Posted on 04/17/2023 6:02:00 PM PDT by DoodleBob
...The Heritage Foundation — a conservative think tank known for its pro-business allegiances — released a report Tuesday written by Alexander Salter, an economist at Texas Tech University, flirting with whether the US government should protect workers from free markets.
Conservatives have long argued that the government should not tax, regulate, or subsidize industry because consumers are better off when companies are forced to compete for their dollars. However, the consequences of globalization for American manufacturing have caused many conservatives to reconsider the need for government intervention. Heritage, once the center of free-market conservatism, is now at this very crossroads.
...
Where markets generate wealth but harm families, communities, and the nation, "Combating monopolies, redistributing income, and even guiding production in essential industries are all valid public policy options," the report said.
...
Donald Trump took the White House in 2016 railing against the consequences of free-market policies.
"Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache," he said in a 2016 campaign speech.
...
The Reaganite fusion of free markets, social traditionalism, and anti-communism "is fundamentally dead," Geoff Kabaservice, vice president of political studies at the market-oriented think tank Niskanen Center, told Insider. "Ronald Reagan in 2023 might have seen his philosophy as pointing in different directions as the needs of the country are different now," he said.
...
Heritage's president, Kevin Roberts, took over in 2021 and has aligned the think tank much more with the New Right, which is home to figures like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who wield state power in the name of culture war... causing a lot of turnover in the organization.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I remember the skunk smell of the beer my mother drank.
I favor financially balanced trade.
For certain key industries such as motor vehicles, no export of dollars as payment. Payment in parts for other parts and for profits.
“commoditize human labour worldwide”
Foreigners tend to underestimate the costs of living in the USA and UK. In London, some have lived ten to a house.
They are happy to do so for a few years, but in doing so they will force wages down to a 10 to a house level for Americans and Brits too, trashing the Western way of life for most Westerners.
As Americans age, they need to spend more on healthcare.
A virtually endless supply of healthy foreign young people means Americans can’t cover their own health care costs.
“the primary thing driving business out of America is taxes not labor.”
There’s many things involved:
1. housing costs
2. health care costs
3. regulations
4. labor unions
5. insurance costs
6. essential part suppliers are often in Asia
7. “worker” attitudes
8. China market access
9. choice of having a Chinese partner or Chinese competitor
“minimum wage”
If employers all think employees should get $1/hour, that’s what they’ll offer.
If banks all think depositors should get less than 1% interest, that’s what they’ll offer.
Corporate mindset can be very powerful and it can be dealt with by legislation or it will be dealt with in other ways.
That’s why the corporations were going to be allowed to build apartment buildings and provide kitchen facilities and basically become a modernized corporation town. For the ability to bring in whatever workers were necessary for the time period each worker was allowed to stay, the corporation had to provide their living expenses. That $10/day, or whatever it would have worked out to be, was money that the worker could send home through the electronic money transfers.
A virtually endless supply of healthy foreign young people means Americans can’t cover their own health care costs.
************
The virtually endless supply of labor that public/private corporate addicts have gotten use to since 1965 is running on empty.
Our whole globe is old and their isn’t damn thing experts or prognosticators can do about it.
Labor utilization and efficiency will become more apparent as we move through this unpredictable decade.
“The virtually endless supply of labor that public/private corporate addicts have gotten use to since 1965 is running on empty.”
You probably don’t live in El Paso.
Trump and DeSantis? Bull s**t.
I don’t trust DeSantis. Of course, I don’t trust any lawyer career politician. People kept electing lawyers instead of leaders...After about 50 years of that mentality it’s left American nearly dead on the floor.
bump
It would be simplest just to do the R&D to collapse the cost of energy and water.
Another reason why the USA needs an across the board 20% import tariff. It is evil to charge income taxes on US labor and then let in 3rd world goods in duty free. The road to serfdom is paved with free trade bricks.
Fixed it.
So, we either tariff or die.
Unions are dead and the minium wage is a political issue. It’s not 1976 anymore.
mittens says corporations are people, too. Just with more rights and privileges than you little people.
corpus (n.) "matter of any kind," literally "a body," (plural corpora), late 14c., "body," from Latin corpus, literally "body" (see corporeal). The sense of "body of a person" (mid-15c. in English) and "collection of facts or things" (1727 in English) both were present in Latin.
Note both the buyer...and the timing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.