Tariffs. How are you affected?

I wonder why you seem to prefer tariffs instead of free trade because it's not companies selling into the US that pays them. They're paid from the pockets of US citizens.

It's easy to warn about something and then, later, to claim some sort of credit for that if/when it happens. The current administration has done more than anyone or anything to inflict social decay on the country.

I think that, for as long as the country remains culturally tribal such that some people look at others through a lens of lefties, liberals, wackos or other such derogatory labelling, it won't ever become cohesive.

I also think it's more indicative of personal insecurity and/or limited thinking that people do that.

 

Meh. We’re tribal apes with delusions of grandeur. As such, we will always suffer from us vs them thinking. The thing is, folks who don’t suffer from such thinking, will suffer at the hands of, and be replaced by, those who do. Lofty ideals and moral superiority are no match for bombs, bullets, or breeding.

As to tariffs; they’re just another form of taxes. I’m not fond of taxes btw. I do like taxes to be as explicit as possible. They also remind the public (via the increased costs) that by buying stuff from elsewhere, they are taking some of those potential earnings from their fellow countrymen. Please don’t use that, as others here have done, to launch into a diatribe from macro 101. I majored in Econ. I understand the theory AND the limitations of theory. Human life does not exist within the pages of an economics textbook and, even less so, within those of a macroeconomics textbook.

 

For most of the 80's and 90's I was living in Japan, and I saw the ignorance from afar---like the people who would smash Japanese cars to push the idea of Buy American (instead of the sensible smart thing they should've been doing----Fix American made products). And as I have said, America changed politically in ways I did not see, so that when I returned to America, I was confused over what was happening. But the trade wars were definitely populist arguments. It seems to me that it didn't matter who was in power, democrat or republican, the trade wars remained. That is what I was working to change with the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, because the Japanese market was not closed to Americans as all the people believed, it was that Americans were trying to shove American stuff down the throats of Japanese that simply did not meet their needs or fit them, and American products were pretty shoddy at the time.

The whole fundamental reason for the trade wars was to prop up the inefficiencies and the elderly factories and methods of American industry. Simply stated, the wealthy Americans did not want to change their ways, nor update their factories, nor bother with quality, because they just wanted to make money, and they expected everybody to shut up and buy their stuff. Now, that doesn't sound like something liberals would support. In fact, they were busy fighting the laissez faire arguments of the conservatives with such things as consumer protection. Conservatives always tended to side with the very wealthy, and the industrialists. Academia had made it very clear that trade wars and tariffs were bad--plain and simple, and liberals always tended to be more educated, and aligned their values with academia. So my initial response would be, I don't think that was the case. Free trade is not necessarily equivalent to laissez faire economics.

I still laugh at the religious wackos and their slippery slope arguments, except that they have pretty much taken over the Republican Party and are trying to force the Nation into Christo-Fascist Nationalism and so the situation is PRETTY DAMN SCARY!

But their arguments which never really came into fruition were are based on their interpretation of a book that was written roughly 2000 - 2400 years ago.

What I have said, and others too, is based on sound economic theory. It would be great to look back 20 - 30 years hence and laugh at this time, though I doubt very much that will happen. If we are lucky, I sincerely hope we can look back and say, "Damn! That was close!" I think it is too late that we will be able to say that, but I would love for history to prove me wrong. But if we stick to the path we are on, there won't be any laughing.

You can't just destroy everything, upset the system, replace it with an inferior system that blatantly feeds greed and expect that any good will come out of it. It took 81 years (since the end of World War II) to create the amazingly integrated global trade system that we have today, and to maintain our position in the center of it. And this was after the amazing injection of infrastructure, economics, strength, wealth, control, and power that World War II and the victory we led, gave us. That is not something that will happen again naturally, and the chances of it happening again for us, are practically nil. Trump is destroying this. And the rest of the world is smart enough that they know they can continue without us!

In 1988, I predicted the credit crisis of Japan that would begin with a stock market crash at the beginning of 1990. My prediction was published in the Toyo Keizai magazine (an economics magazine) in the spring of 1989. In 2026, no one is laughing at that. The Japanese are still feeling the effects of the 2 decades of recession that created. In 2007 I again predicted a credit crisis, this time in the US, and again preached to get out of the stock market when it breaks through the uptrend lines, which it did in the first few days of 2008, close to the all time high at that time. No one is laughing at that, and yet very few people understand how close we came to collapsing into a depression. When the credit markets almost collapsed over the Lehman Brothers collapse (which Bush presidency could have prevented) Americans were completely oblivious to what happened, and most still are.

