Economics Thread

thethe said:
The EV subsidy is not the same as it’s not country specific. It’s ideologically driven as opposed to love of America and its citizens.

You either believe America is a country or just an economic area. It’s very clear where many on this forum stand.
Click to expand...
Implementing tariffs for the “love of America and its citizens” is an example of an ideologically driven policy.

And I’m still unconvinced by this argument of country vs. economic area for the simple fact that *other* Americans are harmed by these policies. If your argument is that I should care about America in a vacuum regardless of whether my own community benefits from that success in any tangible way, I do reject it. I see no point in drawing the line at past the actual people I know and personally care about, but not the human race as a whole. Some dude in Arkansas getting a Quality Control job isn’t any more useful to me than a Chinese worker getting a job, and I won’t feel shame for that.
 
mqt said:
Fair enough, but if we haven’t managed to figure it out yet, I’m not sure how it supports even the stated goals of the Trump Administration to enact such debilitating tariff rates on these materials.

It’s similar in many respects to what the left has done with EVs. If Electric vehicles were actually affordable and preferable to gas ones for most consumers, they would simply buy the vehicles. Instead we subsidized the industry which primarily resulted in companies already trying to make those vehicles getting giant stacks of government cash (looking at you, Elon) and customers who were already willing to buy EVs just paid less. We threw a pile of money at the problem of a lack of natural demand. Now we’re doing the inverse on certain raw material imports and taking in piles of money to account for the lack of natural supply.
Click to expand...
Steel isn’t really a raw material though, that would be the iron used to make it. And I would argue that American steel companies weren’t competing on a level playing field, due to other countries having things like protectionist tariffs, hidden government subsidies, and less stringent labor and environmental requirements. Despite that, we had a steel manufacturing industry until very recently, and I suspect there are still some old foundries standing.
 
mqt said:
Implementing tariffs for the “love of America and its citizens” is an example of an ideologically driven policy.

And I’m still unconvinced by this argument of country vs. economic area for the simple fact that *other* Americans are harmed by these policies. If your argument is that I should care about America in a vacuum regardless of whether my own community benefits from that success in any tangible way, I do reject it. I see no point in drawing the line at past the actual people I know and personally care about, but not the human race as a whole. Some dude in Arkansas getting a Quality Control job isn’t any more useful to me than a Chinese worker getting a job, and I won’t feel shame for that.
Click to expand...
How about if the Chinese worker is a Uighur slave or a 12 year old ( or both!) and the Chinese factory was built without an environmental impact study, was built on the habitat of an endangered salamander, poisons the nearby river, and releases 20x the CO2 into the air as the Arkansas plant?

None of those are unrealistic.
 
Jaw said:
How about if the Chinese worker is a Uighur slave or a 12 year old ( or both!) and the Chinese factory was built without an environmental impact study, was built on the habitat of an endangered salamander, poisons the nearby river, and releases 20x the CO2 into the air as the Arkansas plant?

None of those are unrealistic.
Click to expand...
This is what the free trade people support!
 
Jaw said:
Steel isn’t really a raw material though, that would be the iron used to make it. And I would argue that American steel companies weren’t competing on a level playing field, due to other countries having things like protectionist tariffs, hidden government subsidies, and less stringent labor and environmental requirements. Despite that, we had a steel manufacturing industry until very recently, and I suspect there are still some old foundries standing.
Click to expand...
Nobody will allow more than a few months to unwind almost 50 years of globalism. It’s a joke.
 
Jaw said:
Steel isn’t really a raw material though, that would be the iron used to make it. And I would argue that American steel companies weren’t competing on a level playing field, due to other countries having things like protectionist tariffs, hidden government subsidies, and less stringent labor and environmental requirements. Despite that, we had a steel manufacturing industry until very recently, and I suspect there are still some old foundries standing.
Click to expand...
That’s a really valid point, though I do know that and was using it more as a lazy shorthand for components.

I think even as a person who does believe in global warming and a host of other lefty things that regulations on production need to be looked at. If other countries just do it anyway and we buy it, we aren’t doing what we aim to in the first place.
 
