The Blockade Stopping the Economy From Recovering

Not if unemployment goes down. Not if more people are employed in higher paying jobs, or wages increase more than purchasing power. (and higher wages do not necessarily cause a proportional increase in consumer prices)

Not necessarily. It depends on how other countries react. China is doing a great job of this, so obviously you are wrong.

But even if it did mean lower exports, this still might not necessarily be bad overall for America's economy.

There's no necessary reason why this must be the case. And even if GDP did go down, it is not necessarily the same thing as standard of living. There are some reasons that protectionism might result in lower levels of inequality, higher wages.

But I would argue that protectionism likely would result in higher GDP. All this wealth and capital would not be drained out to another country. What'sthe point in cutting prices a little bit if it results in so much unemployment?

Suppose your child is unemployed and you need someone to work for you? Do you hire your child, or do you hire a stranger who is willing to work for 10% less? Someone in a different country is less likely to buy your products than someone in your own country. It's really like a prisoner's dilemna paradox, in a way, or the fallacy of composition. So while it may be good for any individual company to outsource, as a collective, it may be better for all these companies not to outsource, because they end up loosing so many customers who can no longer afford their products because they have now been displaced into other lower wage jobs.

 

we were becoming the information society, but the corps have sold us out via foreign outsouring

 

I think we understand the issues. This is more about exploring the solutions.

 

How can unemployment go down when you wish to terminate exports?

All costs associated with creating products and services have a direct impact on the price of those goods...and labor is usually a large chunk of those costs.

So you believe the US can deny other nations exports yet have those same nations accept US exports...sort of a one-way trade agreement.

When exports are about 30% of GDP...reducing export sales is going to be a negative impact on the US economy. Reducing any GDP will have a negative economic impact.

Lowered GDP means less jobs and less personal income and less government tax revenue...which of these is a good thing?

Lastly, I believe in open enterprise and international trade agreements. Those who create quality products for a competitive price will find their place in the economy. If the USA desires to increase international sales then the USA simply needs to provide quality products for competitive prices. The USA will win some and lose some...so what. Just like a corner grocery store must create a business model in order to attract and maintain customers, and this neighborhood store will evolve over time, so must the USA in the international marketplace...

 

If the USA wishes to function in the global marketplace, then US businesses must use resources from anywhere in that global marketplace in order to compete. Those of you who keep harping about 'outsourcing' as if it's some evil conspiracy and anti-American need to move into the 21st century! Long gone are the days when US business could be arrogant about their US-made products and services. US consumers as well as consumers around the world demand quality products for cheap prices; those businesses...no matter where they are located on Earth and no matter on Earth where they procure their labor and materials, who wish to provide these products must do so in a very competitive environment...

 

Sorry, the days of American made products are not long gone. They will be making a comeback. I sense a tinge of crafted pessimism in your post. Are you sure you're from the US? For some reason I sense you're from China.

 

There is a $15 trillion economy in process today in the USA. If a person, or a business, wishes to participate in this $15 trillion economy, then both must provide a quality product for a competitive price! If both do this, they will achieve economic success.

Regarding people, or employees, if a person is out of work, can't find work, wants to earn more, blah...blah...blah, then that person needs to take whatever action necessary in order for them to compete against other Americans seeking employment. There is no other solution and government certainly is not a solution! People need more education, more training, more skills, higher performance, relocation, etc. to compete for the valuable jobs.

Regarding business, they too must provide a quality product with competitive pricing.

Lastly, qualifying for a valuable job, securing a valuable job, opening a business, succeeding in business...all of this is very difficult. Those who do not wish to invest in a quality product at a competitive price will never find success...

- - - Updated - - -

Don't even know who you are talking to?? but from my perspective it makes no difference where I live?

No where did I say American-made products are long gone?

 

No, people don't need a lot of training to produce widgets and gadgets. The solution is far more simple than you propose. We expand existing production and build from there. No special skills needed. Just some wheels greased to make it happen.

Don't worry China, people will still buy your crap.

 

we need to revise our import \ export taxes on goods and services

otherwise foreign outsourcing will be the beginning of the end


.

 

Foreign outsourcing has nearly gutted our country already. "Beginning" of the end?

 

Stop voting for and placing in powerful positions corporate owned sock puppets.

Put politicians on official notice that they are no longer the elitists we have allowed them to become, they are employees that need to be scrutinized daily, held accountable immediately if not sooner when they step out of line, or use their power for corrupt self interests, or other unethical practices, just like any other criminal POS that uses their position to misappropriate funds and embezzle.

