Protectionism

[loosecannon]

I am posting empirical evidence underpinned by rigorous analysis. You post rants and preconceived opinions.

And the empirical evidence is that NAFTA has benefited all three countries involved.

If you wish to post something empirical, please do so. I'd love to see it. But you haven't so far.

you are posting globalization talking points and think tank garbage. obviously there is a global industry involved in promoting globalization and far more than willing to erect rationales in it's favor.

DUH.

Meanwhile the nations practicing mercantilism are making bank, while those that aren't are shedding industries, nearing default, critically deep in debt and suffering massive unemployment.

You aren't an American are you?

 

[loosecannon]

Mercantilism fails on so many levels.

http://freetheworld.org/2006/EFW2006complete.pdf

But it has always worked in the real world since the advent f the nation state.

In fact it is the dominant model today.

Except in the USA.

Mercantilism is not the dominant model today. The dominant model is an open economy that mostly allows the free movement of goods, services and capital across borders.

There is some empirical evidence that some developing countries have benefited from trade barriers for a time, but generally, mercantilism and protectionism is damaging to economies.

You can always find specific examples of barriers protecting favoured industries within countries. However, when one looks at the broad volume of trade, most of it is unfettered.

Most of it is fettered.

The number of ways in which markets are skewed takes more than a page to list even if a novice bothers to list them.

There has never been anything which remotely resembled a free market. And almost every deviation from that mythical free market is some form of protectionism.

I pitty you. So smart yet so wrong.

 

[Sheldon]

Looks like Toro has charged into this thread with his graphs.

Freer trade enables labor specialization on a global scale. The division of labor increases productivity and the living standard generally, according to some Adam Smith guy.

I like the iPhone as an example. Most of its parts are made in Taiwan, which is where the whole thing is allegedly assembled. The touch screen is made by a German-owned firm in China. Before the value-added labor of Silicon Valley is factored in the iPhone is nothing more than a worthless hunk of plastic, maybe a handheld mirror if you angle is just right.

Raising tariffs on just one specific industry--say, plastics--would affect several industries on our side of the pond, so I think the idea of targeted protectionism would eventually result in a slew of unintended consequences and a rise of prices across the board.

Maybe a more accurate question is: do protectionist policies targeted at a specific industry create enough jobs to justify the increase in prices? Since that price increase would impact more than just the targeted industry--and then more than one product--I think the answer is almost always "no".

Socialism isn't all bad--it's helped this nation become what it is today--but protectionism is an element of socialism I don't like.

 

[loosecannon]

Looks like Toro has charged into this thread with his graphs.

Freer trade enables labor specialization on a global scale. The division of labor increases productivity and the living standard generally, according to some Adam Smith guy.

according to Karl Marx. Not according to Adam Smith.

And yes, Marx was definitely correct. But specialization can occur on any scale or within a nation rather than in a global scheme.

Ultimately, if all things were equal and energy was finite, it would never be cost effective to make things continents away fr consumption here.

But since all things are not equal and Chinese wages are suppressed they can make shit so cheap that it can be marked up 500% and still be cheaper than our locals can match.

If Toro was correct in saying that wages followed productivity Chinese goods would cost more than similar US goods.

Bu they don't, because China practices protectionism.

 

[loosecannon]

Socialism isn't all bad--it's helped this nation become what it is today--but protectionism is an element of socialism I don't like.

Protectionism is not in any way socialism. It is nationalism pure and simple.

 

[Sheldon]

An inquiry into the nature and ... - Google Books

But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a particular trade, but is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a particular business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them in the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in some others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them.

I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where only ten men were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound about four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day.

But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this particular business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations​

 

[shintao]

Yay or Nay?

How?

Why? Why not?​

America needs to grow up. Take gov. completely out of corporations & business. Let Americans then decide what they want done through their own efforts, at boycotting products and a few criminal laws.

I would prevent any corporation that has abandoned America already from returning, and let small businesses start out fresh.

 

[Toro]

If Toro was correct in saying that wages followed productivity Chinese goods would cost more than similar US goods.

Bu they don't, because China practices protectionism.

