IGX

Another factor to consider regarding trade liberalization:

After carefully reviewing the evidence presented at the conference, USAID finds strong support for our belief that trade liberalization represents an essential part of a pro-growth, pro-poor development strategy. At the same time, we fully endorse the point emphasized by several panelists, that trade reform alone is not a panacea for reducing poverty. To maximize their gains from trade, countries must adopt complementary measures both to strengthen trade’s contribution to growth and to enable poor people to take full advantage of the opportunities that growth creates.

With more than two billion people living on less than two dollars a day, reducing world poverty is a moral imperative.

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/defau ... de_low.pdf

Free trade might* be good for some of the worlds poor.

That's all you brought?

Blaidd Drwg wrote:Free trade might* be good for some of the worlds poor.

That's all you brought?

Poor countries need a strong legal framework to benefit from free trade-- something that it appears TPP will mandate.

Pinky wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

Swamp Fox wrote:I know that previous free trade treaties have cost jobs and destroyed industries in the USA.

And deflation in consumer prices-- there is a trade off.

This is the understatement of the thread. Free trade is good. Yes, some people lose their jobs, but everyone else in the country benefits. The special interests who pop up to prey on jingoistic nitwits every time a trade deal comes up are the ones who are trying to fuck over the country. The President is actually doing something right for once.

Pinky,

Do we have the studies that conclusively show that the net reduction in consumer costs is a greater benefit than the net reduction to the economy from the loss of an industry?

For instance the Citrus industry in the US is gasping for air. Virtually every citrus tree in the US has been infected with citrus greening (Huanglongbing) an invasive bacterial disease introduced into the country via imported fruit. This disease kills the citrus tree within a few years. The industry is spending billions on planting new trees, insecticide (disease is spread by aphids), and foliar fertilizers just to try to stem the tide until an effective solution can be found.

If a solution is not found the entire industry will go under. So there goes the growers, the workers, the harvesters, the guy building the tractor, all the other equipment manufacturing, fertilizer producers, ect. That is a multi billion dollar industry removed from the economy, all of the ancillary industries, and the economic multiplier of all of that income. Plus the additional costs of all of the new unemployment.

Does the slight reduction in cost of citrus actually out weigh all of the real costs to our economy?

How does this play out across hundreds of other industries in the US?

The loss of a domestic industry due to some plague or disaster is very different from domestic producers being replaced by foreign producers.

But to answer your question, yes, there are numerous studies showing that the benefits to consumers (and sometimes taxpayers) from lowering tariffs and other import restrictions outweigh the hit domestic producers take. Orange growers benefit from tariffs on orange juice, but they don't benefit as much as the sum of US consumers suffer. FL sugar farmers, who exist thanks only to import restrictions and tariffs, have famously been used as an example of the ability of a small special interest group to successfully lobby for policies that hurt the rest of the country. Even the much maligned NAFTA has been found to have a positive effect on overall welfare in the US.

Yes and no. That is not the whole story... Taken as a whole, these trade agreements might benefit "the whole country" or whatever term you want to use... But that neglects the critically important point of wealth distribution... Where is the increase going? Is it shared equally or even fairly? I think not. This is really about cheap labor, no? Trade agreements are really nothing more than wealth distribution from the long-time citizen working families to the already well off and foreign nationals and their children. (80% mexicans).

You might be in favor of trade agreements. But it seems unfair to not admit that there are people who are getting economically hurt by it and even more unfair to tell them they have no right to complain.

And yes, it pisses me off that working and lower middle class white families who have lived and worked and fought for this country are getting screwed for the credentialed class and foreigners.

bennyonesix wrote:Yes and no. That is not the whole story... Taken as a whole, these trade agreements might benefit "the whole country" or whatever term you want to use... But that neglects the critically important point of wealth distribution... Where is the increase going? Is it shared equally or even fairly? I think not. This is really about cheap labor, no? Trade agreements are really nothing more than wealth distribution from the long-time citizen working families to the already well off and foreign nationals and their children. (80% mexicans).

You might be in favor of trade agreements. But it seems unfair to not admit that there are people who are getting economically hurt by it and even more unfair to tell them they have no right to complain.

And yes, it pisses me off that working and lower middle class white families who have lived and worked and fought for this country are getting screwed for the credentialed class and foreigners.

Consumer price deflation primarily helps poorer people. It is why, other than healthcare and housing (where the causes of inflation are mostly domestic ) there is no real inflation. And you have to consider employer provided health care inflation as a big factor in the job losses.

Come on man. The history post-Nafta has been a reallocation of quality jobs and therefore $$$ away from working class whites to mexican nationals. Also, I dispute that gasoline and food and housing have deflated since that time. Those are things that matter.

