OT: The free-trader's agenda

Ok, I'll add you to my list for presidential candidates .

Reply to
Why
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If I thought I had any kind of chance, I would go for it. I can just imagine the "accident" scenarios if some average guy was making a go of it.

michael

But, I could count on your vote? Anyone else?

Reply to
michael

Ya got mine, as many times as I can vote. If I lived in Chicago, I could line up all my dead relatives too.

Gunner

"The British attitude is to treat society like a game preserve where a certain percentage of the 'antelope' are expected to be eaten by the "lions". Christopher Morton

Reply to
Gunner

You just might "somehow" end up MIA.

Yep, us trailer trash vote down at the Honky tonk & Louis count's if we vote on his fingers but Louis used to run a punch press & don't have any fingers left just 2 thumbs. So I would vote many times fer ya. And if you got alot of votes & ended up MIA we would send the hounds out lookin fer ya...

Reply to
Why

Yes, and as long as the unions keep pricing the Americam workers out of jobs (manufacturing), those jobs will continue to go abroad. When, as Ed points out correctly, the politicians start promising protectionist policies to get elected, they'll have to deliver or croak. This will start the wars that will further isolate the American workers/markets. Mfg workers here need to face it. There will be an equilibration of wages with the industrialized world, which is growing all the time. Their jobs will soon be competitive with service type jobs. It's inevitable. Greg Sefton

Reply to
Bray Haven

By then, all your election machinery should be well and truly fixed. No need for hanging chads, when you can fiddle bits electronically.

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OR ----- if they want to get it right, they might try looking "offshore"

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Reply to
Wayne Bengtsson

Looking at what we pay these turkeys, I find it hard to believe that any politicians "NEED" a raise. We "pay" them to "represent" us, (which they usually don't) then we "pay" them to face the people that "pay" them? Having a requirement that once each month every politician will face a "no holds barred" Q&A session with the people he's supposed to represent, (we ask the questions, the politician only answers) would eliminate a lot of the bullshit. However, as it would soon expose who owns who, you know it won't happen.

Reply to
Lennie the Lurker

FWIW, I don't know of a single economic theory, including the ones under which our policies are being made, that says our wages must drop. In fact, if you look at the history of world trade, I don't think there are more than a few examples in which ANY country's wages dropped specifically because of foreign competition.

The history and economics of trade are not simple. Anyone who thinks he sees some simple pattern at work simply doesn't understand the issue. I make few predictions about any of it because I've seen how complex the reality of it is, and I don't claim to have a grip on the big picture. However, I'm not sure that *anyone* has a grip on the big picture.

Note I said that the wage disparities will close up. I didn't say ours will drop, although, in the short run, it seems likely they will. But that will be an historical anomoly if it happens. A lot of things can drive a country's wages down, but, historically, trade is not one of them.

Most of what I've written about trade concerns the destructive effects of industry-by-industry displacements, combined with a deep skepticism about our economy's ability to replace good-paying jobs that have been displaced. It's true that we're facing unprecedented conditions, with the enormous surges of products entering the US from low-wage countries. But for every move on the chess board that looks like it will drive our wages down, there are several ways to prevent the game from going in that direction. Unfortunately, most of those countermoves have the effect of damping economic activity around the world. Fortunately, nobody in the world wants that to happen. So we have considerable leverage.

Keep watching and learning. It's a complex issue but there is a lot that can be learned about it. Knowledge about the economics of it is power.

Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

[....]

This administration was around in the late 90's?

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

"This administration" is now. If you really follow the issue, if you really know what's going on with our trade policies, you'll recognize that the transition from the theoretical free-trade policies that started with George I and that were continued by the Clinton administration are not what's driving the policy now.

Now we have a broadly ideological set of policies. Unlike those of Reagan, George I, and Clinton, who didn't believe or accept the idea that we need "downward pressure on salaries," this administration appears to accept the idea. To understand this you have to make a close reading of things that Dept. of Commerce Sec. Don Evans has said, and some of the policies of the Treasury Dept., and the sea-change in the Dept. of Labor.

Don't make the mistake of equating the motivations behind NAFTA and those behind the major shift in trade policy that's occurred since, from promoting trade in products to promoting free flow of capital. The two views are at opposite ends of the telescope, even though they both call themselves "free trade."

Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I know we seem to keep repeating history. However, is there any analogy in history to the tremendous ability to ship goods, services, and intellectual knowledge that we have today? It seems like the speed at which change can happen is so much greater today that the disruptions will be far greater than in the past. To me it is like the 'average' wage in the US. Almost nobody earns that average, most people are at one end or the other. So the wage changes may not be bad, on average. If your at the low end though it could be catastrophic, while the high end just keeps the Humvee for 6 more months.

Gary H. Lucas

Reply to
Gary H. Lucas

Er, wasn't it clinton who pushed through the nafta thing and sent millions of man-hours to mexico?? Oh, silly me, I forgot he is a right wing zealot too.

Reply to
Jenny3kids

Actually, it was George I, and Clinton's team, being good, up-to-date economic theorists, decided to continue the program.

Yes, Clinton was well to the right of center on economic policies. If you want to know how NAFTA actually came to pass, read _The Selling Of Free Trade_ by John R. MacArthur. He interviewed a lot of the policy makers involved with it.

Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Now it becomes clear, if you think Klinton was to the right in any way I can see where you are coming from. His wife is a dammed Marxist for crying out loud!

There is a huge disconnect between your understanding of "free trade" and mine. My philosophy is based on observation of real world events, ie, those who produce a better mousetrap (and of course the means to market it) get a pathway beaten to their doorsteps. You equate it entirely with politics. We aren't even on the same page, since there has never been free trade in a political sense, and never will be. The free trade I base my work on, the one that is real world, that everyone who has a job works to whether they understand it or not, works whether you like it or not, whether you spend millions of words to obfuscate it's meanings with politics or not. Free trade means that if you invent a mousetrap that works best as a paperweight no one will buy it. period. It means that if it does work but unions and government interventions make it cost ten times what logic says it should no one will buy it. It's not a formula, it's simply an observation of how the world works. Now, go back to your long winded tangent about politics.

Reply to
Glen

Where I'm coming from is a pretty intense study of contemporary US economic policies, in which I was deeply immersed for roughly the last year. If you want to actually study the subject and talk about it, rather than knee-jerk your way through right-wing propaganda and unconnected anecdotes, I'll be glad to do so.

But first you have to answer why the liberals abandoned Clinton over NAFTA, welfare reform, business deregulation, and the rest of the Reagonomics agenda that Clinton pushed through while he was in office. He accomplished more conservative economic programs than George I, and damned near as many as Reagan himself.

Specific program and policy examples, Glen. Not dogma. Please.

Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

It's no different than the Clinton administration's agenda...or Bush #1's, for that matter. Why do you only give Bush 2 the credit/blame? Are you just a political hack trying to use this issue as a club? You sure don't seem genuinely interested, or you would look beyond just the current administration...

Reply to
MKloepster

No, I'm someone who has actually studied it, researched it, and wrote over

10,000 published words about it.

I've looked well beyond the current administration. This one has some different characteristics than the last three when it comes to trade policies.

Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote: >

Ed,

Just a little aside here, or maybe a point of order:

You've been remarkably consistent, recently, in demanding and providing specific examples which support or contradict the various issues and ideas that get tossed back and forth here in the group. For the most part, that's an examplary way to argue, to teach, and to keep discussions "honest". However...

Specific facts and figures can be as deceptive, as dishonest, and as counterproductive, as any other debating tool if they're not used carefully. Or, to be more specific, they can only be valuable if the conclusions drawn from them, or the ideas allegedly supported or contradicted by them, are stated clearly, along with the logical connection between the specifics and the proposed conclusions.

To dismiss qualitative arguments in favor of facts and details is as much a mistake as attempting to argue ONLY in qualitative terms. To ignore either the facts, or their broader meanings and implications, is to divide logic in half, and to ensure that an argument can't be productive. If I have to choose between someone who presents facts, but who dismisses attempts to decide what they mean, where they point, or what actions they might indicate, or someone who offers only conclusions, directions, and proposed actions, without facts and details to tell me the reasons behind his positions, then I'll choose "None of the Above."

