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Post by abisai on Jun 8, 2005 9:05:39 GMT -5
GM announced a part of its decision was supposedly high healthcare costs. Basically admitting that not only can they pay workers less in other countries, they can give them fewer benefits as they have no labor rights or protections. This should trouble us because if things progress with other countries tapping businesses to the point that economies grow on a par, they would always have the legal right to screw their employees because they have fewer rights there and businesses here would always be at a competitive disadvantage. Go join a union, if there are any left in your field.
There is also a bias on the stages of production that is nationally based. Businesses do not operate this way and we all know it. It is in the interests of the nations to alter their rules of business to compel the businesses to act within their borders in a manner that benefits the nation. If we believe the stages of production holds any value than we should be wondering why businesses are not proactively seeking local manufacturing sites to pre-empt having to relocate and avoid transportation costs down the road. But they don't because the fact is that either the theory is flawed or the presupposed equalization of economies is a myth. I think a little of both. The businesses avoid large taxation by moving abroad. Tariffs would reap that back and take away a large motive, but capitalists decry free trade. There is not a level playing field on a few levels, of which taxation is a large player as well as labor laws and regulations. The governments in foreign nations take advantage of the situation to allow these events to occur which threatens both legal protections here, the tax base here, and unemployment here. If business was truly left to its own devices of free trade, much would be different in both directions. I don't believe the situation at present is representative of free trade however.
I think the stages of production is partially true, but really not a binding principle. As Ring said much here is services and Ken added information, but a majority of our economy is still production. Plus the advantages held in services and information are the easiest to replicate in other nations and quickest to move. India hosts IT and accounting and finance departments for GSK. Anything that is informationally based is not limited by borders and will quickly move according to supply and demand to the point where it is cheapest and easiest at the moment. China loses out because the Commies commandeer profits and threaten to takeover profitable businesses. The Russians and Middle East lose out because of mob underworld and security risks. Africa is like starting from scratch and South America is right in there trying to get what it can while places like Ireland and India are the forerunners. The more departments and businesses that move, the more it is in our national interests to act.
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Post by abisai on Jun 8, 2005 9:52:06 GMT -5
PS How great is it that Kerry's grades were the same as GW's? THEY REALLY WERE THE SAME PERSON AFTER ALL. We were in for the same ride either way it broke out I think personally. The only difference being that GW is done after this term but Kerry could have had another 4 years aftewards. Which would have postponed the Hillary another 4 years? THE WORLD WILL NEVER KNOW.
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Post by Ringleader1 on Jun 9, 2005 5:06:46 GMT -5
I beleave my economic beliefs are more in line with Nobel Prze winner Milton Friedman. Friedman is an advocate of limited government. He shares the views of Thomas Jefferson that 'government is best that governs least.' "Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens against crimes against themselves or their property."
"When government -- in pursuit of good intentions -- tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the costs come in inefficiency, lack of innovation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player. In the United States, government has gone far beyond the basics."
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Post by abisai on Jun 9, 2005 9:25:51 GMT -5
I hear you on the limited government belief, but we need it to some extent. If we held true to that libertarian perspective, most basic services would be erradicated. Limiting goverment to military, courts, and police. Basically all the things that we take for granted like education and educational grants. NASA. Social security and the entire welfare structure that protects people. Bankruptcy laws. Agricultural subsidies. Natural preservations. National parks. Highways and infrastructural developments. I hate free handouts more than the average America, but the system is so engrained with them that to ignore their role is to miss a lot. I would prefer they were a lot smarter about the means of distributing these handouts and less inefficient, but we need some of these things as a nation. The structures in place are largely the fallout from the reforms after the Great Depression where they lacked the ability of the government to intervene and revive the economy. Having those safeguards in place is a good thing to that extent. It kept the airlines alive after 9/11 for example.
Plus other nations have governments that act willfully to the benefit of businesses. I agree that governing bodies are innately inefficient. But they also provide one of the only means we have to protect ourselves from crimes by defining what these crimes are. Lack of holiday or overtime pay are only defined as crimes because our government deems it so. This does not hold true in other nations, especially those where the businessmen wholesale bribe the governing officials. Bribery itself is not deemed a crime in most of the world, despite the inefficiencies that creates. Democracy almost cries out for the government to act in the best interests of the greater good and enforce laws and statutes that appear counterintuitive at first glance. Like dealing at all with OPEC.
