[John Stossel and his team at Fox Business tried to get Sen. Brown to publicly debate trade with me. Brown refused, alleging that I'm an unworthy opponent.]
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)
United States Senate
Washington, DC
Dear Sen. Brown:
How disappointing that you refuse to debate trade with me in a public forum. If I am, as you allege, too “ideological” on matters of trade, then surely you – a member of the world’s greatest deliberative body – will have no trouble mopping the debate floor with me.
But if your letter in the March 25 Wall Street Journal is evidence of the strength of your case, I frankly do understand why you refuse to appear in public to defend protectionism. After all…
… the facts show that, contrary to your claim, American manufacturing needs no “rebuilding”; it’s not in decline;
… even if American manufacturing were in decline, so what? American workers who produce $1,000 worth of, say, the service-sector output called “biomedical research” or “web design” generate as much value as do workers who produce $1,000 worth of the manufacturing-sector output called “#10 nails” or “t-shirts”;
… if Beijing is promoting Chinese exports by devaluing the renminbi, then it is inflicting harmful inflation on the Chinese economy as it simultaneously subsidizes Americans’ consumption; these consumption subsidies are especially beneficial to poorer Americans who spend larger shares of their incomes on Chinese-made goods than do richer Americans; why do you wish to deny poorer Americans the opportunity to stretch their dollars as far as possible?
… a chief reason why America’s bilateral trade deficit with China has, as you report, increased over the past ten years by 170 percent is that you and your fellow members of Congress have during that time irresponsibly spent far more than you received in tax revenues; so you had to borrow. Frankly, it’s the height of hypocrisy for you to be a member of a chorus that sings, with one breath, of the purportedly “stimulating” effects of deficit spending, and then, with your next breath, screams shrill and atonal chants about how malicious it is for foreigners to be among Uncle Sam’s creditors.
Debating in favor of a proposition like protectionism that has neither facts nor reason – and also, by the way, not a smidgen of morality – in its favor is indeed an unattractive prospect.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
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{ 113 comments }
I envision three Brown monkeys, all clutching their hands to their chest to protect their fingers……with the motto “Touch not!”
It’s amusing when a fool cries “Fool!”.
But hey, why should someone who has achieved the expert position of senator lower himself by debating economics with someone who is merely an economics professor?
It’s amusing how people actually believe there’s such a thing as “ideological” as opposed to “realistic”, I suppose
As though realistic isn’t itself an ideology. Good point. What do we make of something who believes a person can live without an ideology?
I know what to make of them. They are people who are blind to their own ideologies.
Someone, not something.
You’d think the way collectivists like to throw around the word “ideologue” as an epithet, that collectivism is not an ideology.
I guess if you follow principles you are ideological, but if you follow principals you are reasonable.
Every political position is based upon ideological assumptions, its generally people with such assumptions that are repulsive or inherently contradictory that hide their assumptions behind “pragmatism” and use ideology pejoratively to attack their opponents.
It is impossible to determine whether or not something works without some set of rights and values which amounts to an ideology, and the irony of the trade issue in particular is that there is widespread support for free trade amongst economists on both the left and the right.
The ones who sneer at those they call “ideologues” don’t have any guiding principles or ideas. Everything is about people and feelings. Anything that they may call an idea is little more than a justification for an emotional reaction. Take egalitarianism for example. All that is is a justification for envy. Feel first, think second. First come feelings of unfairness at seeing disparities in wealth distribution, second comes the solution of using progressive taxation as a matter of fairness. Same deal with protectionism. First come the feelings of unfairness about lost jobs and goods being priced unfairly, second comes the solution of enacting trade barriers. Then there is the judging of ideas based on the source, regardless of the content. Someone is wrong because they are a such-and-such. Idea be damned. Who cares? Once you figured out the person you have all you need to know.
So I must disagree about needing rights and values. That’s for ideologues. Such things are not needed if you are in tune with your emotions and know how to read people.
The smarter ones do, but you’re right that there is always the potential for people to seek justification of previously held sentiments. However, ideological assumptions are just that; there’s no way to scientifically prove individualism versus collectivism.
What can be done though is to point out how policies enacted in the name of collectivism have often ended up making societies collectively poorer, and that rising inequality in a free market is usually the natural result of actions that also reduce absolute poverty.
I would say though that you are right to say that libertarian ideology seems to be better thought out than progressivism (or conservatism), largely because libertarianism is logically consistent.
Wrong. Individualism is based on observation. Most fundamentally and importantly, individualism is the OBSERVATION that reason is a faculty of the individual. Nobody can do your thinking for you. Some people have ideas that others do not. Some people are able to grasp ideas that others do not. Every individual person has knowledge that others do not. These are observations which we use to derive the basic principles of individualism.
Saul,
Beautiful.
We should expect more than a ad hominem from our senators, as your ideology has no bearing on whether your claims are correct or not. As Sowell points out, much of what goes on in the political arena is fallacy masquerading as legitimate debate.
