If you defend foreign outsourcing you are guilty of defending this...

[DVSentinel]

Let me try to clear this up for you. Import, retail, marketing etc. aren't things you can trade. We have a huge trade deficit. We have become a consumer society and we now running out of money because we've sent our wealth abroad. That is why the economy is in trouble. I don't believe there is any hope of turning our economy around until we start producing agains instead of consuming. If you believe otherwise, that's fine but it is illogical to me. I'm not talking about protectionism. I'm talking about increasing the cost of imports to help motivate businesses to come back home and create US jobs. The government, if it were wise (I realize it isn't), would replace some taxation with the import duties leaving more money in the hands of taxpayers. I don't see any other way out of this mess. Nobody else seems to have a sensible idea. Taxing and spending certainly isn't the answer.

I don't see that as a way out either. Until we start getting money coming back in, or rather more money in more hands coming back, we are still in the same boat. We can produce all we want, but if the only market that can buy it or will buy it is our own, then this is isolationism, or a least a form of it. If what we produce is not sold overseas or affordable, then we still buy some imports and we still have a deficit.

The only real choice is that we create an environment where business wants to be. The global market is simply now too big to be isolated from it. Labor, regulatory costs and taxation has to be adjusted to make us competitive in the world market. Without that, we eventually fail.

 

[fmw]

I don't see that as a way out either. Until we start getting money coming back in, or rather more money in more hands coming back, we are still in the same boat. We can produce all we want, but if the only market that can buy it or will buy it is our own, then this is isolationism, or a least a form of it. If what we produce is not sold overseas or affordable, then we still buy some imports and we still have a deficit.

The only real choice is that we create an environment where business wants to be. The global market is simply now too big to be isolated from it. Labor, regulatory costs and taxation has to be adjusted to make us competitive in the world market. Without that, we eventually fail.

I think that is what our nation is doing. I recommend you dig in for the long haul. It is likely to be very long indeed.

 

[Zalatix]

There is a failure here to consider what these workers lives would be like without the jobs available at Apple. Unless they were dragooned off of the streets and imprisoned in the factory and forced to work against their will they are there by their own choice and presumably would not have been able to find anything with better conditions or pay.

To regulate these factories and force them to spend a lot of money changing things to your liking would be to shut them down because they would lose their competative cost advantage.

To shut down the factory would be to condemn these people to a life of worse poverty and deprivation than you imagine that they are living now.

If America refuses to allow imports from countries where workers are exploited, there's no country for corporations to run to. So they will simply improve working conditions and keep their workers.

 

[Beaudreaux]

If America refuses to allow imports from countries where workers are exploited, there's no country for corporations to run to. So they will simply improve working conditions and keep their workers.

Really? You think it's that simple (Smoot-Hawley)?

 

[Zalatix]

Really? You think it's that simple (Smoot-Hawley)?

Smoot-Hawley didn't do any damage. The loss in international trade MIRRORED the loss in GDP. The Dust Bowl did a thousand times more damage than your fantasy exaggerations of Smoot-Hawley. You want to know what really caused the drop in trade? Look at the Oklahoma farmlands during that period for your answer. We didn't have anything to trade.

Also, we had more exports than we had imports, leading up to (and mostly during) Smoot-Hawley. That's called a trade surplus. Do you understand what this means? If we block imports now, what we lose is our trade DEFICIT. If every country stops trade with us, we lose X amount of exports and X*2 amount of imports. Our trade deficit IMPROVES to zero.

However I propose a much more chemotherapy-style solution: sink the dollar. Do what China did and peg our currency so hard that other nations have to hyperinflate into oblivion to win that game of chicken. Print dollars until the presses melt.

I'd like to see your argument for how we'd keep importing stuff then. LOL.

 

[LowDown]

If America refuses to allow imports from countries where workers are exploited, there's no country for corporations to run to. So they will simply improve working conditions and keep their workers.

As I wrote earlier, imposing our standards on them will have unintended consequences. Increasing working standards to US levels will markedly increase the cost of goods, lower demand, and put people out of work. What we call a job that "exploits" people might be seen as a plum job to the natives. Few people take jobs they don't need.

 

[Neomalthusian]

It is impossible to have foreign outsourcing unless you have working conditions like this in the country where you're sending jobs to.

Is an American company guilty of the living conditions in those countries that existed before they even contemplated locating a factory there?

Is it safe to presume that the quality of life in that country was already quite low if the workers happily take those jobs (maybe even compete for them)?

Would it be better for the people in those countries if our companies never did business there in the first place?

 

[beerftw]

Smoot-Hawley didn't do any damage. The loss in international trade MIRRORED the loss in GDP. The Dust Bowl did a thousand times more damage than your fantasy exaggerations of Smoot-Hawley. You want to know what really caused the drop in trade? Look at the Oklahoma farmlands during that period for your answer. We didn't have anything to trade.

Also, we had more exports than we had imports, leading up to (and mostly during) Smoot-Hawley. That's called a trade surplus. Do you understand what this means? If we block imports now, what we lose is our trade DEFICIT. If every country stops trade with us, we lose X amount of exports and X*2 amount of imports. Our trade deficit IMPROVES to zero.

However I propose a much more chemotherapy-style solution: sink the dollar. Do what China did and peg our currency so hard that other nations have to hyperinflate into oblivion to win that game of chicken. Print dollars until the presses melt.

I'd like to see your argument for how we'd keep importing stuff then. LOL.

smoot hawley most definately decimated international trade.besides the dust bowl,smoot hawley caused a tarriff war with every major country believing the only way to prosper was to produce and sell but not to consume foreign products,the end result was that countries produced products they couldnt sell,because they were all trying to backstab eachother,and litterally raced to the bottom.

add to that price fixing and quota systems,under the belief that lowering production and raising prices was good for farmers.in actuality it made it harder for a struggling nation to afford food,and caused the us to lose to the soviet union in wheat exports,and the rest of europe on many others.

smot hawley was so damaging to the economy that the ultra liberal keynesian fdr repealed it.

 

[TheDemSocialist]

Ill tell you the problem.. Neoliberal capitalism.