Take Enron. What they did was capitalistic. What they did was morally reprehensive. But the dudes are still not in jail because the laws were not on the books to punish people with these manner of schemes (leading to Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002). Take 19th century stock schemes to simply produce more stock to retake control of the company. Take slavery. Take gambling. Take lotto. Take prostitution. Take the stock exchange. Take drug legislation. Take traffic legislation. Take border patrol. Take the SEC. Take the IRS. The government has a very active role to play and does to a greater or lesser extent to the betterment or the detriment of the larger body as per circumstances. I would never discount the role of government in many arenas. Simply put, individuals are too crafty to exploit the laws and policing of the economy to not require an active and interventionary governing body. It dame sure is inefficient and requires reform, but should not be removed entirely.
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Post by abisai on Jun 9, 2005 9:45:19 GMT -5
PS This is fun. I have not thought about a lot of this in a long time. It wish there were more reason to than a messageboard, like a national reform initiative headed by John McCain or something.
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Post by Ringleader1 on Jun 9, 2005 10:24:26 GMT -5
There are no absolutes. Certainly the role of government would have to change as all things do. Especially to account for the changes in the expanding global economies. Unfortunatly the changes made are usaully politicly motivated to shit the balance of power.
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Post by Ringleader1 on Jun 9, 2005 11:39:44 GMT -5
Sorry, I'm at work and and sh*t happens...Anyway, I beleive that policing includes business practices. However, freedom to come and go, move your business, whatever is part of our freedom. Any atempt by the government to interfere with this goes against our constitution.
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Post by Ringleader1 on Jun 9, 2005 11:55:36 GMT -5
Economics not politics should steer the course. What you might think is good (in the short run) now or 10 years from now might not be best in the long run. What I have been taught is that the market polices itself. Supply and Demand: thats it.
In fact, one professor even suggested to me that economics can be reduced to one word: "price." Or maybe, I suggested alternatively, "cost." Everything has a price; everything has a cost.
Additionally, sound economic policy is straightforward: Let the market, not the state, set wages and prices. Keep government's hands off monetary policy. Taxes should be minimized. Government should do only those things private citizens can't do for themselves. Government should live within its means. Rules and regulations should provide a level playing field. Tariffs and other barriers to trade should be eliminated as much as possible. In short, government governs best which governs least.
Unfortunately, economists sometimes forget these basic principles and often get caught up in the details of esoteric model-building, high theory, academic research, and mathematics. The dismal state of the profession was expressed recently by Arjo Klamer and David Colander, who, after reviewing graduate studies at major economics departments around the country, asked, "Why did we have this gut feeling that much of what went on there was a waste?" 2
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Post by abisai on Jun 9, 2005 12:45:23 GMT -5
Yeah economists are great and all that but half would think things are getting better and half would think things are getting worse, they're not a lot better at guessing those things than the rest of us. If they were, they would be rolling in dough.
The Consitution was born partially of political and economic roots for sure. But to claim that it holds any sway over the way the governement rules the economy is short-sighted. Should we eliminate the role of the FED? The IRS and its tax code is not in the Consitution, should we never pay any more taxes? Surely we have to go above and beyond the Constitution and we often do. We require doctors to hold degrees instead of letting the market determine who is a good doctor. We require people to pass minimal standards in order to be able to drive a vehicle. There are requirements all over the place. I think that the business environment is not policed enough in this regard. A state attorney general should never have to act out of inaction by the SEC, but that is precisely what Elliot Spitzer in NY does. He's even addressing SPAM and mass marketing which are fine and dandy business practices that drag the entire economy with the saturation of communication that they produce. The FDA should police products better that promise to made people herbally enhanced physically, smarter, healthier, and living longer. Snake oils are fine and dandy business practices that we need to proctect ourselves from.
