to buy that much stuff from China? China obviously isn't going to be importing goods from us because they are poorer than us and can't afford to! Plus they can produce them cheaper.
Free trade lets us take advantage of their lower labor costs and buy lots of cheap goods, saving the consumer tons of money. That's why our standard of living has SKYROCKETED in the modern era. We don't NEED higher wages when goods are as cheap and abundant as they are thanks to free trade. When we can find a cheaper source for a product than producing it ourselves, the smart thing is to use the cheaper source and reallocate your labor into doing something different. Otherwise your people are working harder than they have to for less. It's much better to get that toaster for half-price from somewhere else and buy a new shirt with the money you save instead of paying twice the price to build the toaster yourself and not get the shirt at all.
Buchanan's tariff plan simply cannot work. Other countries will retaliate with tariffs of their own. A tariff is a sales tax. Free trade is like a sales tax cut for all Americans. If we lower the amount of people we're trading with, we end up paying more for less. Higher wages don't mean anything when prices inflate at the same time.
The point of an economy is NOT to produce jobs, it's to produce goods and services. Every single company in the world would do that without ANY labor if they could. And that's a good thing. It means the cost of those goods go down and we all can afford to work less and still buy the same amount of stuff.
If you want foreigners to buy your products, make a better product or make it cheaper. Our movie industry does great internationally because although our movies have bigger budgets, they’re much better quality than most foreign productions. So we don’t have to charge more for movie tickets than any other country does.
If you suck as a producer, don’t ask the government to tax the superior, cheaper foreign goods to prop up the crappy job you’re doing. If you can’t do the job and compete on a level playing field without corporate welfare propping you up, find another line of work.
Wrong. If we cut the legal and illegal immigration, there will be more jobs for the current freeloaders.
Plus an abundance of cheaper domestic labor will spur more innovation and entrepreneurship. Welfare creates a “floor” which wages cannot go below, because people will simply take the free sh!t rather than work for less. If somebody can start up a company with people willing to work for lower labor costs than they are currently, you’ll get more start-ups, which will create more growth and jobs and higher wages over time if they’re successful.
Happiness is not defined by goods and things alone. The difference between a manufactured good and a service is often kind of arbitrary. Is paying for a massage or buying a massage chair all that different in terms of what you get? Is a manufactured book different from a digital book you download online? We can start a lot of businesses outside of manufacturing that people will be happy to pay for. We don’t need manufacturing as some sort of “special snowflake,” protected form of production.
If we are short on jobs now, it’s not because we need “manufacturing” necessarily. It means we just need more innovation in whatever form it comes. And innovating something new is always better than trying to cling to the same thing you did in the past. To spur on innovation we need to expand free markets in education (school choice), decrease regulations, decrease taxes, and cut off the free sh!t so that people are actually motivated to get out and work.
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