Why should we expect more than ad hominem from these feces throwing chimps? I’m surprised he was able to producing anything as coherent as an ad hominem.
Why? Because it reflects on us. I hold no idealistic notions of politicians, but we put them there because we hold critical thinking in such little regard.
I hate to tell you this, Seth. They are thinking critically
“When countries like China manipulate their currency and give government subsidies to industry, that’s not competing—that’s cheating.”
———————————
Doesn’t the US subsidize a number of industries itself, agriculture for instance? And couldn’t the activities of the Fed be construed, at least in part, as manipulation of the currency?
It’s not manipulation when America does it. We’re special. We have to do it because our enemies do. It’s not really manipulation. We are the leaders of the free world. We would lose jobs. We wouldn’t have to do it if they didn’t do it. They started it. Free trade sucks. Which of these sound bites will get me elected?
I’m late for my haircut in California. Tell the staff to call the pilot and get him to start up my taxpayer funded private jet.
What happened to the “like” buttons?
Like like like like like like
hahahaha…. very well said.
The US got hammered by WTO to the tune of billions dollars for the subsidization of cotton, in a Brazilian lawsuit. They were also given permission to enact trade sanctions against the US. The Brazilian govt accepted a down payment of $400 million dollars. Now the US is giving Brazil $2 billion dollars as a donation toward the development of their oil fields. Mexico won trade sanctions against the US for breaking trade treaties of the NAFTA agreement when the Obama admin gave an executive order to disallow Mexican truckers from going beyond the 50mile barrier of the US/Mexico border. Mexico retaliated, legally by WTO authorization, on farm products. This attempt to please a special interest and enact protectionist policies resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs related to the products that Mexico added a 100% tariff to. Tsk, tsk……oh what a tangled web we weave……..
The perception that protectionism = good is real, and it must be dealt with. It’s extremely difficult to explain to people that the competition for their specific set of low-skills is immense. It’s even harder to explain that “everything will work out better” because that could take a generation. Most people like pretending that if they just “work hard” that they should be rewarded by life long employment, regardless of the alternatives available to their employer. No amount of economic studies or blogs will be able to overcome the sheer anger of driving past an empty manufacturing plant that employed 3 generations of your family.
It may be in our best interests, as economic free thinkers, to remember that there are real people with real problems that will not have the time to “wait” for the flow of resources to return them to the life they had thought they earned and deserved. After all, they committed no crime, but yet must face the punishment.
Many of us believe in the motto of “people don’t see/realize the bad side of protectionism”. The problem remains, the people that don’t see it, don’t really care about it. If segregationists could see how bad their actions were for them economically, would they still do it?
I find it quite easy to show people that after three decades of mostly free trade in most of the countries of the world there are about 2 billion fewer people living in abject poverty, and the average wages in our own nation are much much higher than they were a generation ago.
our homes are bigger, our cars are better, we eat more exotic and a larger variety of food, and we live longer.
Most people will actually be convinced by this evidence, only a few will not.
I agree that the evidence is available and a rational person should be conviceable. My arguement remains, that economics doesn’t only live in the rational world. The psychological and emotional aspects of “trade” should be accounted for in all social sciences. Yes free trade is better, but to pretend that there are not political ramifications that arise is just silly.
As for our bigger homes, better cars — that matters very little when you have no presents on Christmas for your little girl because your labor was more expensive than the Mexican across the border.
What’s interesting, is that a least one time, several hundred, if not several thousands of jobs were denied from the America marketplace due to the high modernization of a manufacturing plant. A newly modernized Ford plant in Mexico that has the capability of producing up to 6 vehicles on the same line. This plant is unlikely to have employed, directly, as many people as the many plants that it would eventually replace, but the employees at this plant would have been paid more, and the higher wages would have supported many new jobs that are within the community in which the plant would have been located. This type of manufacturing will be the norm. Fight it as they may, the luddites, but the techonoloy is not going away, except to another country rather than here.
That’s for sure. Even Denninger is a protectionist, and he calls himself an LPer.
…or he has recently advocated for the LP, anyway.
Lack of an opportunity to earn a living with a specific set of skills is not “punishment”, that kind of misuse of language feeds the problem.
From the viewpoint of that individual, what would you call it?
Which of these sound bites will get me elected?
I’ve received survey calls wherein the questions are all aimed at which message is most likely to persuade me to vote for a tax/bond issue. Will it be: “the children”, firefighters and policemen, etc.?
You need caller ID, so you can ignore everyone, like me.
[Note: marginally effective for in-laws]
…in-laws, and trolls on blogs.
Not really a problem, only happens in front of elections and I like to complain about the restrictive nature of the questions also like to repeatedly refuse consent to tax and bond issues.
I just exchanged thoughts with Senator Brown, and now my mind is a blank.