Free market in energy allowed Enron to buy and trade energy surplus and shortages. Find and dandy business practices. Of course when they went ahead and capitalized on it everyone who was not an Enron stockholder suffered. They literally limited supply to increase costs drastically. The deal was there was no competition because competitors would have to purchase billion dollar energy projects to enter the field of competition. Simply put, regulation was demanded and ultimately passed by Congress.
Nothing in the Consitution says I can't have sex with a goat while high on cocaine. But that is illegal and for public health reasons it damn well should be. We need to police these things and need a proactive and interactive governement to get involved. Otherwise the collections agency could be legally purchasing everything about you from the bank and begin placing liens against your property instead of through the court of law where that process belongs. Otherwise insurance people can purchase your entire health and financial history before deciding what to charge you - or waiting to drop you from coverage for those terms until there is a claim filed. The reason monetary policy should be monitored is self evident in the history of nations across the globe, it is too volitile to let things just plain happen. When you do that people that can exploit the situation with insider information can and do profit greatly at the vast expense of everyone that is not privvy to them. If there was no monetary policy people would and surely profit from moving in advance of market shifts they would create, irregardless of the effects on the larger economy (house lending, construction, pension plans). Especially when we are talking global economy and other governments able to do things that would be wrong/criminal to do in this country. The industrial age tought a valuable lesson about allowing the powers that be to determine their own destiny. Employees would be sacrificed to a bottom line. This would hurt our consumer economy and the middle class. Other nations have done this in export-frenzy to supply to our consumers and are coming around to realize that it is a surefire means to decay the intranational economic base. Money need be reinvested internally for an economy to grow. A large portion of our society could abandon our society to invest abroad if they lack faith here. This would drive businesses away and destroy large segments of society for the profit of a smaller segment. We should avoid this and need a governing hand to intervene.
I think very strongly that a huge reason that economists (and Communists!) are short-sighted is that they deal with two variables. The Laws of Supply and Demand. They rarely address the fact that consumers are not utility maximizers in the sense of supply and demand. People don't buy the cheapest house, car, clothing, cologne, coffee, etc. In business there are numerous competitive advantages that can be applied and are, not just pricing. Generic products often sufferly vastly to the marketed and braded products, even salt and water is branded despite the fact that these are elemental compounds with no real competitive advantages over one another. People opt to purchase organic foods at a higher expense to them. People purchase too much when they have an excess of money disposable. Rational thinking is great in theory but not practical to the reality.
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Post by Ringleader1 on Jun 9, 2005 15:07:08 GMT -5
Economist, don't make sure that were rolling in dough. They make sure that the market is unhindered and fuctioning properly. The Fed and Mr greenspan tweak the system through money supply and interest rates so that the economic cycle is stable. No great depression, no run away infalation. They should not enact sweeping reforms. Of course when ever you deal with human error there are going to be times when people do what you least expect. Criminal activities should be dealt with and human rights be preserved. We are just slightly on opposite sides of the center. Enrons are going to happen as greed rules the day(drop in the bucket). You can't cover everything and thats the bueaty of the constituion, it evolves. I maintain that we stay true to it spirit. Should we limit free trade because Chinas workers get paid less and companies want to go there. Should we kick out all of the Mexicans because they work harder and complain less. G.M. is a dinosaur. Nobody is buying it's cars. Plain and simple. Hey, these views are not original. It's always going to be Jefferson Vrs Hamilton for example. I like the compasion our country has. I curently benift from it. I just don't want to get carried away and mess with free trade and put our businesses at a disadvantage.
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Post by abisai on Jun 9, 2005 22:28:54 GMT -5
China works cheaper because workers that voice dissent are imprisoned or assassinated - legally or not. Unions are implicitly at odds with the larger People's Republic and squashed as detrimental to the Communist party.
Mexicans work harder because they are limited to the jobs that allow illegal immigrants, chiefly the hardest work out there. They complain less because they speak a foreign tongue and have negative legal grounds because they face deportation and unemployment if they dissent.