Sadly, the size, complexity, and globe-spanning nature of some of the topics/problems discussed here defies complete knowledge or understanding, even by those who have a great deal of time and energy to expend. Most of the members of this group, who have full time jobs doing other things, can't even come close. I count myself among those, of course. The impossibility of complete understanding, however, does NOT negate our responsibility to attempt to understand, if only so that we can be involved in the simplest and most direct forms of action, like voting. So, we need SOME way to make up our minds.

People like yourself, who have time and energy for study of political and economic issues that most of us don't, are extremely helpful. But that doesn't solve the whole problem. What most of us do, when we really try to be competent, is a sort of "grass roots" form of the scientific method. We look at the few facts we have available, form a hypothesis based on those, and then look for other facts or evidence, within our limited reach, which either support or disprove our hypothetical positions. More facts are better, of course; and a good hypothesis is never mistaken for a proven fact. It remains dynamic, open to revision or reversal, when new information becomes avaialable.

When someone shares his ideas - his hypotheses - he's not necessarily confessing that he doesn't have, or doesn't care about, specific details and facts. In the case of someone who thinks carefully, and argues honestly, the statement of a position or qualitative viewpoint serves two very important purposes, even if the facts supporting the position aren't stated right along with it.

The first value of hypothetical arguments is that they can be much broader, and much more applicable to a whole range of questions and problems, than the specific details about any one issue. It's ood to know that a half-inch HSS endmill runs best at 690 RPM in a particular steel workpiece. It's even better to understand the principle of surface speed, and that 90 SFM can be a good starting speed for ANY HSS cutting tool in a whole variety of steels. The specific facts of one case are important; but not nearly as valuable as the over-riding principles that can be learned from them. Could you find an example where the surface speed rule doesn't work or apply very well? Of course. Should the existence of such an example nullify the value of SFM calculations in general, or be used to demand that machinist training in trade schools not include the presentation of dogmatic rules and preconceptions about how to calculate cutting paramenters? I don't think so.

Or, to look at the question in a way more consistent with the typical formation of political positions: If someone proposed the hypothetical idea that there are calculations which could be applied to almost any machining problem, and described the principles behind those calculations WITHOUT trying to name all the specifics and details that went into the idea, or that might later result from it, would that make it a bad idea? Of course not.

Naturally, a good scientist would immediately demand that the principles MUST be applied to specific cases, to test whether they actually work. And that would be exactly the right response. But the need for such tests, and the recognition that they ought to be performed, is the second value of a hypothetical argument. How do we design tests and experiments, if we don't have any clue about what we're looking for? How do we connect facts together (or see that they're not connected) unless we have some hint or guess that a connection might exist, or that one is possible and worth looking for? How do we even know that we need to take guesses, and to formulate hypothetical answers, if we don't intentionally ask questions about things that are bigger, more far reaching, and more generally applicable to the world at large, than ANY of the individual facts or specifics?

The answer is that we don't. We can't. We NEED to include qualitative arguments, and hypotheitcal positions, and even (sometimes) wild guesses, in EVERY debate or discussion, precisely because those things are what guide the search for, and the evaluation and understanding of, whatever facts we might be able to learn. And, we need to be extremely careful about applying the old adage that a single exception disproves a rule or theory. That's just not true. The existence of exceptions, or special cases, or even just unexplained conflicts between data points, doesn't necessarily make ANY principle unsound, or unfit for use in a wide variety of other situations. Exceptions are reason for caution, or for more careful study of the applicability of our principles; but they're almost never a good reason, all by themselves, to declare a whole principle unsound.

If a machinist found that a particular half-inch HSS endmill ran best at only 500 RPM in a particular workpiece, in a particular machine, with a particular feedrate, depth of cut, coolant mix, etc., and then declared that SFM calcualtions are worthless, you'd think he was crazy. If he decided to ACT like the calculations were worthless, and to invent some other way of calculating machining speeds on every other job in the shop, you'd probably fire him. Even if SFM numbers only serve as a starting point, or as an approximation, subject to revision based on specfic data yet to be learned with any individual job, that still makes them a pretty good tool to have around. How ELSE would you estimate where to start? How COULD you do calculations based on specifics that you haven't even learned yet? And how would you use the specifics, without at least some basic guidelines to help you design experiments, and to measure results, and to draw conclusions?