Actually I would have to agree with Senator Brown on Dr. Boudreaux not being a worthy opponent. Given that Dr. Boudreaux is not running for office for the Senator’s seat, he is not running for office as an opposing political party, etc; the Senator has nothing to gain and everything to lose by such a debate. Besting the ivory towered academic wins not points for Senator Brown, but being seen a fool could potentially cost the Senator politically. Heads-I-lose, Tails-I-break-even, is not a good situation for anyone, especially a politician.
I could have saved myself the trouble of writing a post if I had just read what you wrote and said “Agreed”.
But the senator didn’t refuse on the grounds that Don was too well educated. He refused on the grounds that Don was an ideologue. He should have the guts to admit why he’s not having the debate and not slander his opponent to obscure his real reason. There’s nothing Senator Brown would like better than a debate with an ideological know-nothing to make his own position seem balanced and well-reasoned.
Exactly. A person shouldn’t waste time with debate when the *audience* is blinded by ideology. When your opponent is blinded, it should be considered an opportunity to persuade reasonable people.
But the truth of the matter is that Sherrod is an empty suit who is simply afraid of looking bad to voters.
Here he is back when he ran for Mississippi governor under a different name as the reform candidate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed0c978SspM
The Senator is a politician, and Dr. Boudreaux has no skin in the political game. I don’t believe that this is a slight on the senator any more than it is on Dr. Boudreaux. They are masters of separate domains. When the Senator speaks or gives opinions they are “political” opinions and have nothing to do with economics or even reality in general. He speaks what he believes are the correct things that will further his career as a politician. For the Senator to debate a subject matter expert in economics is not a worthy debate since the subject matter expert speaks of how things DO work, while the Senator’s business is how things SHOULD work, or at least how he should CLAIM they should work to continue being elected. How they DO work is absolutely meaningless (and pointless) to him.
An analogy just occurred to me. A debate between a politician and an economist is like a debate between a magician and a physicist. The magician works on illusion and the physicist will try to point out how disappearing pigeons, pulling rabbits out of hats, etc. is impossible. Exactly how does the magician gain by this debate? He doesn’t. It profits the magician nothing to be debated on the laws of phyics. That ain’t his gig……
I see. You’re making a positive argument and I’m making a normative one. But I’m not sure your positive argument is accurate. I, for one, would be less likely to vote for Senator Brown after this because I value honesty and courage in politicians. I know plenty of other people who do as well.
You can’t assume that It necessarily benefits a politician to slander people who he is afraid to debate.
Don,
You are missing the point as to why Senator Brown won’t debate you. It’s the same reason why former VP (and Nobel Peace Prize winner *cringe*) Al Gore refuses to debate global warming skeptics. Senator Brown and Vice President Gore have no incentive to debate you. If Brown debates you and looks like a fool (which he will), he stands to lose a heck of a lot. If he wins, however, there is not much of a payoff.
In other words, if I got elected to the senate by convincing voters that the earth is flat, I wouldn’t dream of debating that issue and potentially looking like a fool. I am better off by not debating and calling my opponents fools. He has everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Senator Brown’s (and most proponents of protectionism) understanding of economics has not evolved past the days when witches were burned.
Senator Brown’s understanding of politics is, no doubt, superb.
Bet you a dollar to a doughnut that Don had that fingered out already.
I’ve always assumed that calling someone “ideological” is the same as “feels differently than me” Same with “political”. Only other people are “political”.
Greed, too.
Feels?
Only in the loony left is it called feeling. To the rest of the world such subjects call for thought.
A recent article in I believe the Columbus Dispatch showed that Sherrod is expected to win reelection. Can’t wait to move back to the buckeye state after school… not
Having Brown accuse you of being too ideological is yet one more instance of the Left projecting their own faults on the opposition. Clearly Brown is the ideologue.
It is troubling to see this type of projection from the Left on nearly everything now – when a lefty is accusing someone of racism, it’s often because he is the racist. When a lefty is accusing his opponent of using lobbyists or big money in politics, it’s because he is using lobbyists or union money to influence politics. When a lefty accuses a global warming skeptic of accepting money from big oil, it’s because the Left has accepted corporate money to promote its carbon-limiting agenda.
Etc, etc, etc.
Everyone is an ideologue. Leftists prefer not to engage in debate about ideology because their ideology tends to contradict itself.
People ought be free to do what they want with their bodies, until of course someone needs healthcare, education, or a customer for their expensive product then government gets to step in; with no rational principle about which “right” ought take preference.
The left likes to conflate goods and services that may or not be useful if provided to some degree by the government with rights, because the rights based argument is so much easier to make; that way they don’t have to worry about pesky things like efficiency and helping everyone in society rather than just some special group.
Prof–Did you clear your talking points with the Koch brothers?
no idiot, he GIVES the Koch bothers their talking points.
Oh kyle8, how i wish there were a like button. Very funny!
ditto^10
“why do you wish to deny poorer Americans the opportunity to stretch their dollars as far as possible?” DB
Well maybe because since we opened up the “free trade” agreements the numbers of poor have grown, many more don’t HAVE jobs, and they have far fewer dollars to stretch.