Jaw said:
How about if the Chinese worker is a Uighur slave or a 12 year old ( or both!) and the Chinese factory was built without an environmental impact study, was built on the habitat of an endangered salamander, poisons the nearby river, and releases 20x the CO2 into the air as the Arkansas plant?

None of those are unrealistic.
Click to expand...
See above. I have a host of things I believe in that I increasingly fail to see as a realistic policy aim. We will not end the plight of the Uighurs through giving them less manufacturing work, and we won’t save the planet by letting China pollute it instead.
 
mqt said:
See above. I have a host of things I believe in that I increasingly fail to see as a realistic policy aim. We will not end the plight of the Uighurs through giving them less manufacturing work, and we won’t save the planet by letting China pollute it instead.
Click to expand...
Destabilizing chinas economy absolutely would be a driver in that happening.
 
mqt said:
That’s a really valid point, though I do know that and was using it more as a lazy shorthand for components.

I think even as a person who does believe in global warming and a host of other lefty things that regulations on production need to be looked at. If other countries just do it anyway and we buy it, we aren’t doing what we aim to in the first place.
Click to expand...
That’s been my biggest complaint about US environmental standards for a while now. Increasing regulations here while not banning or heavily penalizing imports from countries with already lower standards just hurts the economy and the environment.
 
mqt said:
If China begins losing revenue, you don’t think enslaved Uighers will instead turn into dead ones?
Click to expand...
I can’t predict what the ccp would do. This is definitely in their lexicon of choices. All the more reason to stop enriching them in the name of childish libertarianism.
 
Jaw said:
That’s been my biggest complaint about US environmental standards for a while now. Increasing regulations here while not banning or heavily penalizing imports from countries with already lower standards just hurts the economy and the environment.
Click to expand...
People can scream free trade and feel good about themselves though!
 
Jaw said:
That’s been my biggest complaint about US environmental standards for a while now. Increasing regulations here while not banning or heavily penalizing imports from countries with already lower standards just hurts the economy and the environment.
Click to expand...
We largely agree on that point, but we frankly have people at the wheel right now that are picking and choosing which parts of a more national approach to economics is tolerable to them. A lot of the things you seem to care about that more protectionist policies aim to solve are being undone by the other actions of the current Administration. If we’re going to intentionally make it harder for the Americans who don’t get nice new jobs, we should be expanding social programs, not gutting them.
 
mqt said:
We largely agree on that point, but we frankly have people at the wheel right now that are picking and choosing which parts of a more national approach to economics is tolerable to them. A lot of the things you seem to care about that more protectionist policies aim to solve are being undone by the other actions of the current Administration. If we’re going to intentionally make it harder for the Americans who don’t get nice new jobs, we should be expanding social programs, not gutting them.
Click to expand...
As opposed to the previous administrations they chose nothing for Americans interest?
 
thethe said:
OMG - the horror!

And yet these people complain about our entitlement system and unsafe cities.
Click to expand...
In all seriousness, protectionism will result in higher prices. That’s the point and I’m okay with it. It should also result in higher average income. Unfortunately that part doesn’t happen as quickly. My hope has been that increased domestic oil production would lower transportation costs enough to take a lot of the sting out of the higher import costs. That hasn’t happened yet but I also don’t think of the big globalist corporations have any incentive to lessen the burden. They don’t like the policies and would gladly help make politically untenable.
 
Jaw said:
In all seriousness, protectionism will result in higher prices. That’s the point and I’m okay with it. It should also result in higher average income. Unfortunately that part doesn’t happen as quickly. My hope has been that increased domestic oil production would lower transportation costs enough to take a lot of the sting out of the higher import costs. That hasn’t happened yet but I also don’t think of the big globalist corporations have any incentive to lessen the burden. They don’t like the policies and would gladly help make politically untenable.
Click to expand...
Yup - this has been my position from the beginning. Net/net Americans will be ina better spot. First world issues of a PS5 costing 50 dollars more (lol) aside these policies will be great for majority of Americans.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top