Quote:
Originally Posted by Saltheart
Governemt could slow it (or could have at one time) by banning the export of American Manufacturing Technology. Yes China has people who will push the buttons on a machine for less pay than the American operators but they wouldn't have the machines with buttons to push if we didn't send those machines over seas.
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Slowing it (not sure of the it to which you're referring here) would not stop it. There is no way that a government of free people can stop the flow of information from its boundaries except to relinquish freedom, and, again that would slow it but not stop it. Protectionism does not, ultimately, lead to higher standards of living. What it perniciously tends to do is create an illusion of higher wages by the constant inflation of those wages through various protectionist schemes such as three year wage contracts, government subsidies to protect commodity prices, larger government to distribute to those who "fall behind" due to artificial raises in wages and prices, higher taxes, etc., etc. There is also the mistaken idea that money is wealth. So the larger quantity of money you have is supposed to make you that much more wealthy. If it costs you ten times more to buy a thing than it costs someone else to buy it, does that make you more wealthy than him because you have ten times more money? It gives you the potential to buy more things compared to your neighbor, but not necessarily to someone across another border. If we look at property, rather than money, as being wealth, than it's the things you own that make you wealthy, and your money is only useful if it is spent on things. So if you can buy more things from China with the same amount of money that you would have to spend to buy less things in the U.S., you will become wealthier buying things produced in China than those produced here. China will have the money, you will have the things. In order for China to be wealthy, it will have to spend the money it got from you, just as you spent it. So, the free market rather than protectionism, allows you to gain more wealth. Where will China spend that money? If it spends it here, it will be at our prices, so China will lose since things are more expensive here. If it spends it in China, through creating jobs to pay workers to buy things, then the consumers in China will gain wealth. So you will have gained things and the Chinese consumer will have gained things. Now having gained things at a lower cost, you have money left to buy things here that you can't buy from China. That spreads money to entrepeneurs that can provide those things. So you can also gain more things/wealth from here as well. And, eventually, if our protections are removed
internally, we can produce things more cheaply here, and as foreign markets grow, especially as they maintain protectionism and large government intrusion and protectionist welfares and contracts, their costs will rise, and we can begin to produce competitively here, and there will be that more stabilizing worldwide market that we dream of.