The real world… the facts on the ground … show YOU are wrong. There is no need for a debate just some opening of eyes.
According to your “common sense” argument for protectionism, the correlation between this, http://trade.businessroundtable.org/glossary/timeline.html, and this, http://www.miseryindex.us/urbymonth.asp, should be obvious. I challenge you to find it.
Oh, look! A giant pile of poo for some well-meaning and helpful individual to step into.
“poo”
We call this “horseshit” in the uncivilized West.
Muirgeo has never met a post hoc ergo propter hoc that he didn’t like.
post hoc ergo propter hoc sounds like a bunch of proctological terms. Yasafi might be a pediatrician, but we all know where his head is.
muirduck is one of the humans that can do his own personal prostrate exam by using eyeball examination of it because he spends so much time there.
Muirgeo — I don’t know what you you know — all I know is that everything you know IS WRONG.
Why do you come here and spout things that are obviously not true and easy to check, there are not more native poor in the country since the 1970′s when we started free trade. Just the opposite, the number of jobs available and the average wage adjusted for inflation both went way up since that time.
If there are still a lot of poor people it is because we have imported tens of millions of desperately poor people and they have not all had time to prosper yet.
Or the ‘poor’ have not put forth effort or sacrifices (usually of time) to make gains and relieve themselves of being ‘poor’. I would also ask someone to describe ‘poor’. I would not use Govt. definition of a person living poverty as it is politically skewed and with silly standards set in such as property ownership (not land, but silly things like Microwaves or Flat panel tvs).
“Well maybe because since we opened up the “free trade” agreements the numbers of poor have grown, many more don’t HAVE jobs, and they have far fewer dollars to stretch.”
Oh yes, because…
1.) What we have now is certainly unrestrained “free trade”
2.) Free trade “agreements” with hundreds of pages of stipulation/regulation are certainly laissez faire
3.) There is only ONE economic variable, and that is the aforementioned agreement(s)
As long as we all agree with the above, I’m sure we’re all in the same boat here…
Here’s some advice for Sen Brown: “Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”.
If I were a pol, debating Don on anything would be the last thing I’d want.
I have asked my daughter whose bff is Sherrod Brown’s chief of staff to forward this article to her. We will see if it results in anything.
Senator Brown could easily win the debate by asking the professor a single question; By what metric professor do you wish to judge the success of the American trade policy? Debate over….
Headline … Brown in 1st Round TKO over challenger.
Or, in the spirit of the NYT, and previous posts:
I am Krugman, Nobel King of the modern Luddites.
Who are the Luddites?
We are, we’re all modern Luddites…
Who voted for you?
You don’t vote for a king –
Eh? How do you get a Nobel king-thing then?
The grey lady of the Times, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Krugman, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king!
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords, subsidies, and redistributive schemes is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony, or union-derived theatre!
Be quiet!
You can’t expect to wield supreme power just ’cause some Nobel Committee tart threw a sword at you!
Shut up!
I mean, if I went ’round saying I was President, just because some moistened bint had lobbed a Nobel at me, they’d put me away!
Shut up! Will you shut up?!
Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!
Help, help! I’m being repressed!!
What’s a king?
Are you still here?
I think the professor won with this question: “why do you wish to deny poorer Americans the opportunity to stretch their dollars as far as possible?”
Well at least you tried. So what metric shows this to be the case? What’s your evidence?
Here is my evidence;
http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
Since MFN status was given to China there are now more than 6,000,000 people with out jobs. So are you saying their unemployment checks or welfare checks or dollars collected holding “will work for food” signs are stretching further? Is that your claim?
When I clicked on your link, I was told the data base was unavailable.
Second, if you collect a minimum amount of money, are you saying buying cheap goods/services is a bad idea? My evidence, if you will, is buying cheaper goods/services leaves me more money for more goods/services. Would you rather see people spend all of their income on one good or service so they only have that one good/service thus lowering their wealth?
As far as the unemployment, if US businesses can’t compete and are forced out, those workers will move to US businesses that are demanding workers, signaled by high wages. If a city chooses WalMart over Macy’s for clothing, all of those workers from Macy’s can become nurses, as the high wages are signaling a need for them. Everyone benefits: cheaper goods, and more nurses.
Again, because the link is not working, do the numbers include those who voluntarily chose to be unemployed (such as my wife who hasn’t worked since our daughter was born in 2001)? Or businesses that failed to compete, causing natural unemployment? Basically, are you saying the only factor to unemployment is trade with China?
I think Ann Coulter got it right. Go figure.
Yeah Sheet… you should listen to her and go get a little more radiated.
That article is like something right from The Onion but the sick silly bag’o'bones is actually serious… telling us we don’t like science…LOFL
You, like Sergeant Schultz, offer denunciations of Coulter, and the studies she cited. But, neither one of you have offered any contrary evidence.
I know. I know. If His Holiness: The Divine Prophet Algore I didn’t invent it; it ain’t science.
