More "Free Trade" Fail.

[Anti Federalist]

By the way, nice of you to completely ignore my first post with the link in it, AF.

lol I better never see you rant against free trade again until you try to refute it.

Answered in the post above.

And I'll rant and rave to my heart's content, thank you.

 

[ClayTrainor]

You can't support free markets and oppose free trade, without being a giant hypocrite.

 

[agitator]

That has nothing to do with this. That's keynesian economics....the free-trade argument is economic fact. It's like 2+2....no economist, either keynesian, supply-side, austrian, etc, tries to refute it.

Being that other counties don't operate the same and the fact that the governments needs to raise funds, what is wrong with small tariffs instead of internal taxation?

 

[Anti Federalist]

Keep printing money? You have me bamboozled here. I thought we were talking about trade, not our federal government spending....


Tariffs destroy wealth is fact. Tariffs hurt the consumers more than the help the local producers. Fact.

No matter HOW rich or poor your country is, tariffs will ALWAYS destroy part of your country's wealth.


That's why this is the stupidest debate I've been in.

Simple question.

What hurts savings, investment, capital improvements and is more intrusive:

Income taxation,

or

Tariffs?

 

[Kregisen]

Yup.

Tariffs were in place for 150 years of this country's history.

In 150 years we became an economic and innovative powerhouse the likes of which the world has never seen before.

Post WWII and that started to change.

The final nail in the coffin driven in the early 70s by Nixon and Kissinger, letting Mao know that his 50 million dead were well spent in the Great Leap Forward, and removing the last vestige of reality to the US dollar.

AF, why do you keep ignoring my post on page 1?

Listen, I couldn't care less what you choose to believe, but you create more threads than anyone else on here, and it seems like 1/4 of those threads are against free trade, and it's MISLEADING people.

If you keep ignoring the facts and won't bother debating people, please for the sake of everyone else, STOP POSTING about it.

 

[ClayTrainor]

Tariffs destroy wealth is fact. Tariffs hurt the consumers more than the help the local producers. Fact.

No matter HOW rich or poor your country is, tariffs will ALWAYS destroy part of your country's wealth.

Yup. This is true of all forms of taxation and extortion. Tariffs are not some magical exception.

Ron Paul gets this...

"Tariffs, taxes, and duties upset the balance, because governments add costs to the calculation which make doing business less attractive. Similarly, so-called managed trade agreements like WTO favor certain business interests and trading nations over others, which reduces the mutual benefit inherent in true free trade." - Ron Paul

That's why this is the stupidest debate I've been in.

It's the same as all arguments for state policy, "Free Trade/free markets don't work, the solution is for government to regulate and tax us".

 

[driller80545]

Krigesen, I'm not sure that your facts are actually facts. Good read, but a little shaky in the real world.

 

[agitator]

It's the same as all arguments for state policy, "Free Trade/free markets don't work, the solution is for government to regulate and tax us".

If we are to believe governments need to raise funds for its operation, what do you propose.

 

[Kregisen]

Yup. This is true of all forms of taxation and extortion. Tariffs are not some magical exception.

Ron Paul gets this...

"Tariffs, taxes, and duties upset the balance, because governments add costs to the calculation which make doing business less attractive. Similarly, so-called managed trade agreements like WTO favor certain business interests and trading nations over others, which reduces the mutual benefit inherent in true free trade." - Ron Paul



It's the same as all arguments for state policy, "Free Trade/free markets don't work, the solution is for government to regulate and tax us".

Exactly. If the federal government has to raise funds someway, then some market will become distorted. What I'm arguing against is this view that the majority of america holds (who get it from their TV sets) that free trade is hurting America, and tariffs will help us. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I'm NOT TRYING to say that tariffs can't be used for revenue, if there are no better alternatives.

It's just plain stupidity to say that tariffs will make us richer. (like what AF says every single post) That's what I'm arguing against.

 

[ClayTrainor]

If we are to believe governments need to raise funds for its operation, what do you propose.

That you put the gun down, and let me choose to give my earnings to whoever I want and interact with anyone I want. I see no reason for me to meddle in your affairs, and would kindly ask that you don't require an agency to meddle in mine and force me to pay for it.

"The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State... is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State." - Rothbard

 

[jtstellar]

so many economic illiterates in the "liberty" camp.. fuck
spare me the struggle between laziness and responsibility for fucks sake
how many hours do you even freaking spend reading free market economic/austrian materials or just financial stuff in general in a week to even feel qualified in your own mind to define what free trade is and to make a case (a shitty one) against it
a <1/10 fraction of what i do would put you around at least 5hrs a week give it a break already you brain dead economic illiterates

 

[axiomata]

Krigesen, I'm not sure that your facts are actually facts. Good read, but a little shaky in the real world.

Instead of keep on saying, "Econ 101" I'll show you.

