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Originally posted by Tables R Us
Dude, look in the mirror.
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I do every day. I would suggest that you may want to crack open an economics text book.
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Originally posted by Tables R Us
The economic benefits of free trade to wealthy countries are based on comparative advantage, not absolute advantage. Countries like China and India violate the principles of comparative advantage by stealing intellectual property (the Chinese engage in rampant piracy), imposing requirements of direct investment in the local country in order to sell goods there (check ownership requirements to operate in China or India), and other things. Adam Smith and David Ricardo would support retaliatory tariffs against countries engaging in obvious protectionist behavior like this, or violations of GATT, currency manipulation, and dumping.
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Have you talked to Adam Smith or Ricardo recently? As Reagan once responded when asked about retaliatory tariffs, "if the guy at the other end of the boat in which we are sitting punches a hole in the bottom of his side of the boat how does it help that I do the same"?
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Originally posted by Tables R Us If the principles for competition are violated, free trade results in benefits based on absolute advantage. This means that some countries LOSE. This is a huge difference.
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Your argument implies that our country is worse off because of our trade relationship with China and India. Or in other words, that because of certain restrictions China and India have placed on our respective trading relationships (and their unwillingness to enforce some international property rights agreements), our comparative advantage with these countries has been lost and therefore India and China have gained absolute advantages. Therefore in our respective trade relationships they are the winners and we are the losers.
To say that because of some restrictions on domestic investing and lack of respect for intellectual property, our country is no longer experiencing a net profit from our trade relationships with China and India has to be the most economically ignorant statement said on this board to date. If you don't think we are experiencing a net gain from our trading relationships with China and India, then shutting down trade completely between our nations would actually put our country in a better economic position than exists now. About as many economists would support that idea, as astronomers support the idea the Sun revolves round the earth.
There are still a myriad of comparative advantages our country still enjoys by trading with China and India Even with the restrictions they impose, or treaties they don't enforce, our country benefits immensely from our relationship. There are many economists that argue, and I agree with them, that the restrictions imposed by India and China on free trade hurt these countries more than they hurt us. I definitely believe that China's and India's lack of enforcement of property rights hurt their economies more than they hurt ours.
Of course we want these countries to change their domestic rules so their economies are less restrictive, and we want them to enforce international copyright treaties. But such changes will benefit them more than they benefit us.
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Originally posted by Tables R Us Nonsense like this is why median wages per worker have been stagnant since 1980. And why shifty right-wingers like to change the subject to median household income and talke about how it's grown. Well, the only reason median household income has grown is that the mrs, kids and grandparents all got jobs.
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Median wage per worker? You may want to look at prior posts on this board where I explained why the term Median when it comes to statistics, is a useless one. How about the average wage per worker or the average wage per worker in every quintile?
Can you cite one example where the US has increased its trade restrictions against another country (as you suggest we do with India and China) and such restrictions have benefited the United States?