Dr. Sowell has it right when he explains that the ‘cheap’ labor in less advanced nations are more costly than that of the higher compensated laborers in the US. The US worker is far more educated and have had a trait instilled in them culturally that others do not have. That is the trait of putting forth more effort in expectation of merit gains from that extra effort. The American worker has been incentivized through the capitalist system and through generational training to innovate at their job and to give a better performance for their chance to ‘move up’ within a business. The ‘cheap’ labor in the other countries also have less mechanization that speeds up production and creates more efficiency.
It is not necessarily ‘cheap’ labor that incentivizes investment in foreign lands. The lower labor compensation is only one of the many reasons for investment in another country. But, MSM focuses on the labor costs as the reasoning for creating a ‘straw man’ argument. After the high tax costs, high regulation costs, high litigation costs, tariffs on raw imported products, the repatriation penalty, and then the ever increasing mandated labor compensations, a business will find it less punitive to continue investing outside of the US.
The precieved loss of manufacturing jobs in the US is not necessarily the result of trade pacts. The US is manufacturing more than ever. The ‘loss’ of manufacturing jobs is more often the result of mechanization. In Mexico, Ford has built an auto plant that can assemble up to 6 different vehicles on the same line. The personnel within the plant are more educated and trained and higher paid than that of the avg. auto plant in a union factory. If anything, we can blame the unions ever increasing demands which drive up costs of a plant and create more inefficiencies by requiring the X amount of people to be ‘on the job’ regardless of need. Ford attempted to build a plant in the US similar to the Mexican plant, but was met obstructionism from Union sympathizers…. Govt officials. So instead, of more jobs at higher pay and a product produced at a lower cost to consumers which enable the American consumer to hav more money in their pocket for other ‘wants’ or ‘needs’. The American consumer and American worker is now poorer by the protectionist measures.
When one manipulates reality anything can be proven. Don Boudreaux fails to mention that the ‘manufacturing’ he is referring to is simply the value of manufactured goods produced in the USA – a metric which does not account for the billions of dollars of parts imported from slave labour rate jurisdictions and balloons comprehensive dollar values by including the value of imported parts while the intended manipulated perception is that these gross values are all from USA manufactured products. When one deducts these off shore produced parts produced in slave wage jurisdictions from the ‘manufacturing’ figures that Mr.Boudreaux relies upon one finds a completely different and opposite conclusion.
Mr. Boudreaux knows this and is depending on the naivety of readers to not know the difference – a sly manipulation which has obviously fooled a lot of people.
Morality has three positions. Moral – which means one knows what moral is and does it. Immoral – which means that one knows what moral is and doesn’t do it. AMORAL – which means that one never considers morality in the first place.
Morals are constructed from human and social values. There is not one human or social value or moral for that matter) which can be expressed or described in terms of dollars. This means that capitalism cannot now or ever will even consider morality as it only considers dollar values which are incapable of describing even one human or social or moral value.
There can not be a more apt operant example of amorality than one for whom dollars are the only value considered before decision and action.
Capitalism is amoral.
Capitalism does not have the ability to perceive or react to morals (human & social values); it can only respond to greed which can be measured in terms of dollars.
Democratic government (government which represents and responds to citizens human and social values) is capable of being moral and forcing capitalism to be moral. Of course when right agenda demagogues form the government then government is immoral/amoral depending on whether or not one considers that the right agenda ideologues understand morality (human and social values) or not in their governmental capacity.
Amoral/immoral capitalists hate morality (it negatively affects greed) and also hate democratic government because not only is democratic government responsive to morality it also has the power to force capitalism to be moral.
One needs only to consider the billions of dollars the Wall Street and banker crowd spend every year to corrupt our political system into either stalemate (Who is benefited when government is stalemated? The rich or the poor?); and these people are people who would never spend a penny unless there was a dollar in it for them!!
The rich are obviously hugely benefited by political stalemate, a fact which is easily illustrated by the enormous shift of wealth over the last 40 years from the middle class (income $100,000 or less) to the top 5% of income collectors. Meanwhile the bottom 50% of income earners are fodder for the wealthy when democratic government is either stalemated, dominated by capitalist serving representatives or non-existent.
So called ‘free trade’ is far from free and as currently constituted is very far from fair and equal. These scurrilous manipulated agreements have only one objective – to punish middle class workers into accepting the same slave wage/no benefits conditions existent in the countries which receive our exported jobs. And,of course, the neocons main objective is to transfer even greater wealth upward into the pockets of the top 5% of income collectors.
The only countries which we could expand ‘free trade’ to and have it be reciprocal are European countries, Australia, Japan and perhaps South Korea – countries which we have not even considered for so called ‘free trade’. With whom have we aggressively pursued ‘free trade’ (in reality one way trade)? Countries whose workers could never possibly afford to purchase anything manufactured by Americans, except for used clothes at pennies per pound or heavily government subsidized food commodities.
Mr. Boudreaux should give us the figures for American manufactured goods which have been purchased by our ‘free trade’ slave wage/benefit partners.