If a tariff does it's job, it always reduces consumer surplus. It can increase producer surplus (hence why producer lobby for them at the expense of consumers), but as a result of the tariff, the sum of consumer plus producer surplus is less than it would be without the tariff. This is called the deadweight loss and why Krigesen's insistence that tariffs destroy wealth is 100% correct.

 

[ClayTrainor]

Simple question.

What hurts savings, investment, capital improvements and is more intrusive:

Income taxation,

or

Tariffs?

An Income tax is probably more harmful, but that's like saying getting punched in the gut hurts less than getting punched in the face. Both suck.

 

[charrob]

we need trade balance, where imports = exports. Impose tariffs on goods from foreign nations until there is a trade balance; if eventually we start exporting a little more than importing, ease up on the tariffs so that there is again balance. This is a win-win for everybody, and still allows nations to specialize in what they might be particularly good at making.

 

[agitator]

That you put the gun down, and let me choose to give my earnings to whoever I want and interact with anyone I want. I see no reason for me to meddle in your affairs, and would kindly ask that you don't require an agency to meddle in mine and force me to pay for it.

"The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State... is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State." - Rothbard

So no form of taxation? Including sales tax?

 

[ClayTrainor]

So no form of taxation? Including sales tax?

Right. Taxation is extortion, and all organizations financed in this manner will naturally breed more extortion and corruption. There are far better ways to finance every single service that government claims to provide, all the way from security services to health care services.

 

[Anti Federalist]

AF, why do you keep ignoring my post on page 1?

Listen, I couldn't care less what you choose to believe, but you create more threads than anyone else on here, and it seems like 1/4 of those threads are against free trade, and it's MISLEADING people.

If you keep ignoring the facts and won't bother debating people, please for the sake of everyone else, STOP POSTING about it.

Because I haven't.

Because your example assumes a number of things, most importantly that the $40 bears are EQUAL in quality to the displaced $55 bears.

And your own example lists producers and their employees as being "hurt" buy a flood of cheap foreign teddy bears.

The people hurt, at least in the short run, are in two groups, both on the supply curve.

1. The first hurt is all those firms – and their workers and owners – who were producing teddy bears at $55 but can’t afford to produce them at $40. These firms are on the supply curve above point F but below the supply-and-demand intersection point. These firms were knocked out of the market. Presumably, they’re going to enter another market, but at least in the short run they’ll be unemployed, and the “short” run can be long and usually is painful. (These resources’ inability to produce for $40 indicates that they are valued elsewhere. Remember this from comparative advantage: if you’re high-cost at producing one thing, you must therefore be low-cost at producing something else.)

And finally, FOR ONE MORE TIME this entire model is based on Ricardo's law of Comparative Advantage:

WHICH DOES NOT APPLY WHEN YOU ARE DEALING WITH A RIGID INDENTURED SERVITUDE CASTE SYSTEM/STATE LIKE INDIA OR A PRISON STATE LIKE COMMUNIST CHINA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is no business model that can compete with a state prison that opens up shop right next to yours making the same thing with prison labor.

Now, that is why I think about this topic the way I do, perhaps I'm wrong, but it is not my intent to "mislead" anybody, nor is it the nonsensical rantings of an idiot, both of which you have insinuated in this thread.

I'll rant and rave all I please about it and we can discuss the matter, but if you want to keep up the left handed insults, you'll end up being only the second person that I've put on ignore in over three years.

 

[agitator]

so many economic illiterates in the "liberty" camp.. fuck
spare me the struggle between laziness and responsibility for fucks sake
how many hours do you even freaking spend reading free market economic/austrian materials or just financial stuff in general in a week to even feel qualified in your own mind to define what free trade is and to make a case (a shitty one) against it
a <1/10 fraction of what i do would put you around at least 5hrs a week give it a break already you brain dead economic illiterates

No, I think many agree in the hypothetical. But do you think the governments are ever going away? Do you think they will not always want some form of coercive funding?

So in that society, how best to fund the government?

 

[axiomata]

we need trade balance, where imports = exports. Impose tariffs on goods from foreign nations until there is a trade balance; if eventually we start exporting a little more than importing, ease up on the tariffs so that there is again balance. This is a win-win for everybody, and still allows nations to specialize in what they might be particularly good at making.

Why do we need imports = exports? That's just mercantilism lite.

Check out this: http://www.lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams58.1.html

 

[james1906]

Instead of keep on saying, "Econ 101" I'll show you.

If a tariff does it's job, it always reduces consumer surplus. It can increase producer surplus (hence why producer lobby for them at the expense of consumers), but as a result of the tariff, the sum of consumer plus producer surplus is less than it would be without the tariff. This is called the deadweight loss and why Krigesen's insistence that tariffs destroy wealth is 100% correct.

I studied that in college too.

Once again, no free trade advocates have stated how a country can trade when it produces very little. The only way to continue trading is to pay for the goods. However, when you don't have any money to pay for the goods, you are forced to print it out of thin air.