This is factually wrong. Output per worker in China is a fraction of the output per worker in the US. American workers are more productive.

you are posting globalization talking points and think tank garbage. obviously there is a global industry involved in promoting globalization and far more than willing to erect rationales in it's favor.

No, these are studies done by a variety of sources making the same conclusions. There are more, but I have posted enough.

You aren't an American are you?

Ad hominem deflection irrelevant to the discussion.

Toro, you seem to misunderstand the discussion at a fundamental level.

Yes of course, globalization may very well benefit the world economy at large more than mercantilism. Esp the poorest 2nd and third quintiles of the world pop, a the expense of the 4th and 5th quintiles.

The glaring real world example in support is that is that the BRIC nations are averaging something like 6% annual GDP growth during a recession that many say could have ushered in a world wide depression.

Mercantilism, by definition, is not concerned with global GDP increase or benefit. It is strictly concerned with relative national benefits.

Like; "gee it would be great if the US had to worry about putting the brakes on OUR economy because 9% annual growth threatens to overheat OUR economy".

That is strike 7.

You lose.

Economics is not a zero-sum game. BRIC economic growth is occurring because of a shift in internal institutional priorities, a move towards a market economy, technology transference, and in China's case, massive government stimulus. These are all irrelevant to America's condition.

In fact, the BRIC countries are what have been keeping the global economy afloat. They have been the biggest source of demand for American goods.

Here is what the former socialist President of Chile had to say about globalization.

President Michelle Bachelet opened an international gathering of socialist leaders in the Chilean capital on Monday by urging them to take advantage of the "reality" of globalization instead of fighting it.

"Let's admit it, comrades, modernity and globalization are not an imperialist invention," Bachelet told the conference of the Socialist International, an umbrella organization for socialist parties from around the world. "They are realities and it is up to us to turn them into opportunities." ...

"Our rival is not economic modernity," Bachelet told the gathering. "Our rivals are the forces that oppose social progress and seek an accumulation of wealth that excludes many."

Bachelet Touts Benefits of Globalization - washingtonpost.com

while he openly opposes globalization

Wrong on two counts. First, he's a she. Second, she does not oppose globalization.

But what anyone with with the most basic understanding of arithmetic knows is Americans cannot maintain their standard of living while at the same time competing with a foreign workforce that can subsist on a fraction of the prevailing American wage.

Wages are paid based on productivity. The more productive you are, the more you will be paid.

absolute bullshit. When productivity increases wages don't follow suit.

And many of the most productive people are paid 1/100 as much as CEOs in global corps. In fact the CEOs are often arguably the least productive wage earners on earth, often making bank while their own firms collapse beneath them due to wholesale mismanagement.

Yet the multi million $ parachutes and pensions in no way reflect your shallow theory.

The difference between econ theory and econ reality is as the difference between fantasy and reality.

There have been many economic studies demonstrating causality of productivity to wage growth. Though I wouldn't disagree that CEOs are overpaid, that does not change the fact that the more productive the worker, the higher they are paid. For example, it should be pretty obvious that someone who makes airline engines is more productive than someone who works behind a counter at a gas station. And those people are paid accordingly to their levels of productivity.

Now you are just looking like a gooftard.

NAFTA helped create the flood of illegal aliens and the conversion of the Mexican economy to a drug fiefdom.

NAFTA also facilitated the exodus of dozens of core industries from the US. And with 9.6% unemployment forecast to persist for decades you can't defend offshoring industries.

No matter how many quackpot economists support your anti American memes.

Please demonstrate a causal link between NAFTA and the Mexican drug trade. It strikes me as "gooftard" and "crackpot" to make such a link given that it is driven almost entirely by internal American demand. Are you saying that because of NAFTA, we have outsourced all of our drug distribution, that the Mexicans are stealing jobs from American drug dealers and drug kingpins? Is that why everyone on The Wire was so poor?

Most of it is fettered.

The number of ways in which markets are skewed takes more than a page to list even if a novice bothers to list them.

There has never been anything which remotely resembled a free market. And almost every deviation from that mythical free market is some form of protectionism.

I pitty you. So smart yet so wrong.