Neither seems like free trade to begin with because there is not a level playing field. There is a great deal to be said for free trade and it is inevitable. While we share common laws and business practices among the borderless US states, international laws are practically not binding at all unless you savagely kill hundreds of thousands and even then maybe not. Workers and businesses alike can move within the US states allowing the market to relatively equalize itself. So all we have internationally is trading blocs and national controls. It is in our national interests to exert these things to our betterment. The trend we see is our means of production turning over to transnational operations. Other nations refuse to acknowledge any intellectual property rights so our advantages in information and services and innovation are tenable at best.
This more relates to China, which we presently have zero influence over. China is willing to forego its intranational economy in the short term to exploit cannibalization of foreign economies, which transnationals play a willing role. There is a recent trend of Chinese businesses buying out their transnational partners from the production side to the corporate side and moving back to the nation of origin for the franchise, reversing the move only with the profits being reinvested in the Chinese instead of the nation of origin. China also routinely dumps product in our market to soak up marketshare and put American enterprises out of business in their long term perspective. That is free trade. They can do that so easily not just because of complete lack of workers' rights, but because if they fail the Communist government will prop them back up to repeat. Businesses don't care and can do whatever they want to that is not the point, the point is the effect on the people within the nations and their reliance on government to protect them.
Mexico I think we could exert tremendeous control over. I think it would be great to remove border patrol with Mexico and Canada and place it at their borders where we could share patrolling from outside these trade partners. We'd still need to instill some rather basic legislation to equalize the playing field, but this would really accelerate free trade to the betterment of all parties. This is slow to happen because there are really few crossover opportunities for labor due to the language barriers and legal restrictions. I could be convinced that it is a good thing to allow Mexicans to have totally free access to our job market if there were moves made to get business to have the same operating laws in each sector. A common language would go a long way in that regard, but that will likely be a fusion a hundred years from now that none of would be able to comprehend called Spanglish.
The driving force of our economy is the consumer market. This needs a lot of spending and disposable income and a healthy middle class to do it. Other nations have rivers and mountains and businesses and airports, but they don't have shopping malls. Other nations are realizing this is why say Japan advanced form third world to developed nation following WW II whereas say Coumbia floundered in the dependency of an export economy. The more they realize this, the more likely it will be that goods are diverted to home nations instead of cheaply here. That is great for the global economy and everyone and hurray. To me the difference is simply making sure that our high standards are preserved by getting other nations to accept high standards, like outlawing bribery, a strong court system, balanced tax codes, minimum wages, labor rights, and then we can play fairly with them. We need our consumer market, we need a strong hand to guide it.
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Post by abisai on Jun 9, 2005 22:31:42 GMT -5
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
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Post by abisai on Jun 9, 2005 22:37:37 GMT -5
Constution is mad, mad, crazy wise. It is not however characterized by free trade, since it was discussing protectionist importation tariffs and the creation of a postal service instead of allowing the market to create one. Similar to how interstate highway were built or NASA gets its groove on without either being left to the market. Naturalization laws are not really free trade practices either but an understandable prerequisite to sovereignty. Promoting invention and intellectual property is not really a free trade practice, but the Constitution advises it and we do it every day.
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Post by abisai on Jun 10, 2005 9:30:18 GMT -5
What do you think about debt relief for Africa?
I think this is a good thing. Sure the global economy needs something like this to kick start them and the continent could use a boost to help them on their way to developing. Then there is the national interest we have. This is something that earns us good favor and diminishes anti-US sentiment among the terrorists. It also could diminish the haven for terrorist activities in the future there. Not to mention the potential to create new trading partners and investment opportunities in Africa as they develop.
I wonder if something like this would ever convince someone that our government is not racist either. That seems a popular notion, most recently voiced by Howard Dean in reference to Republicans. Smooth move Dean, way to lead your party dude. Making racist jokes to call Republicans racist (the only way Republicans could get this many minorities together is if they brought in their wait staff)? DAMN!
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Post by Rob G on Jun 10, 2005 20:02:35 GMT -5
Just wanted to comment of Dean. The guy is fucking madman and everyone knows it. The democrats put him in there to do exactly this. The middle pof the road democrats are apparently worthless so give the madman a try. I loved how after he made his statment the 4 democrats who consider themselves possible presidential nominees immediatly made statementns distancing themselves from dean. Polotics is for swine
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