Hitachi Corp. said:
If there were no data or historic examples to support trade then that analysis would hold. Where is the actual aggregate evidence that free trade is bad? Nearly 93% of economists recognize that free trade increases individual's welfare. If free trade is bad for a nation, isn't interstate trade bad for individual states?
How is it bad for such nations? Is China worse off because of their increased growth due to trade?
Not to be rude, but I cannot ascertain what exactly you are either stating or trying to ask when it comes to state-run economies/nations and their interaction with more market-based countries.
What exactly are you trying to say? That China is an under-developed nation, which relies largely on its export industries? That is true, but that has more to do with how under-developed the country has been (due to past policy) than with trade providing new economic opportunities. As the country becomes more developed it will be able to provide more services, and have a more dynamic economy.
Mises was only one market intellectual. The market can still operate with state-controlled entities. Granted, efficiency is lost by nations seeking to further political goals over economic ones. However, the gains are still present. Is there an actual example of how free trade has hurt the United States as a country?
There is a large body of evidence both historical and empirical that suggests markets change social structures. Look at the labor market. If it were not for freer labor markets women would still maintain a mostly degraded role compared to men. The push of markets with advanced housework utilities allowed for women to have greater participation in the workforce. Not to mention the markets have made U.S. culture the most influential in the world. Why do you think youth will frequent Burger Kings and McDonalds in Asia? It’s because trade allows for non-coercive transactions to spread different aspects of culture. The reason we can have such a diverse and multi-layered culture is because economically beneficial interaction can occur at a low cost. English is the most commonly used language in business. American culture is spread throughout the world, and allows for world culture to mix even more. If you wish to see the dire effects of trade protectionism look no farther than North Korea. It is one of the few remaining command style economies. Its people are impoverished and its culture dying. It has very little influence on the world’s culture. Compare that to Japan, which has significant influence on world culture in video games, animation and much more. Free trade will only strengthen America as a whole. Is there any actual evidence that free trade has hurt our cultural standing?
Interdependence is a positive requirement for cooperation.
The free market may have been an open landscape, but WWII and civil rights movements were the vehicle for women's advancement.
Those signs of puke food are not trophies; their salads are okay.
This is the epitome of free trade, it does not address the issue of domestic productivity, as a need for valued production and interrelated positions.
With NAFTA, the automobile industry took large portions of its manufacturing to mexico for lower wages and production costs.
MS-13 gangs, anchor babies, overpopulation, social welfare -
ROBERT L. BARTLEY WSJonline said:Open Nafta Borders? Why Not?
Immigration is what made this country great.
Monday, July 2, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT
Reformist Mexican President Vincente Fox raises eyebrows with his suggestion that over a decade or two Nafta should evolve into something like the European Union, with open borders for not only goods and investment but also people. He can rest assured that there is one voice north of the Rio Grande that supports his vision. To wit, this newspaper.
We annually celebrate the Fourth of July with a paean to immigration, the force that tamed this vast continent and built this great Republic. This is not simply history; immigration continues to refresh and nourish America; we would be better off with more of it. Indeed, during the immigration debate of 1984 we suggested an ultimate goal to guide passing policies--a constitutional amendment: "There shall be open borders."
The naysayers who want to limit or abolish immigration look backward to a history they do not even understand. Each new immigrant group has been derided as backward, unclean, crime-ridden and so on; each has gone on to adopt the American dream of a free and independent people, and to win advancement economically, politically, socially. The ability to assimilate is the heart of the American genius, precisely the trait that sets the United States off from other nations. Immigration makes the U.S. what it is.
On this Fourth of July we celebrate this history more forthrightly than we have in two decades. Anti-immigrant hysteria peaked in 1996, when the California Republican Party self-destructed with anti-immigrant themes. Today the GOP is led by George W. Bush, who told campaign audiences "family values do not stop at the Rio Grande." The employer sanctions in the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill are now recognized as windmill tilting. Congress has repeatedly raised the limits on H-1B visas for engineers and such, to 195,000 a year from an original 65,000. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court twice held that aliens are people too, entitled to such basic rights as the presumption of innocence, petty 1996 legislation notwithstanding.
At the same time, the U.S. is gradually relearning the secret of assimilation--every informal recognition of cultural differences but no formal ones. "Bilingual education," which trapped schoolchildren in a Hispanic ghetto for the benefit of ethnic politicians and a few teachers, is on its way out. Racial quotas generally are under increasing suspicion. In the next census, in 2010, increasingly meaningless and irritating questions about ethnicity may be abolished. This too bodes well for future acceptance of immigrants.
Immigration now runs about a million a year against a population of 275 million, a rate that remains below the historical average. The proportion of immigrants with postgraduate education is three times the native rate. New immigrants are no longer eligible for welfare, removing that bugaboo. A study by the National Research Council in 1997 found that while unschooled immigrants are net recipients of taxpayer money in the first generation, their children repay these costs.
About half of current immigrants are Hispanic, though the Asian component is projected to grow rapidly. By far the largest single source is President Fox's Mexico, a Third World nation of nearly 100 million inhabitants sharing a 2,000-mile border with the U.S. The opportunity north of the border is inevitably a huge magnet for the poor but ambitious. There is no realistic way to stop the resulting flow of people--certainly no way that would be acceptable to the American conscience.