Feel free to post something, anything, to support your arguments. You haven't thus far.

 

[Toro]

Looks like Toro has charged into this thread with his graphs.

I had to bring out the big guns!

Plus, I had to preempt Shogun before he comes rip-snorting in with his anecdotes!

 

[rhet 2]

I don't know economic theories from Adam's off-ox.

I do know a bit of history, which includes economic policies and practices of previous cultures.

The pre-pharonic Egyptian warlord who created the first unified Egyptian kingdom practiced socialism: all food and all manufactured goods were collected into his personal control and distributed according to his perception of the relative value of various segments of the population subject to his power, his personal judgment concerning every person's relative "value to the State" -- his warriors, his priests, his government administrators got the lion's share -- those who actually produced the food and goods got the least -- and slavery was the primary source of the physical energy required to produce both. Further, this economic practice DID NOT STOP wars: it FUNDED his wars of conquest. He was the first, the predecessor to Stalin and Castro and Chavez. Labor forced from top-down control of the economy and labor/production supply DOES NOT STOP WARS AND DOES NOT STOP class inequality in terms of material possessions: those in power have the most, those who actually do the work still have less than those in power. We've seen this exact same result of socialism in the Soviet Union, in Cuba, in China, and now in Venezuela and in the United States: those in political power get rich and live in luxury, those who labor to produce the wealth have less and live in ever declining conditions -- because those in power take too much of the resources of the working class and spend it on things which do not directly improve living conditions for the working class.

Anyone want to argue that Ukrainian farmers actually lived better under socialism than they did under Nicolas II? Anyone want to argue that Cuban working slobs live better under Castro than they did under the Spanish monarchial system? Anyone want to argue that the lives of Chinese working class slobs were more comfortable, happier, more prosperous under Mao than under the Emperors? Anyone want to argue that ECONOMIC PROSPERITY for the Venezuelan lower classes is actually rising under Chavez's control? Under socialist governments, those in control of the government determine distribution of wealth BASED ON THEIR OWN VALUATION of class contributions to producing that wealth -- and ALWAYS think they themselves deserve more because they achieve more and are more necessary to the good of the State than those who actually earn the goodies by working their butts off.

The Roman Empire, beginning with Augustus Caesar, used government grain doles to buy vote from the lower classes -- this is how Octavius became Imperator in the first place -- and kept on being elected Imperator for decades -- until what had been a time-limited and very narrowly defined and restricted and limited authority became absolute and unlimited power to do whatever the hell he ALONE thought "good" -- and, again, the people in control of the government lived in luxury -- those without jobs, uneducated and untaught, lacking any job skills, lived in near-starvation off the government dole -- and the working class, those in the middle, especially merchants, bore more and more and more of the cost of living for BOTH sets, those in political power and those who had no power even over their own living conditions.

In time, the Roman government actually, by law, forced merchants to donate more than 6 months out of the year to earning the means to keep the unemployed from rioting and burning down the palaces of those in POLITICAL power -- not commercial and manufacturing classes who actually produced the wealth -- those pretty much operated outside Rome itself. Eventually, they tried to force occupations onto citizens: a man whose father had been a carpenter was forced to be a carpenter -- because blue collar workers STOPPED WORKING -- they actually could live better off the government dole than they could by earning their own basic life needs.

As MILITARY DEFENSE of outlying areas declined, violence and destruction along the borders increased until even the outlying border areas of Italy itself came under the same outside attacks, because of two factors, 1) the politicization of the military/police forces and 2) there wasn't enough in the federal treasury, which had teetered on bankruptcy because of excess borrowing to pay for "social programs."