Know the truth and it will set you free!
Excellent!
“Mr. Boudreaux should give us the figures for American manufactured goods which have been purchased by our ‘free trade’ slave wage/benefit partners.”
Oh he won’t bother…
“Mr. Boudreaux knows this and is depending on the naivety of readers to not know the difference – a sly manipulation which has obviously fooled a lot of people.”
Not me!!!
Here’s a pretty decent explanation of what Don avoids to mention. I wonder if he tells his students this.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_25/b4039006.htm
a metric which does not account for the billions of dollars of parts imported from slave labour rate jurisdictions
A red herring to attack free trading between people.
What do you want to do about this “slavery”, leave them worse off or better off. If you are unable or unwilling to negate the power of the slave drivers, you choice is limited: if you refuse to trade with them, they” remain poor and get poorer, if you trade with them, they’ll be better off and eventually get wiser and gain more power.
Which do you choose?
You call it slave labor. And without the investment or work that has relocated there, what would the people then be? How do you measure what constitutes slave labor? Are the people coerced or forced into labor by another? Are they not choosing to engage in labor? Democracy (in its pure sense) will fool you into believing it is acting morally to correct any injustices of capitalism, but since it is men instituting the ‘moralities’ they will inject their own self-interests and corrupt the ‘utopian’ system. The fact, too many, neglect is that man is inherently fallible and any system will have individuals who will act on their own best interest, even if another should be short changed. While capitalism, is not perfect, it is self correcting. Without govt assistance, the firm that is acting ‘immorally’ will collapse under its own weight. With govt assistance, the firm can recover from its malfeasance and continue again to behave ‘immorally’, but under a different name.
Where is the morality in creating dependency within the US by continuing to entitle citiznery further deincentivizing individuals to earn a living?
You don’t know the truth or anything about morality. You should read more philosophy. I can teach you but it would take a long serious of posts.
Morality is merely a relative phenomenon, subject to the prevailing distribution of power that upholds order in society, or civilization. What any society in history considered to be moral became immoral over time. This is because the morality is always a justification of the existing power equilibrium in a society. The powerful make the rules. They justify their status with their ideology. The people are mass conditioned to believe the ideology. For most of human history, slavery was common, or better yet, the foundation of the society. Society was formed upon conquest and exploitation. Nothing the powerful ever did was thought to be immoral. The concept of morality was only a tool to prevent the rest of society to be passive about the status of the ruling elite.
All human labor, as well as all human exchange, has one thing in common. That is for those involved to maximize their psychic income. For some, that may not be the same as maximizing their monetary income, but the overwhelming majority of people seek the best possible terms in the transactions that they make. We live in a society where power is distributed more evenly than a thousand years ago. Slavery is considered immoral only because the distribution of power prevents it from happening. Any action that potentially might reverse the current distribution of power, or action that might change the power structure from being shared by the many to being held by the few, will automatically be thought of as immoral. But any action that is currently happening is usually considered moral, only because there is enough social power backing it and justifying it with an ideology.
Using that as a premise, slavery is just the extreme outcome of a negotiation based upon a total imbalance of power. The slave has no power, but as power is shared, slavery ceases to exit while varying forms of exploitation take its place that better reflect the distribution of power. In this case, minorities might be discriminated against. Again, the common thread is that people always seek to maximize their power, or to win the best possible terms in their economic negotiations. You feel proud when you make a profit. you don’t care if someon eelse lost money. If you can hire someone for $9 hr, you will, and you feel without moral anguish if that is what the market is, but what if the market allowed you to own slaves? Of course, in that society and in that time in history, you would, and again, without suffering feelings of moral guilt.
Every day there are billions of human exchanges that take placed that are based upon people trying to maximizing their gains. Some don’t like the outcome of what they can achieve under conditions of freedom, so they turn to politics which enables them to prosper through compulsion, or force.
Compulsion is a degree of slavery. When done in the private arena, we think of it as immoral, but when done via the political process, we don’t yet. We justify compulsion and theft through poltics today, through democracy, which we are falsely conditioned to think is related to freedom and liberty, when it is only majority tyranny, or tyranny by the many instead of by the few. We are fools to see that by justifying compulsion, we are justifying a degree of slavery, just as Aristotle justified slavery in his own time, to the degree that it existed back then.
I’ll conclude by saying that this Michael Warhurst knows nothing about morality, or truth. His post is a strong argument for compulsion and coercion, or in short, for slavery and, his own words, immorality.
Part 2:
The “moral” argument that we shouldn’t purchase from 3rd world countries or companies that exploit their labor is flawed. First, it just isn’t true from the 3rd world countries perspective. In China, for example, why do millions of “free” peasants living on rural farms migrate hundreds of miles to the crowded seaboard manufacturing districts if they were being “exploited”?
No two societies are identical as to their relative distribution of power, and to the degree that power varies, so will the difference betweeen the social classes be seen.