Stop making laws, abide by the ones that are on the books, as their oath requires, and eliminate any and all programs that are antiquated, or nonproductive. STOP ARGUING OVER CRAP THAT DOESN'T PERTAIN TO YOU EFFECTIVELY DOING YOUR JOB AS AN ELECTED OFFICIAL!!!

Evaluate all foreign aid and eliminate immediately, any foreign aid that goes to countries that either support or harbor terrorists.

Stop the anchor baby, illegal alien gravy train welfare programs. Initiate work programs for anybody seeking public assistance, and pay them minimum wage for the hours they need to work to cover the costs, and insist they spend the rest of the week applying for jobs and documenting the places, contacts of those businesses they seeked employment from.

Make a constitutional amendment that any laws that congress passes, must be adhered to by all public officials, no fine print or exceptions.

Review each and every regulation on the books and if it doesn't pertain to public safety, public health, or a direct destruction to the ecosystem, remove them immediately without exception so competition can be reintroduced back into the economy, and capitalism can actually work again just as much for the small entrepreneur as it does under the current corrupt system that protects the rich/elites corporate empires.

Take the rich/elites tax code and replace it with a simple flat tax on earned income, that doesn't exceed 16% where 10% goes to the state that person resides in, and 6% goes to the federal government, so all other forms of taxes can be rightfully eliminated. No tax exemptions (except for non profit organizations that actually spend their money on helping the community they reside in, which eliminates that burden on the government to attend too), no loopholes, no tax breaks except those that pertain to employing and maintaining jobs that make the employees productive members of society, not a burden on the rest of us.

Make it completely against the law to donate any money to a political party, and only political donations can be given to a particular candidate that that individual can actually/legally cast a vote for, not to exceed $100.00 from each eligible voter, in the form of a personal check or a notarized money order. No corporations, no unions, no foreign citizens/governments, or any other entity should be meddling in the election process that belongs to the voters and the voters only. Anyone receiving illegal funds, or accepting favors from lobbyists, will be charged as an organized criminal, lose all assets as ill-gotten gains, and after conviction of racketeering should automatically receive a 20 minimum sentence for each infraction.

Now if you are serious about fixing things Silhouette, help make these things become a reality, or stop typing, since you are obviously not interested in saving this country from the inevitable economic collapse on the horizon if the two party scam remains in power..

 

You mean, stop voting...

I've got a better idea: national referendum on lobbying reform. Any politician caught taking money, favors or influence of any kind from corporate lobbiests is guilty of treason and all the remedies for punishment therein.

 

Bribing public officials is already illegal. The best government corporate money can buy turn a blind eye to the obvious standard operational procedure.

Insider trading is also illegal when one of the peasants do it, but when a politician does it it is considered a job benefit.

Voting democrat and/or republican is nothing more than condoning corruption and treason.

 

The blockade stopping the revival is the government. With bailouts, stimulus, and low interest rates, we are encouraging mal-investments with insufficient resources its what got us into this mess and its what is making it worse. Ludwig von Mises predicted this way back in the 50s:

when the government pushes interest rate to artificially low levels it encourages investments. The investments are bad and their are not enough real resources to back the investments the result is a temporary boom rise in wages prices and inflation but the inflationary boom can not be sustained as there are insufficient real resources for all the projects. The resession needs to be embraced so we can save money and liquidate all the bad investments. The recession is not pleasant but it has to happen after a crack-boom like the one in the housing market and the more it is put off the worse it will be. The more the government intervenes the worse it makes things or if it helps at all it only sets the stage for worse things down the road eventually the piper has to be paid.

This is what happened in the housing boom and bust and its what is happening now.

 

Last time I checked actually, lobbying IS legal and goes on all the time. Also Citizen's United, the political-bribery statute writ-large was upheld as you know. So there's some very powerful pro-bribery statutes allowing the buying and selling of our elected leaders every single day. Right there is the root of the weed in our economic recovery. Rich corporate interests are apparently too stupid to know of Henry Ford's wisdom: to give enough work opportunity and to pay his employees well enough to afford his cars.

It's a delicious catch-22 that I'm at once aggravated about and spellbound in watching unfold. Essentially, corporate monopolies have to allow competition to regain a foothold again to provide enough jobs to allow consumers to be able to afford their monopolized products!

There's only one way out: corporate-monopoly morality. Or more succinctly, death of monopolies.

And don't hold your breath on that one.