Then, local leaders started using part of their own resources to hire and equip and supply their own private militia defense forces; independent farmers and carpenters and metal workers (blue collar labor) began to appeal for protection -- and the feudal system was born: legal ownership of the land passed to the warlord, but the worker AND HIS DESCENDANTS had usafruit of it for all future time, so long as they also supplied a set amount of labor for the warlord's personal needs -- it started off as 1/7th -- one day's labor on stuff like road building, 5 days on communal farming projects (farms no longer existed -- each farmer had a strip of land as long as an ox team could plow in a single dawn to dark day -- and somebody else had the strip next to his -- they worked all the strips together and divided the produce according to how many strips each family had been guaranteed -- the lord had 1 out of every 7 strips, 1 out of every 7 piglets or lambs born, while each "serf" had 1 out of the entire herd of swine or flock of sheep, grazing being common and herd management being common shared duty) -- in addition, the warlord had specific reserves for himself alone, all hunting rights being reserved, all timber rights, etc., from which income and food supplies he was expected to support the metal workers who kept his swords and shields and plows etc. in good order and his warriors fed and in physical condition for actually fighting bandits. It was a remarkably stable economic system -- except for one thing: there was little to no Upward Mobility, few ways that individuals could break out of their father's social rank and economic activities to satisfy personal ambitions and creativity, pursue personal ingenuity which is the source of technological innovations without warlord approval first.

Magna Carta is actually an attempt to stop the reassertion of Divine Right of Kings by legally and militarily destroying the old feudal warlordism -- and John I (think early 1100s -- some 800 years after the formal official end of the Western Roman Empire, some 300 years before the final destruction of the Eastern half by islamic imperialism) got his clock cleaned -- it was NOT innovative and "progressive" or "liberal" -- and it was NOT "conservative" and "traditional" at all. It was two ALWAYS existing socio-political systems in rivalry since time immemorial clashing, with warlordism coming out on top -- local SMALL government more entrenched in England -- while Big Government (advocated by Charlesmagne and the source of the Holy Roman Empire) replaced warlordism on the continent, particularly in France and Spain.

With the beginning of the surge in technological innovations -- especially in the wool industry (Chaucer's Wife of Bath -- c, 14th century -- was based on a real economic phenomenon; the women of Bath LED a cottage industry that took dominance in the wool/fabric trade away from Flanders -- until the merchant's guild took it away from the women; similar changes were happening in the chandler's trade, metal-working, ag technologies, and, mostly, in transportation related and military industrial and construction areas -- with a huge economic gain for commercial trade directly boosted by the Crusades) -- with these technologies and expanded commercial trade demands came a greater demand for pasture land and the Enclosure movement made the feudal system obsolete -- expanding commercial and industrial potentials challenged ag as the primary economic activity. This Enclosure Movement in England created a massive unemployment crisis by the time of Elizabeth I -- and mercantilism was born. Mercantilism is colonialism for the economic gain of the Home Country under the control of the government. The Hanseatic League was a glowing example of mercanilism at its most successful.

Free trade DID NOT EXIST At ALL until the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was created by break-away New England commercial interests -- based on the superior technology of the Yankee clipper ship and the New England fishing trade and the New England manufacturing trade, centered on the textile industry. In many ways, it was the spinning jenny, the steam engine, and the cotton gin that made slavery and human sweat labor in producing raw materials and food supplies obsolete -- and that was already well underway BEFORE 1776. By 1800, the home-based production system was already being challenged by factories elsewhere, so independent production (the Village Blacksmith is the usual exemplary lamented "old way") and self-sufficiency and self-employment are beginning to obsolesce.

Now, think about WHY the American colonies were settled vs. why Spain conquered it's own territories in the Americas -- and at the same time, thing about the difference between America's Manifest Destiny expansionism and Spanish/French and BRITISH expansionism during the 1800s. Both were driven by economic THEORY and economic demands -- but they were radically different in methodology and in focused purpose. And both are directly related to the question of socialism vs. free trade vs. mercantilism vs. protectionism.

Then, after discussing those distinct historical ACTUAL APPLICATIONS of economic theories, let's talk about what happened when Woodrow Wilson, the Father of Progressive-ism, "came to the throne" so to speak -- and how the US AND EUROPE BOTH crashed in the time between 1918 and 1929.

 

[antagon]

Mercantilism is a discredited policy.

nuance, toro. appending 'neo-' to any such words which you hold such a presumption would put you in line with the modern state of public affairs... particularly in terms of economic philosophy.

 

[rhet 2]

Mercantilism is a discredited policy.

nuance, toro. appending 'neo-' to any such words which you hold such a presumption would put you in line with the modern state of public affairs... particularly in terms of economic philosophy.