If you want to be self righteous about labor conditions, why wouldn’t we refuse to import all middle eastern oil, or better yet, all foreign oil, since wherever on the globe it is produced, it is mostly done so in tyrannical despotic regimes that exploit their people. Why isn’t Sherrod Brown seeking to shut out all oil? Why does his so called “morality” only apply when union factory workers in his state are affected? The reason is that he is only using morality as an excuse, or as a diguise for the theft and compulsion that he requires in order to satisfy his big union paymasters who own him.
We all know that working condition around the planet can be pretty dismal–even though the workers in those far away places prefer their job over not having one. Those workers would also testify that they need us to buy their products or they would become worse off. It is a lie to think that protectionism helps them. It only makes them all poorer.
Since I am an individualist. I prefer the freedom to decide for myself who and what I can buy from people willing to do business with me. Also, I prefer that the protectionists here also have that right. That means that they should not buy foreign made products if they feel better about themselves for it. But they have no right to enslave me not to do what I calculate as best for me, or my household. They have no right to tell the millions of lower class people in this country that they can no longer save money at Walmart because the protectionists and politicans want to protect the unions from competition.
The moral argument using 3rd world labor expliotation is a joke. Those who make it never follow it themselves in their private dealings. They’re hypocrites; losers, whose only consolation in life is to tear down those doing better than them.
Good job sir! Wow!
Good job sir! Wow!
Ditto
Wage rate is not what defines slavery.
Since you don’t understand that, the rest of your post is likely ignorance in the same vein and unworthy of a read.
What’s the going wage rate for a slave?
Whatever it would cost to house them and keep them healthy.
Slavery was not economically competitive with free labor and was the main global reason for its decline. Paying wages was cheaper.
The point about wage rates and slavery is important. Wages were only paid when slaves became powerful enough to win their freedom, or when it became too costly for the slave holder to maintain them.
Methinks1776, My point about slavery was to explain moral relativism. Slavery was moral a few hundred years ago, and many here think protectionism is moral. This means that everyone here who is a protectionist is morally brainwashed to a contemporary view. Someone with an advanced understanding of the evolution of morality and ideology, such as what I posess, can easily grasp and identify customs and institutions that today are considered moral, yet will be immoral to future generations. But I do agree with you on one thing. You shouldn;t read what you can’t understand or what you’re too bigoted to grasp. Protectionsim is bigotry, just as, to you, the chinaman is the new nigger. The fact that your comfortable shitting on China makes you as bigoted as those who shit on the blacks a few generations ago, but you’re too stupid and blind to know the difference.
“Wages were only paid when slaves became powerful enough to win their freedom, or when it became too costly for the slave holder to maintain them.”
Uhh…but doesn’t that mean slaves are NOT paid wages? So you are saying, there is no such thing as “slave wages”.
Jesullivan,
My post was a response to Michael Warhurst, not you. How did you not get that? I am most certainly not a protectionist….and some of by best friends are “Chinamen”.
Whatever it would cost to house them and keep them healthy.
That’s not a wage rate. That’s the cost of equipment maintenance.
VV, is this a trick question, like “what’s a Grecian Urn?”
It’s not very sporting to pick off blatantly incoherent arguments, but sometimes it is recreational just the same.
Attempting to equate ‘morality’ with common ecnomic laws and principles? It is also immoral to take more than you need……therefore, buy some Ramen noodles, a tent, bottle of water, sleeping bag, and then give the rest of your earnings or properties to others who are without.
Protectionism will only cause more unemployment. Especially, as other nations respond to the US actions. We can see this in both the magnesium mining as the US has added tariffs to imports to protect a mining company and about 400 jobs in Colorado. But, you will not have to look far to see how American business who uses magnesium in their products lose out in global markets as the cost of their product is now 80% more than the foreign competition. We lose more jobs from the tariff protectionism. We have also seen the results from See’s candy who was forced to relocate from the protectionist tariffs on sugar. They could not compete globally and were forced to relocate. Heck, to a certain degree, I am all for the liberals adding all the protectionist measure that they wish. I know what the results will be and it won’t be a higher GDP or creation of more jobs. So go for it. My jobs is safe. And, as the detrimental results begin, I will take note on the foolishness of attempts in trying to rationalize the hundreds of different fallatious reasons for the failure of their theory. The attacks will, of course, be directed at the businesses or CEO’s for making important decisions to keep the business profitable as they relocate or mechanize their businesses further.
Sherrod Brown has one motive and one motive only.
Sherrod Brown.
What he does is what all socialist do, act in the hope that he personally gets through life without discomfort and effort.
End of story.
Yep.
“Sherrod Brown has one motive and one motive only.
Sherrod Brown.”
And this stands in stark contrast to vidyohs and his motive…which is….