Again, if we stick to the path we are on---a path directed by a complete moron who has a history of failed businesses, and designed by a bunch of Christian fanatics who have too much sway in the GOP (the Heritage Foundation), and an obsessively greedy elite---it would be foolish to think that we are ever going to be great again...

 

Are you saying that humans are by nature, tribal apes? Because I wholeheartedly disagree. I have spent time with several indigenous cultures, and I have followed indigenous spirituality since the mid 90's, and have learned much from the wisdom of numerous elders in Native communities. What people refer to when they claim that our society is tribal is a dynamic and world view that began in the planter cultures in my opinion. It is dependent on dualism, an in-group out-group, and opposition.

While I believe this world view began when the planter cultures began creating villages and the roots of civilization was formed, many tribal planter cultures themselves have a world view that tends towards the older hunter gatherers in my experience. Their older world view is not one of dualism, but rather multiplicity, and community. Rather than seeking opposition and dominance, they sought balance. I believe that mankind is evolving away from this dualism and towards a multiplistic cosmology, and that our very survival as a species depends on this. Perhaps this is why the polarization and Nihilism is so strong in our world today---it is the final push before such dynamics are deconstructed----if we don't destroy ourselves in the process.

Why do conservatives always have to revert back to muscle over brains until eventually they circle back to eugenics. I've had this argument so many times over the past few years. The Nazis, by the way, had bombs bullets and breeding. They considered modern science to be a Jewish abomination, and they literally tried to create a cosmological science that was about as stupid as the crazy fringe science ideas pushed by MAGA adherents today. The Nazis and the Italian Fascists (like MAGA today) rejected the lofty ideals and moral superiority of enlightenment liberalism, but they had bombs, bullets, and breeding, in fact, they had what they thought was the absolute best breeding----white skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed! But in the end, they were no match for brains, lofty ideals, and moral superiority (i.e. the West with their technology, and morals and ideals of freedom, liberty, justice and democracy----i.e. the very things that enlightenment liberalism gave us).

So buying foreign goods takes away potential earnings of fellow countrymen? The world does not really work that way any more. This is not the 19th century. In today's world do you know what tariffs do? They destroy the businesses of your fellow countrymen. Trump's tariffs have seriously impacted small businesses----the very fellow countrymen that you think are getting hurt by foreign trade. There are so many parts that are not manufactured in the US, and cannot be manufactured here, and therefore these small businesses are getting killed whether they are manufacturing here, or just selling, or whatever business they are in!

Meanwhile, big companies take advantage of the tariff-induced higher prices by raising their prices, and this hurts all consumers. And it is all for nothing, because the trade deficit did not change-----we are still at the same trade deficit as we were a year ago. The only thing that has changed is that imports and exports have both dropped. So are you all in for making the American consumer and the small business person suffer for nothing other than the deterioration of American trade? Because that is what is happening!

I don't understand----didn't you say in the end that you just took some economics classes? I still don't understand how you could major in economics and understand it and yet come to the conclusions that you do. When I tried to get you to explain this before you were very vague about it, but it seemed to me, and still does, that perhaps your knowledge of economics has been tainted by the so-called libertarian economists, and the gold bugs, and all of their ilk.

Throw that crap away, and read some real economics---please! Their arguments are based on conspiracy theories that are 150 - 200 years old! Talk about predictions that we can later look back on and laugh about! They have been predicting the crash of the US Dollar and other currences they consider to be fiat currencies for almost that entire 150 years!!!

 

Yep, it always has to go to the nazis doesn’t it? That’s the first and last page in the liberal the playbook, right? Ok. Since everyone a liberal doesn’t like is a nazi, then it must be cool to firebomb any civilian population belonging to a people who disagree with liberals then, right?

 

Let’s see:
I made no mention of eugenics. Mind you, the fact that there are now warning labels on hair dryers to tell people to not submerge them in water while they are turned on would suggest that we may need to let Darwin thin the herd a bit. My reference to breeding was meant to mean quantities. We have adopted policies and beliefs in western societies that discourage our own populations from having children and then our governments claim that they need to bring in new blood from the third world usually to… ensure economic growth it seems.

As to all of your expositions about economics and your wish for me to explain mine; as I said, human lives are nowhere to be found within the pages of any economics textbooks. You can’t feed your family your country’s gdp. A working man’s job prospects are not enhanced by the amount of disposable plastic-crap he can buy at Walmart.
Economics has become little more than a narrative tool to enhance and perpetuate the power of the financial and political class. The “numbers” say whatever those who paid for them want them to say. The dismal science has sold out whatever little credibility it may have once held.