Actually, there are NO NEW IDEAS -- they've all been tried to one degree or another in past history.

And hypotheses (which is all we've really got when it comes to economics -- not theories at all -- with only two proven Laws instead of theories) disconnected from actual historical applications of those hypotheses are just words blowing in the wind.

 

[antagon]

But what anyone with with the most basic understanding of arithmetic knows is Americans cannot maintain their standard of living while at the same time competing with a foreign workforce that can subsist on a fraction of the prevailing American wage.

Wages are paid based on productivity. The more productive you are, the more you will be paid.

The foreign workforce that is paid a fraction of the prevailing American wage is paid this low wage because the foreign workforce is much less productive than the average American worker. The work that has gone offshore has been predominately lower productivity tasks.

This is the employment cost index for manufacturing. It measures total wages and salaries paid to manufacturing workers. As you can see, it has been rising despite offshoring.

where do you get this shit from, man? wages are a function of supply and demand within the labor market, just like any other market. on this basis, i argue that the foreign workforce's price advantage is due to 1) the absence of price fixing (a minimum wage) 2) a massive differential of labor supply compared to demand -- demand merely burgeoning at this juncture. 3) the combined effect of 1 and 2 in a global production market for labor-intense (your low-productivity) goods. in this global market, efficiency has more to do with longer hours and lower wages than the skilles of workers valued in our job market.

the ECI tracks the same thing, man. supply of qualified workers across demand.

 

[Toro]

where do you get this shit from, man? wages are a function of supply and demand within the labor market, just like any other market. on this basis, i argue that the foreign workforce's price advantage is due to 1) the absence of price fixing (a minimum wage) 2) a massive differential of labor supply compared to demand -- demand merely burgeoning at this juncture. 3) the combined effect of 1 and 2 in a global production market for labor-intense (your low-productivity) goods. in this global market, efficiency has more to do with longer hours and lower wages than the skilles of workers valued in our job market.

the ECI tracks the same thing, man. supply of qualified workers across demand.

That shit is from the St Louis Fed Fred, which gets its data from the BLS. Wages paid have continued to rise as productivity in America has continued to rise.

Wages are indeed a function of supply and demand, but as you know, not all tasks are homogeneous. There isn't one "labour market." There are many, many different labour markets. The labour market for picking strawberries is very different from the labour market for designing analog semiconductors. Ergo, the supply and demand and thus the wages paid are very different in different labour markets. The higher the productivity, the higher wages paid. In fact, there have been several empirical studies which have shown the widening of wage inequality in the developed world has had little to do with globalization but instead with the application of technology, which is theoretically and empirically consistent with wages paid based on productivity. Basically, if you haven't upgraded your skills, your wage has stagnated. As David Ricardo rightly pointed out in his Theory of Comparative Advantage, the nation is better off doing what it is best off doing. In the developed world, this has meant continued focus on the production of high valued goods. Because there has been an endogenous shock by the introduction of China into the global economy forcing cost curves down, those at the bottom end of the productivity chain have been hurt the most. Since 1970, the real wages for uneducated white males has actually fallen whereas the wages for the best educated has risen the most.

 

[antagon]

The world grew rich under free trade, not mercantilism. You don't understand economic history.

17th century western mercantilism cultivated an economy around production much like asia today. i argue that these western countries now cultivate their economies around consumption through the same sort of heavy-handed management which is entailed in classical mercantilism. developed, post-industrial consumer economies have not come about by way of free trade any more than mercantile wealth had.

in extreme examples like the UK, as i had referred to earlier, the role of the state is every bit as pronounced as the mercantile policy there was 300 years prior. in this way, stacking domestic economic factors in deference to consumption as is consistent in every developed economy is not free trade or any product directly arising from it.

free trade has remained fairly constant, while economic policies have shifted their preference from consumption control to production control.

 

[editec]

Protectionism has been proven stupid for nearly 200 years, ever since Ricardo.

Oh for crimminies sakes! You could not possibly be more wrong. You need to read some US history, Baruch, because if you believe what you just wrote, clearly you don't know any.