All I am saying is that there have been losers and it seems niggardly (Yo Blaidd!) to deny that fact and not understand why those who have paid the price want to you know.... stop paying the price.

Corporatism/Liberalism is fine. I personally disagree with it strongly. But it is a real thing and a logically coherent way of distributing the wealth of a society. I just think you all should be honest about what you have done and are doing to the country. And that does not mean listing the physical comforts the corporation have provided IN A VERY LOUD VOICE AGAIN AND AGAIN LIKE RUSH>>>>

TLDR I love me some white people and don't want them screwed any more by the deracinating Corporatists.

Bring the US down to the third world, not vice versa...at the expense of the North American way of life

HUGZ

bennyonesix wrote:Also, I dispute that gasoline and food and housing have deflated since that time. Those are things that matter.

This may explain what I was trying to say:
http://www.frbsf.org/education/publicat ... n-headline

Housing inflation (which I mentioned in my previous post) was domestically caused, largely because of changes in tax policy during the Clinton years. Either way, I've never seen an argument linking housing inflation with free trade agreements.

Fair enough, housing is a separate issue from "Free Trade".

It is not a separate issue from Corporatism however.

It was the result of legislation meant to channel wealth to the banking system. I call prioritizing banking a central tenant of Corporatism.

Also, the link you provided seemed to say that energy and food were excluded from the calculation of inflation/deflation... So I would think you should not use the "lack of inflation or presence of deflation" as proof of anything relating to those commodities.

Gas prices are artificially high unless one creates a tautology and defines "what is" as the result of the "free market". Absent collusion of foreign powers the price of energy would drop significantly. And, the collusion of said foreign powers is allowed and encouraged to stabilize and/or increase corporate profits.

Additionally, the price of food is positively related to the price of energy.

But my central point remains. I do not deny that Corporatism provides a logical way of allocating the wealth of a society. I simply say that there are losers in that allocation and that I am a fan of the losers so I don't like it. Also, I think it niggardly (heheheh) that the Corporatists do not acknowledge that there are in fact losers or that anyone has anything to complain about.

bennyonesix wrote:Fair enough, housing is a separate issue from "Free Trade".

It is not a separate issue from Corporatism however.

It was the result of legislation meant to channel wealth to the banking system. I call prioritizing banking a central tenant of Corporatism.

Corporatism means whatever you want it to mean-- any group of individuals joining together for their collective common good can be considered Corporatism.

bennyonesix wrote:Also, the link you provided seemed to say that energy and food were excluded from the calculation of inflation/deflation... So I would think you should not use the "lack of inflation or presence of deflation" as proof of anything relating to those commodities.

It also includes them-- read the whole thing.

bennyonesix wrote:Gas prices are artificially high unless one creates a tautology and defines "what is" as the result of the "free market". Absent collusion of foreign powers the price of energy would drop significantly. And, the collusion of said foreign powers is allowed and encouraged to stabilize and/or increase corporate profits.

That is a statement too general to have any real meaning. It leaves out our latent energy production potential and the latent production potential of neighboring nations (especially Mexico, which is notoriously inefficient). Unless you are suggesting that restrictions on refining capacity, interstate selling rules, and drilling are at the behest of foreign collusion. I'd be interested in seeing your evidence-- they seem to be self imposed wounds from everything I've seen.

bennyonesix wrote:But my central point remains. I do not deny that Corporatism provides a logical way of allocating the wealth of a society. I simply say that there are losers in that allocation and that I am a fan of the losers so I don't like it. Also, I think it niggardly (heheheh) that the Corporatists do not acknowledge that there are in fact losers or that anyone has anything to complain about.

A supposition for which you provide no evidence. Of coarse there are losers and winners-- economic arguments assume this. The argument is that, in the aggregate, we are better off. I though Pinkenstein made this pretty clear-- maybe he didn't.

Course, not coarse.

Sure, working class people will be negatively impacted economically but they won't need as much money because if this thing goes well, prices at Wal-Mart could potentially drop.

All of you bitching that you don't even know what's in the package forfeited this right when you refused to cough up the cash required to be involved in this great thing called democracy. If the President says it's good for you, it's obviously good for you.

In 1950, the biggest employer in the US was General Motors and the average compensation was the 2014 equivalent of about $50/hour with including pension and health care. In 2015, the biggest employer in the US is Walmart and the average wage is under $10/hour and the workforce is carefully managed so that most of them don't work enough hours to get benefits.

"Free trade is good" - does that mean every agreement you could ever get into is equally as good for all sides?

When someone talks about a corporation in this context, or the way we normally use the word in the modern world, it isn't any group of people that get together. You don't form a corporation by coming to an agreement between individuals, that's a contract. You get a corporation by filing some papers in some government building.

