Obama to propose $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue

sangha said:

You are being very misleading. You said that your formula measures economic dependency, and your formula failed to take into account what was being traded.

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The international trade ratio can be applied in a relative sense to compare the trade dependence between two (or more) nations. "What is being traded" falls more in line with microeconomic analysis, as opposed to the macro setting described previously.

The fact is, without foreign trade, our economy grinds to a halt.

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Nonsense. While the impact of complete autarky would be problematic; the U.S. would be far less "ground to a halt" than Germany, China, South Korea, France, The United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc.... Why? Because the U.S. has the most developed internal economy on the planet; rich in natural resources, arable land, and a highly productive internal service producing sector.

You will find that no other nation on the planet has a more developed internal (do you know what this word means?) economy than the United States. This is a fact.

That means we are highly dependent on intl trade

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Your use of the term "highly" is subjective. We can quantify the fact that we are "less dependent" than a high majority of the planet.

We can stop buying a lot of toys and our economy won't grind to a halt. We can't stop importing oil,or computer chips, or number of other goods without wrecking our economy.

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You act as though computer chips and oil are not produced in vast volume here in the United States. Autarky would be painful for everyone, but less painful for us!

You haven't shown any evidence that anyone besides yourself uses it in the way you have.

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Your strawman is a failure.

I never disputed anything you said about Germany so this is a straw man. I also never said we are the most dependent on intl trade either.

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Have you not payed any attention to what i have been saying? relative to the rest of the international trading community, we are of the least reliant on international trade. Your reply, "But we import lots of oil!" does not refute this statement. :lol: The use of the terms more, less, least, and most imply inequality.

I merely refuted your claim that your ratio is an accurate measure of independence on intl trade. Try to focus. You're grasping for an argument and your points are lacking coherence as a result

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The ratio provides a quantity which can be used in comparison to other nations allowing the use of more, less, most and least.

And that statement has been proven wrong. It has been shown that one must look at what is being imported and exported, and the role those products play in the economy, in order to determine how dependent an economy is on intl trade. Even you agreed with this.

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Why is this so hard to comprehend for some people; do you believe there is a difference between "Country A is dependent on oil" and "Country A is less dependent on oil than Countries B,C,D,...."? Stating that a country is dependent on international trade without quantifying the scope and magnitude accomplishes very little. A measurement based on comparison is implied. With that said, we can take it to another level by comparing what they are importing and exporting (comparing how much oil Germany imports with the U.S. for example), but this does not invalidate my position.

I agree. There are many factors that have to be measured. That's MY point.

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You still do not even understand my argument. How on earth can your point refute something you cannot grasp?

You want me to prove a "maybe" statement?

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I want you to prove "the other words".

DRZ said the same thing I did

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Definitely not.

I made the same argument that DRZ did.

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See above.

Goldenboy219 said:

The international trade ratio can be applied in a relative sense to compare the trade dependence between two (or more) nations. "What is being traded" falls more in line with microeconomic analysis, as opposed to the macro setting described previously.

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Repeating this doesn't make it more true

Nonsense. While the impact of complete autarky would be problematic; the U.S. would be far less "ground to a halt" than Germany, China, South Korea, France, The United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc.... Why? Because the U.S. has the most developed internal economy on the planet; rich in natural resources, arable land, and a highly productive internal service producing sector.

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I never said we were more or less dependent than any specific nation. However, your claim that we are one the least dependent nations is false.

But I do agree that internal resources do make an economy independent, but that just undercuts your claim.

You will find that no other nation on the planet has a more developed internal (do you know what this word means?) economy than the United States. This is a fact.

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We weren't talking about who had the more developed internal economy. You are undercutting your own claim here

Your use of the term "highly" is subjective. We can quantify the fact that we are "less dependent" than a high majority of the planet.

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No, it's "relative", not "subjective", as your own response implies (ie "less dependant")

And there are plenty of poor nations whose economies would not change much without intl trade. They were poor to begin with, and they'd still be poor without trade

You act as though computer chips and oil are not produced in vast volume here in the United States. Autarky would be painful for everyone, but less painful for us!

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Relative to our needs, they are not produced in vast volume.

Your strawman is a failure.

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Umm, nothing in that link says that your ratio is a measure of economic dependence on trade. It merely notes how the economic downturn affected the trade of various nations.

You failed again

Have you not payed any attention to what i have been saying? relative to the rest of the international trading community, we are of the least reliant on international trade. Your reply, "But we import lots of oil!" does not refute this statement. :lol: The use of the terms more, less, least, and most imply inequality.

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You're changing your argument here. You did not compare the the US to "the rest of the international trading community". You compared us to the rest of the world.

The ratio provides a quantity which can be used in comparison to other nations allowing the use of more, less, most and least.

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But it does not measure "economic independence on intl trade". I never said it was a useless measure. I merely said it didn't measure what you claimed it did

Why is this so hard to comprehend for some people; do you believe there is a difference between "Country A is dependent on oil" and "Country A is less dependent on oil than Countries B,C,D,...."? Stating that a country is dependent on international trade without quantifying the scope and magnitude accomplishes very little. A measurement based on comparison is implied. With that said, we can take it to another level by comparing what they are importing and exporting (comparing how much oil Germany imports with the U.S. for example), but this does not invalidate my position.

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Yes, comparisons require measures. Unfortunately, the measure you used does not measure independence from intl trade

You still do not even understand my argument. How on earth can your point refute something you cannot grasp?