The USA had tariffs to foster growth of US industry from day one.

Hell lad, we had a revolution mostly because England would not allow us to even create most indutries here on our shores.

What?

Did you think it was ONLY about taxes on imports?

You were misinformed if you thought that.

You know WHY they could impose taxes on iron glass and paper?

Because England made it illegal for those industries in the colonies.

Go read some history.

It makes no sense for people to pay extra for something you can get cheaper elsewhere

.

It does if you're a nationalist.

If protection was a good idea, each family would still be chipping their own arrowheads and fletching their own arrows themselves.


Bad luck if you didn't have obsidian on your territory, and had to make do with basalt or agate.

Poppycock. You need to read Adam Smith, sport, It's clear you haven't.

Even if you are better at something than someone else, if you can make more resources for yourself doing something they can't, you still do better to hire the less competent person.

We're talking about nations, not indididuals.

Milton Friedman uses the example of a lawyer who can type at 80wpm hiring a typist who can type at 30 wpm. The lawyers time is worth $200 per hour, the typist 's time is worth 8.

Uncle Milty is an internationalist.

Of course he supports a FREE TRADE.

He clearly doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to the USA.

He's a Randian thought and though.

 

[Toro]

The world grew rich under free trade, not mercantilism. You don't understand economic history.

17th century western mercantilism cultivated an economy around production much like asia today. i argue that these western countries now cultivate their economies around consumption through the same sort of heavy-handed management which is entailed in classical mercantilism. developed, post-industrial consumer economies have not come about by way of free trade any more than mercantile wealth had.

in extreme examples like the UK, as i had referred to earlier, the role of the state is every bit as pronounced as the mercantile policy there was 300 years prior. in this way, stacking domestic economic factors in deference to consumption as is consistent in every developed economy is not free trade or any product directly arising from it.

free trade has remained fairly constant, while economic policies have shifted their preference from consumption control to production control.

It depends what you mean, I guess. I don't see the state as being active as being necessarily mercantilist. In most developed economies, the state is 30%-50% of the economy. Most of that is used to spend on wealth transference policies and infrastructure spending. Does high welfare interfere with the labour market? Is road building an interference with the free market? Is this mercantilism?

I view such questions as rhetorical. The state steps in to provide insurance, to redistribute wealth based on societal preferences, where markets fail and where markets don't fail but political power is used to redistribute wealth based on privilege, access to power and skewed political arrangements. Is Sweden mercantilist? I'd say no. The country has an elaborate welfare and entitlement system funded by high taxes on income and consumption but is a free trading nation which is friendly to capital. That to me is not mercantilism.

 

[loosecannon]

If Toro was correct in saying that wages followed productivity Chinese goods would cost more than similar US goods.

Bu they don't, because China practices protectionism.

This is factually wrong. Output per worker in China is a fraction of the output per worker in the US. American workers are more productive.

so. if labor was rewarded based on productivity then labor costs of goods produced would be the same everywhere.

It it isn't, and it isn't.

No, these are studies done by a variety of sources making the same conclusions. There are more, but I have posted enough.

i.e. globalization talking points and think tank garbage.

Ad hominem deflection irrelevant to the discussion.

No it isn't. The merits of globalization and market liberalization are disproportionately realized according to nationality.

That's the whole point of mercantilism and globalization.

Economics is not a zero-sum game.

Of course it is whenever it is viewed statically.

BRIC economic growth is occurring because of a shift in internal institutional priorities, a move towards a market economy, technology transference, and in China's case, massive government stimulus. These are all irrelevant to America's condition.

Hogwash. BRIC nations are realizing robust economic growth due mostly to the fact that their labor productivity is cheaper than ours and because they practice protectionism while we practice globalism. And of course our twin deficits.

In fact, the BRIC countries are what have been keeping the global economy afloat. They have been the biggest source of demand for American goods.

Then explain the trade deficit.

Please demonstrate a causal link between NAFTA and the Mexican drug trade.

Mexicans who used to have tolerable subsistence livelihoods working their own lands have been displaced by agribusiness and the short sighted lure of better paying manufacturing jobs that just didn't pan out.