Facts come first, of course. But we very seldom (never, in the case of gigantic issues like political policies or global economics) have more than a small percentage of them. But from the facts we DO have, it's proper, and IMPORTANT, to attempt to discern meanings, applicable principles, and general attitudes. And from those we can choose what else we need to learn, how to learn it, how to apply it, and even how/if to accept or exclude things we might learn which aren't consistent with our principles.

It's not good enough just to say that I can't prove what I propose, or to find specific facts or examples that don't agree with my position. If we all waited for enough information, and enough true scientific investigation, to prove our opinions or viewpoints, we'd all be helpless, without principles or positions, and easy prey for anyone who wanted to cook us and eat us just by claiming facts that we couldn't check, and by having the audacity to draw (self-serving) conclusions while the rest of tried to be too careful, and therefore to have no opionions, viewpoints, or principles to protect us.

Qualitative arguments are NOT a confession that the person making such arguments doesn't know any facts, or doesn't care about them. That happens often enough, of course, but it's not necessarily the case. In many discussions, debates, or arguments, qualitative ideas are the reasons for looking at particular facts, and the means for evaluating them, and the standard by which to measure their relevance. Equally important, qualitative argument provides the opportunity for prediction

- for making plans and decions about things which haven't happened yet, and which therefore CAN'T be evaluated in terms of details and specifics.

How DOES a machinist calculate the best starting spindle speed for a new job, on a new machine, with a cutting tool that he's never used before? Trial and error? Gather some facts and specifics, and then try to understand them? Of course not. From (always incomplete) facts learned in the past, we form hypotheses and principles which don't NEED to be absolutely or universally accurate; but which serve us anyway by helping us estimate the likely results of future actions and decisions.

How DOES someone know if cutting taxes will or won't stimulate economic growth? By doing it first, and gathering data later? By waiting for an all-inclusive proof that it's a good idea? By refusing to do it because of known specific instances where it didn't work in the past? Not if the person involved is fit to be in a position of making such decisions. What he/she does, or should do, is look at that small percentage of actual facts that are available, and that can be understood, and which seem to be applicable to the current question, and try to determine from those some large, more general, more future-oriented principle that can guide decisions and actions.

How CAN we know if invading a country like Iraq will be a good thing or bad? By pointing to the specific, detailed facts about how well it went the first time we tangled with the Iraqis? Is that enough information to make such a choice? When someone suggests that there are lessons to be learned from our experience in Viet Nam, is that a bad suggestion, just because a lot of the facts and specifics in the current case are different? If you can point to some specific positive things about the Viet Nam war, does that automatically mean we can expect good things from another war with some similar circumstances? If, the day before the US invasion of Iraq began, someone had warned that it might turn into a bloody, uncontrollable, and endless series of guerilla attacks that would cost American lives and try America's patience and resolve, would that person have been "proven" wrong by examples like the invasion of Europe in the 1940's, or the invasion of Grenada in the

1980's? The person warning about the dangers of guerilla warfare wouldn't have had any specifics to support his argument. The specifics in Iraq hadn't happened yet. He'd have had only principles, theories, hypotheses, and and a willingness to look for, and to attempt to understand, the wider implications of some of the facts of history. He would even have been "guilty" of selectively including certain facts from the past, while choosing to exclude others. Would that have been an unsound way to form an opinion? Would the prediction have been wrong? Would a qualitative argument in that case have been necessarily unacceptible, and unfit for consideration? I don't think so.

It's all too common, of course, for people to form opinions without facts, or with too few facts, or with too narrow and guarded an attitude about changing an opinion when new facts become known. But dismissing opinions, and imagining that facts and details should win every argument, is every bit as dangerous.

Of course, this is just my own opinion. I can't really offer any facts or specifics to back it up.

KG

Reply to
Kirk Gordon

"Not dogma"? I see you've never met Glen...

Ed, meet Glen. Glen, meet Ed.

Ok Ed, that should put an end to the confusion...

Reply to
Gary

I think that Ed would be the *first* one here (followed close on the heels by me) to say that most economic theories are pretty much full of holes. And that the economists and politicians who claim to be using them and relying on them are (pick one or many):

a) clueless b) delusional c) lying

Jim

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Reply to
jim rozen

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