When, ever, has protectionist measures lived up to the hype of increasing the economic success of Americans? With each action there are effects. Technology has been the cause of more decline in manufacturing jobs than any other cause. But, this is simply a reallocation of resources as we modernize and become more efficient. Our current luddite class of unions can fight all they want but fail to recognize that the businesses that build the new technologies and those that service them will need new personnel. We simply relocate our human capital. The problem is in the eye of the beholder.The only ‘loss’ is to union management who see a decline in membership (usually coerced membership) and therefore see a decline in ‘dues’ which the union leadership uses to purchase influence in govt. This is a big problem for Democrats. They rely, heavily, on those collective donations from union dues.
Do you realize during the majority of this nations history most of its tax revenue came from tariffs?
You trying to tell us this post “Free Trade” economy is the best we’ve had? Is that what you are trying to tell us? Does that make sense to you? …. because it will be a hard sell because no one has any money and aggregate demand for such silliness has fallen way off.
You are not understanding…….. more jobs are lost from punitive tariffs that make US products less competitive globally than are gained from the precieved ‘saved’ jobs.
Run a business or manage one and be responsible for the entire operation. Also, your pay will be completely determined by profits. You will understand very quickly that hypothesizing about you would ‘like’ things to work will fall by the wayside, sharply.
And this stands in stark contrast to vidyohs and his motive…which is… – Yasafi Muirduck
Honesty.
Something you and Sherrod Brown are severely lacking.
Brotio,
I don’t really have anything to say to you…. just felt like calling you a dope…dope.
For once, Muirdiot, our pet idiot, you are correct.
You really do have absolutely nothing to say.
You want higher tariffs for the wrong reason. Also, you forget that higher tariffs on imports are met with equally higher tariffs on US product abroad. This acknowledgement is being had by Barak Obama in the form of the $400 million dollar payment to Brazil and the $2billion dollar ‘investment’ of drawing out oil from newly discovered wells. The American business and consumer suffers from higher tariffs, not gain. The cost of compensation for the American worker is not the sole reason for relocation. It is the reason that the media and sly politicians highlight. But, the high corporation taxes (not to mention the high costs of navigating the thens of thousands of pages of tax code), personal income taxes, high regulatory costs, high litigation costs, threats of higher energy costs (not free market costs, but govt fabricated higher costs), etc.,….. the American business is hit with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in costs before he/she makes their first sale.
Why are liberals always in discussion with theory and ideas that have been proven to have little to no success overall?
FSf57A http://guI2vS0jBrn7M3Apkdef81n.com
Just how in the world (no pun) do you anti-protectionist define protectionism?
Do you not understand “Sovereignty”?
All of you anti-protectionists are protectionists! It was inborn in you.
If you believe in and are concerned with personal security regarding your wealth, your status, your physical safety, your physical health and your mental health you are therefore a died in the wool protectionist, and, if your married or dating you most likely don’t share your significant other with someone else for that matter either.
For example:
If you invented something you would secure both a U.S. patent and International patent.
If you penned something worth while you’d protect it with copy rights.
If you created a hybrid plant you’d protect that property with a patent.
You might buy a GPS or a shot gun to get you thru Detroit safely.
You read warning labels and most of the time follow those instructions.
You protect your email with passwords.
You have a secret PIN number for your cash cards.
Bottom line is, damned the person or people who screw with your sense of self preservation! Translated that means you ARE a protectionist.
Without a healthy basic sense of self preservation there is no incentive to contribute and there isn’t any desire to create and or innovate even to at least protect the sense of self preservation. Should I repeat that?
Maybe every patent holder and copy right owner should be forced to forfeit their created works for the enrichment of the world population?
Just a thought here; how is it possible that just about every teen and young adult under 25 years old in the middle east has a cell phone but no jobs? Or is that in the U.S. that I’m thinking? How come at age 60 I don’t even have a cell phone? Because I can’t afford one anymore…that’s why! How did that come about? Well, my wifes computer techi job was out sourced to India last year and since then we’ve lost a lot of our spendable income. Thank you Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich. Anyone else care to share the wealth from their own pockets? Maybe a guy like Putin, or Newt or Gary Hart or even Al Gore wouldn’t mind throwing some cash my way??? I didn’t think so.
Our government according to the Constitution is supposed to be protecting the interests of the citizens of this country yet it’s our government that is and has been undermining it’s citizens while in collusion with the United Nations since the early ’60′s with it’s socializing One World Order mission, meaning there is no room on the agenda for PROTECTIONISM. The state will protect all regardless of ones own inherent sense of self preservation. It’s a one size fits all solution of absolutism designed to accommodate the dictating elite only, i.e., the power brokers, the union bosses, the billionaires, the bureaucrats, etc.. Wow, those 4 groups could pass for Scientologists. ha ha
You folks who are anti-protectionists ironically sound way too socialistic. If you really do believe in anti-protectionism then by all means dig deep into your own pockets and give the world what it needs or better yet give it what it wants while you have what you still have before someone takes, including your job, all that you have away from you via taxes or outright confiscation (theft by government or by a common thief or by an illegal immigrant here or abroad). By the way anti-protectionist, how did you get what you own (or rent)?