This was headlined last May when five sunburned and dehydrated survivors staggered up to Border Patrol agents in a desert called "The Devil's Path" about 25 miles north of the Arizona-Sonora border. Searchers found six more survivors, then 14 bodies. Smugglers had abandoned the group in 115-degree heat without water. This is no isolated instance; last year 491 souls perished trying to immigrate. With the U.S. Border Patrol doubled by the 1996 act, these victims were forced to risk death in increasingly desperate corridors.
Sealing the border against people willing to risk death is not a practical option, let alone a morally attractive one. The only hope is to manage the flow of people in a constructive and humane way. As President Fox says, "By building up walls, by putting up armies, by dedicating billions of dollars like every border state is doing to avoid migration, is not the way to go."
Item one in any agenda to ease border problems would be rapid economic development to provide opportunity within Mexico. It's entirely possible that Mexico will become the next tiger economy. It has the huge advantage of free trade with the world's largest market. For all its poverty, it has a large first-world economic sector and a technocratic elite educated at the best American universities. Contrary to stereotypes, the general population is exceptionally hard-working. Politically President Fox promises a fresh start after ending 71 years of one-party rule. If Mexico can avoid the currency depredations that have marred its last quarter-century, the immigration problem may start to fade.
North of the border, the solution to the problem of illegal immigration is to make it legal, or at least to normalize the movement of people. A program of temporary work visas would allow Mexicans to go home; the incentive for undocumented aliens now is to stay rather than face the border barrier a second time.
Laws and regulations can generally be made more generous. The 1996 Border Patrol expansion is a dubious expense, expanding a cops-and-robbers game that sometimes turns deadly. After the 14 deaths in May, the Mexicans promised to patrol their side of the border in especially dangerous areas, while the Border Patrol promised to arm agents with pepper balls rather than bullets. During the campaign, President Bush talked of dividing the Immigration and Naturalization Service into two agencies, one to police the border and another to aid immigrants already here.
Another amnesty for undocumented aliens is already in the air; every decade or so Congress somehow or another faces this reality. Even opening Nafta borders completely, I would dare to suggest, might not unleash a new flood of immigrants.There is a limit to the number who actually want to come, and experience suggests that many of those who do already can find a way. And after all, we did have a long history of unlimited quotas for Western Hemisphere immigrants, ending only in 1965.<--LIE
President Fox is nothing if not a visionary. Many scoffed at his ambition to unseat the machine that had run Mexico for generations; now they scoff at his proposals on immigration. But over the decade or two he mentioned, a Nafta with open borders may yet prove not so wild a dream.
Mr. Bartley is editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
I did not say those were not factors. However, to ignore the impact market forces had on opening opportunities for women would be quite foolish. Due to the increased efficiency of many household utilities women faced a smaller opportunity cost for working part-time. Moreover, due to the increase in corporations clerical work was in higher demand. Clerical work generally does not require a significant amount of training, and can be done relatively efficiently on a part-time basis. In this sense women had more opportunities to work and would reap comparatively larger gains from working. This was all because of the market. Not to mention, the decline of unions, which did not include many women in their ranks. (The idea was to limit the supply of workers to married men who could then be paid a “living wage” that would allow them to be the only bread-winner.). Markets also helped lessen the influence of unions (through trade and other factors) to allow for a more equal labor market. Legal reforms certainly played their part, but if it were not for the economic forces that made hiring women profitable such change would have taken much longer to take place.
It does address the need for domestic productivity in a rather simple sense. If workers know that relatively low-skill manufacturing positions are not guaranteed they are inclined to increase their skill sets (especially with very transferable skills). This in turn forces the American work-force to be more productive. Not to mention by allocating resources in the most efficient manner (offshore outsourcing in some cases) you free up other resources in the domestic markets (which can in turn produce something else). There truly is no real evidence against free trade. It is as close to an empirical fact as economics has. Arguing something 93% of economists agree upon is mostly pointless.
This is precisely why we should return to protectionism and switch back to the days of the self-sufficient household. If free trade between nations were truly bad then trade between states would be bad, and trade between households would also be bad. Obviously this is not the case. Integration and the division of labor from trade has been driving living standards upwards for decades.
Empirically, the benefits of trade are rather substantial.
He is not a pretty conservative neoclassical economist. He is a New Keynesian. That is why he has a number of studies on the "Stickiness" of Prices, which is something that originated from Keynesian economics. Even if you ignore that, it is fair to say that a good number of the 93% of economists who support free trade are Keynesians. This is truly one of the areas of economics that has no real debate left (in broader terms, sensitivity and other issues still need to be addressed).
Good thing I don't set much store by the economic literature then.:mrgreen:
This makes no insight into why they accept these wages and conditions nor does it create an excuse for it when better wages and conditions can be given, it is just an old get out for those profiting from others.
New Keynesians and most other keynesians are neoclassical economists. New Keynesianism is just a label for his macro views ie an amazingly bastardised hardly recogniseable version of keynesianism. The only real keynesians are the post keynesians, the disciples of those like Joan Robinson and Nicky Kaldor who were colleagues and friends of Keynes himself and their economics is wildly different, generally rejecting marginalism and Keynes really came to do for all intents and purposes.The idea of rational expectation which is central to it would make Keynes turn in his grave, Keynesianism is uncertainty!