This is why Uncle Sam [if we had one with huevos] needs to kick the problem in the crotch. Because corporations will go to their deaths blindly before they take steps to regulate themselves. And they will take the entire country down with them... That's the inherent danger with monopolies, they are an economic monoculture that cannot survive a pestulance of conditions like we have today. When they go down, everyone goes down. And we simply cannot have that as a measure of national security. Monopolies are a threat to national security.

 

The mistake in opening trade was providing insufficient mitigation to the short run effects.
In the long run, free and open trade will prove beneficial to all countries involved, in the short run however there are economic displacements that could have been limited by a more gradual shift, or some aggressive infrastructure spending to create jobs to replace those lost in the initial shift of production overseas.
At some point in time, a prosperous Mexican middle class(and a prosperous Chinese middle class) will provide export opportunities for US business, however in the mean time we need to deal with the very real negative effects of such large economic shifts.
The US has a very bright economic future, given huge energy finds, and huge developing markets in Latin America and Asia, and borrowing against this future to mitigate the effects of some of the very things that make this future possible, makes perfect sense.

 

No, fracking isn't the answer. Destroying the last underground freshwater resources we have for both drinking and agriculture is not the answer to our longterm economic plan.

Haliburton by Law must disclose ALL of it's fracking chemicals to public scrutiny according to the Safe Drinking Water Act.

 

All you are showing is how corrupt the system has become and why there needs to be drastic changes, unfortunately the two party scam has a monopoly on government, and therefore dictates to the people how it will run the nation, when it was never intended to be that way.

Lobbying in itself is not evil, but it certainly has the potential to be evil and when there is a corporation involved, or an industry forking out large quantities of cash for lavish trips, food/drinks, 5 star Hotel accommodations, campaign finance, or black (or any color really) cases full of cash, it becomes bribery and bribery is illegal. To what degree is determined by crooked politicians and their crooked lawyers (USSC).

We as a nation have the short term memory of a small puppy, and they (criminal politicians) use that to their advantage, and as the saying goes, we get the government we deserve, because most of the population is too stupid to know when they are being lied too, and played.

 

Lobbying can be reformed and harsh penalties and exposure to voters made part of the punishment for violations. We can introduce a stigma towards lobbying where it is equated with rape in the minds of voters. Anyone exposed for accepting favors from industry could be made to wear the scarlet letter and their career ruined. This would usher in a new age of democracy where the Will of the People is actually catered to. Everyone can lobby but any gifts of cash or favors must be strictly forbidden and on legal par with bribing a police officer or a judge.

 

Obviously we agree, but the idea that lobbying needs to be restrictive only falls into play when the unethical is involved. Unfortunately the same elected officials who are supposed to police the unethical practices within the government are the ones allowing it to remain unchallenged. IOW there is no benefit in eliminating the benefits of unscrupulous activities when they are working so well for them.

Lets face the facts, every time the government tries to reform something, they are actively reworking the system so that it works better for themselves, and is not in the best interest of the nation as a whole. Look at election reform, most of the legislation in that area benefits the candidate not the voter. Same with the finance reform. When they should have removed special interests of any kind other than registered voters eligible to cast a vote for the candidate in question to eliminate the corruption money creates, they opened the door to unlimited amounts of corporate dollars to sit rough shod over elections throughout the country. What it has done is utter nonsense to the election process and made corporate entities even more of determining factor when it comes to who the people will be actually voting for, and it will always be their guy.

 

When money is involved it must always be assumed it will be used to influence. If it's illegal to use money to influence the enforcers of laws [police/judges/juries], how is it legal to use money to influence the creators of laws? [Congress, State Legislators]

 

We are not hurt when we send paper American money overseas. The money has t come back to us, otherwise they gave us goods devices and labor in exchange for cheap paper. They don't even get the physical paper but that is another story. Protectionists just say this in the hopes the consumer will give them charity for their inefficient business model. We can't spend 150k educating people to do work that is not worth 150k internationally over a lifetime. Goodbye textiles, hello robotics. ( besides cashiers are worth More internationally then seamstresses).

- - - Updated - - -

They decide what is legal.

 

Well then if they can be bribed, so can police, judges and juries. What's the difference?

Manipulating law is manipulating law. You cannot sanitize it in certain cases and not others.

 

There is a difference though between free speech advocacy and bribery. I have worked for politicians, you really can't buy all of them both sides of the aisle. That doesn't stop them from doing dumb things though because they think they know better then people though. Just as dangerous.

 

I still don't see the difference. You know lobbiests are bribing Legislators every day with gifts, money and favors. If they were doing that to police, judges or juries, we'd throw them in the slammer.

Yet right at the top of the legislative process, they're given free rein.