It is a specifically defined legal entity and an accounting abstraction. It's a number, some paperwork in a government office, some bank accounts and some insurance policies, and title to some possessions, but it would be ridiculous to expect it to have a conscience, or to grant it the same rights that people have, such as free speech. Turns out if you do that they wind up having incredible power.

Liberal versus conservative, according to the civics textbook definition, has to do with more government vs. less government. So being pro-corporate, although it is certainly associated with the Republican party, which is supposedly the more conservative party, is really more a liberal thing, corporations are strictly a government thing.

I was thinking about this, in scifi movies etc. there has been a recurring theme for a long time that eventually technology would create robots that would overtake and wrestle control from human beings in a robot revolution. People also worried a lot about blowing up the world with a nuclear bomb or supercollider or etc. Turns out that the thing that really got away from us was the corporations, just vapor, a pure abstraction. That is poetic! It wasn't mad scientists that would wreck the world, it was mad lawyers and politicians. Who'd have thought.

The other one I was thinking about, was the scifi thing where the government would control people by planting a tiny computer chip in their head. Spending some time with younger people, watching how they are with their phones, it's evident it wasn't necessary to take the messy step of putting it in their skull, you can completely pwn a person by putting the little chip in their hand.

ccrow wrote:When someone talks about a corporation in this context, or the way we normally use the word in the modern world, it isn't any group of people that get together. You don't form a corporation by coming to an agreement between individuals, that's a contract. You get a corporation by filing some papers in some government building.

It is a specifically defined legal entity and an accounting abstraction. It's a number, some paperwork in a government office, some bank accounts and some insurance policies, and title to some possessions, but it would be ridiculous to expect it to have a conscience, or to grant it the same rights that people have, such as free speech. Turns out if you do that they wind up having incredible power.

Liberal versus conservative, according to the civics textbook definition, has to do with more government vs. less government. So being pro-corporate, although it is certainly associated with the Republican party, which is supposedly the more conservative party, is really more a liberal thing, corporations are strictly a government thing.

A corporation and corporatism are different things. A corporation is a legal entity; corporatism is a political concept.

Testiclaw wrote:Course, not coarse.

LOL

ccrow wrote:In 1950, the biggest employer in the US was General Motors and the average compensation was the 2014 equivalent of about $50/hour with including pension and health care. In 2015, the biggest employer in the US is Walmart and the average wage is under $10/hour and the workforce is carefully managed so that most of them don't work enough hours to get benefits.

"Free trade is good" - does that mean every agreement you could ever get into is equally as good for all sides?

Don't be silly.

bennyonesix wrote:Come on man. The history post-Nafta has been a reallocation of quality jobs and therefore $$$ away from working class whites to mexican nationals.

That shift is due to a lot of reasons. While NAFTA made cheaper Mexican labor more competitive, we were doing things that made our labor more expensive. Those things include:
1. Health insurance rules
2. Underfunded pensions coming to roost
3. Higher than average corporate tax rates
4. Environmental regulations

bennyonesix wrote:TLDR I love me some white people and don't want them screwed any more by the deracinating Corporatists.

At least you're finally being honest. Wow.

Turdacious wrote:

bennyonesix wrote:Come on man. The history post-Nafta has been a reallocation of quality jobs and therefore $$$ away from working class whites to mexican nationals.

That shift is due to a lot of reasons. While NAFTA made cheaper Mexican labor more competitive, we were doing things that made our labor more expensive. Those things include:
1. Health insurance rules
2. Underfunded pensions coming to roost
3. Higher than average corporate tax rates
4. Environmental regulations

RIGHT. So when you enter into an agreement without insisting that both sides adhere to the same rules (health insurance, minimum wages, environmental regulations, occupational safety regulations, you're a RUBE. You just got beat.

It's only confusing if you think the people negotiating "our" side of it have the well being of the US in mind. That's the real rube here!

ccrow wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

bennyonesix wrote:Come on man. The history post-Nafta has been a reallocation of quality jobs and therefore $$$ away from working class whites to mexican nationals.

That shift is due to a lot of reasons. While NAFTA made cheaper Mexican labor more competitive, we were doing things that made our labor more expensive. Those things include:
1. Health insurance rules
2. Underfunded pensions coming to roost
3. Higher than average corporate tax rates
4. Environmental regulations

RIGHT. So when you enter into an agreement without insisting that both sides adhere to the same rules (health insurance, minimum wages, environmental regulations, occupational safety regulations, you're a RUBE. You just got beat.

It's only confusing if you think the people negotiating "our" side of it have the well being of the US in mind. That's the real rube here!

Are you suggesting that Congress and bureaucratic agencies shouldn't have the power to make laws issue regulations unless they are done in conjunction with Mexico?

TPP - such a wonderful idea that the Senate isn't allowed to advise and counsel on it after it's negotiated.