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EricC85 · 01-27-2018, 07:55 PM

(01-27-2018, 11:33 AM)JackCity Wrote: 14 year olds back in manufacturing seems like a very good plan.

I'd actually allow 8 year olds work, makes the workforce so much bigger and gives jobs to more Americans. Cheaper products and more profit for all!

Understand I'm not advocating that I'm only pointing out that to compete with cheap labor that would be one of the cost allowing child labor back domestically.

Personally I don't have a problem with cheap labor overseas creating cheaper imported goods. I think American companies can still compete and the tire example I've used is an area that is proven to be true.

My point is selectively impossing Tarrifs on hand picked industries is counter productive and undercuts supply side economics.

(01-25-2018, 11:18 PM)flsprtsgod Wrote:
(01-25-2018, 08:14 PM)EricC85 Wrote: By that logic we should impose Tarrifs on anything made outside of Canada or Europe.
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, for instance, are just fine.

(01-25-2018, 10:55 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: Apparently this is more than a 2-sided question. I have a different point of view from both of you.

I don't think imported tires are of lower quality than American made tires. But that's beside the point.

Secondly, if a person wants to buy imported tires, they should have that right. And I don't think restricting imported tires would have any effect whatsoever on the human rights of the overseas countries where those imported tires were made.

But let's suppose that we did restrict cheaper imported tires. Now everyone who needs new tires has to buy more expensive American made tires. Because of this, people drive longer on old tires instead of getting new ones. Fewer tires get sold and installed. Raise the price, reduce the demand. So fewer tires sold, fewer jobs at tire stores and fewer jobs at tire installers.

The problem is, things that benefit society as a whole are much harder to see than things that benefit a particular special interest. People say, for example, we need to restrict the inflow of cheap steel from overseas to save American steel jobs. It's easier for people to see that we saved some jobs at a steel mill than it is for them to see that the price of everything that uses steel just went up and they're going to have to pay more for a whole lot of things.

People save a whole lot of money on cheap imported goods, and that money that they saved flows into other businesses here in the United States. Suppose a person who is living from paycheck to paycheck has to pay more for clothes, and shoes, and a TV set. And then they need to fix their roof. Do they postpone fixing their roof? And with the price of shoes going up, do they buy fewer shoes? And what effect does that have on jobs at shoe stores?

Bottom line: I don't think we can control the flow of cheaper goods, and I don't think we should try to. We need to either find a way to compete, or find some other business. I am for free markets and free trade.

And yet our primary economic adversary has neither free markets nor free trade, so why grant them free access to our market at the same time they undercut us with immoral busuness behaviors? Cheap stuff at the cost of our moral fabric.

Our moral fabric is conducive to how we conduct ourselves. We can't evaluate the rest of the world's moral fabric and decide to only participate in trade with those select we find acceptable. That would be economicly unsustainable since the concept of morality is subjective and changes with whoever is in power.