The largest industries in Mexico today are oil which is declining, the drug trade and human trafficking in that order.

NAFTA has so hollowed out the core economies of central America that there simply are no opportunities domestically besides crime and moving illegally to the US to find work.

Most of it is fettered.

The number of ways in which markets are skewed takes more than a page to list even if a novice bothers to list them.

There has never been anything which remotely resembled a free market. And almost every deviation from that mythical free market is some form of protectionism.

I pitty you. So smart yet so wrong.

Feel free to post something, anything, to support your arguments. You haven't thus far.

Of course I have, I have annihilated your feeble arguments. The success of nations practicing protectionism is abundantly obvious merely by taking a look at which nations are withering and which are thriving while simultaneously recognizing those that peg their currencies and practice strict protectionism.

Were we not so reliant on foreign capital to finance our debt we too would doing a lot more of the same and preserving our economic dominance.

 

[antagon]

where do you get this shit from, man? wages are a function of supply and demand within the labor market, just like any other market. on this basis, i argue that the foreign workforce's price advantage is due to 1) the absence of price fixing (a minimum wage) 2) a massive differential of labor supply compared to demand -- demand merely burgeoning at this juncture. 3) the combined effect of 1 and 2 in a global production market for labor-intense (your low-productivity) goods. in this global market, efficiency has more to do with longer hours and lower wages than the skilles of workers valued in our job market.

the ECI tracks the same thing, man. supply of qualified workers across demand.

That shit is from the St Louis Fed Fred, which gets its data from the BLS. Wages paid have continued to rise as productivity in America has continued to rise.

Wages are indeed a function of supply and demand, but as you know, not all tasks are homogeneous. There isn't one "labour market." There are many, many different labour markets. The labour market for picking strawberries is very different from the labour market for designing analog semiconductors. Ergo, the supply and demand and thus the wages paid are very different in different labour markets. The higher the productivity, the higher wages paid. In fact, there have been several empirical studies which have shown the widening of wage inequality in the developed world has had little to do with globalization but instead with the application of technology, which is theoretically and empirically consistent with wages paid based on productivity. Basically, if you haven't upgraded your skills, your wage has stagnated. As David Ricardo rightly pointed out in his Theory of Comparative Advantage, the nation is better off doing what it is best off doing. In the developed world, this has meant continued focus on the production of high valued goods. Because there has been an endogenous shock by the introduction of China into the global economy forcing cost curves down, those at the bottom end of the productivity chain have been hurt the most. Since 1970, the real wages for uneducated white males has actually fallen whereas the wages for the best educated has risen the most.

i'd agree that there are several labor markets. i was trying to get at that in my point 3. your broader point is taken that some labor markets are adapted to certain demands and that others are not. where free market philosophy prescribes that economies will flourish from allowing market functions such as this determine the bases of economies, i argue that country's policies should be geared to the interests of their constituents. external to free market philosophy is the fact that labor markets are not as flexible as consumption and production markets, particularly markets for 'entry-level', low efficiency, labor intensive production in which china debuted a couple decades ago. where this translates to policy, is the onus of governments to temper the flexibility of trade to that less-flexible nature of the labor market.

additionally, because i am of the opinion that the consumption basis or production basis of national economies are determined by policy, i argue that these policies must be directed at an economic balance which can exploit the factors - particularly human factors - which exist within the borders of the country, foremost. where a country fails to do so, the economy is that much less efficient, since importing goods which can be produced within the capacity of the labor market makes no sense either. developed economies supplement the consumption capability of a labor market operating under the foregone conclusion that they should relinquish production to these 'more fit' economies. the result of that is a welfare state sucking at a financial services (for example) sector which marginally utilizes the labor market... my criticism of the UK... again. where's the efficiency there, at a macroeconomic level?

 

[Toro]

Of course it is whenever it is viewed statically.

And protons are static if that's how you want to view them.

But you would be wrong.

Of course I have, I have annihilated your feeble arguments.

If by that you mean bluster, rants, opinions and nothing demonstrating empirical causality, then yes, I'm sure in your own mind you've annihilated my arguments.