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Repeating that won't make it any less false

sangha said:

I'm not sure what your first question means, but the answer to your 2nd is "possibly but not necesarily"

There are many nations which export far more than they import. Many third world nations export raw materials but it hasn't resulted in wealth and prosperity except for a few dictators and their most loyal supporters

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My first question was in a global market should competition exist.
In short should Americans be building products to compete with other countries, or should America let other countries build their products for them in so doing would not the consumers be effected by the labor force?

In my opinion it will be some time before the unskilled labor force leaves America.
Thus creating a void in money circulation as well as tax revenue.

Theory; 1 millionare paying taxes with a tax refund or 20 million unskilled laborers paying taxes.
Theory; 5 millionares with money to buy products 20 million unskilled workers buying products.

This has to do with consumer spending through labor productivity in the U.S..
If the labor force in America continues to go down so will consumer spendingeace

sangha said:

Repeating that won't make it any less false

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This was my original statement:

Goldenboy219 said:

I would like to point to the fact that the U.S. has (by far) one of the most independent economies on the planet. Yes, we might import more than any other nation on a nominal basis, but such comparisons do not reflect the nature of trade. The U.S. imports less than 15% of GDP, which is far far less than any other industrial nation in the world outside of Japan. But when you take into consideration Japan's export sensitivity in regards to output, the U.S. enjoys a greater independence (that is not to say we are completely independent).

So can the whole "we are exporting all our jobs" crowd cut the nonsense?

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I clearly presented my statement within the context of relativity. To which you replied:

sangha said:

NO, the US has one of the most interdependent economies on the planet. Our economy depends on trade. Without our ability to export goods, we would quickly go bankrupt. Without the importation of oil (as well as many raw goods) we would quickly go bankrupt

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Which does not even address my statement. I never said complete autarky would be painless in the U.S.; only that it would less painful in comparison to nearly every other nation. You have only proven you do not understand the topic.

upsideguy said:

I didn't say I was successful at it yet either.... It has taken a ton of my money and has been running at breakeven over the last two quarters. I have been at it for two years (open for 18 months). Hopefully it starts making real money over the next year.

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Best wishes. There are lots of difficulties, many obstacles are put in place by local and state governments. I hope you make it.

sangha said:

It depends on the business and the market. Some businesses will never succeed. Others require a lot of investment. Others do not.

My most successful businesses were mostly internet-based. I bought financial data, did some calculations that were then being done by hand, reformatted the data, and sold it to financial institutions who replaced the work done by those employees with my data. Since they no longer employ those people, they don't know how to calculate the info they need, so they can't develop their own software to do the work. All this took was some insight, some labor (to write the programs and built the website) and a little upfront money (to purchase the data and for the internet provider)

I'm also involved with importing a food product that is hard to find, limited in supply, and superior to other similar products on the market, which I sell to high-end restaurants. The markup is small, as is the market, but it is a steady source of income. It took a little money (to purchase the product initially) and some labor (to go around and sell the product)

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Very nice. I started one of the first Internet Service Provider companies. We got to a million a year in sales at around our 18 month mark. But we had some graft. I had an employee skimming cash. It took a while to catch her. And my money partners were a bit shady. So I left between year two and three.

Goldenboy219 said:

This was my original statement:



I clearly presented my statement within the context of relativity. To which you replied:



Which does not even address my statement. I never said complete autarky would be painless in the U.S.; only that it would less painful in comparison to nearly every other nation. You have only proven you do not understand the topic.

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And as my quoted response shows, I did not say that your ratio was meaningless; Only that it was insufficient as a measure of "independence" from intl trade. I even used oil as an example, which you agreed with when another poster used the very same argument

WRT your 2nd point, I see you still don't get it, even after I've explained this several times - there are many poor nations whose economies would be less effected if they stopped trading with other nations

Misterveritis said:

Very nice. I started one of the first Internet Service Provider companies. We got to a million a year in sales at around our 18 month mark. But we had some graft. I had an employee skimming cash. It took a while to catch her. And my money partners were a bit shady. So I left between year two and three.

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I guess I should point out that I originally went to college with the intention of becoming a CPA. I took 3 years of acctg, and both my brother and father were CPA's, so I have a good understanding of how to setup a business to make such cheating difficult to do, and easy to detect.

I suspect that theivery by partners is one the leading reasons why many businesses fail. That's why both cash and bank balances need to be checked daily

sangha said:

I guess I should point out that I originally went to college with the intention of becoming a CPA. I took 3 years of acctg, and both my brother and father were CPA's, so I have a good understanding of how to setup a business to make such cheating difficult to do, and easy to detect.

I suspect that theivery by partners is one the leading reasons why many businesses fail. That's why both cash and bank balances need to be checked daily

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Supply and demand have nothing to do with it, natural disasters, slow delivery of goods and services, bad business loans, illness...it's all greed? That's stretching it a bit.

sangha said:

I guess I should point out that I originally went to college with the intention of becoming a CPA. I took 3 years of acctg, and both my brother and father were CPA's, so I have a good understanding of how to setup a business to make such cheating difficult to do, and easy to detect.

I suspect that theivery by partners is one the leading reasons why many businesses fail. That's why both cash and bank balances need to be checked daily

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In this case she was our CEO's secretary. When we fired the CEO we quickly discovered her graft. Like many businesses we had the technical aspects in hand but not the business processes.