A question for liberals: why do you focus on money and not production? (bill, interest)
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I'm not going to sit and argue with all your points. But I think you need to examine both sides of the coin. As another poster mentioned, we don't have free trade. Other nations, particularly China, place tariffs of upwards of 30% on our goods. Tarrifs on goods coming into this nation are a friendly 3%, if any at all.
I think this document -- the Harmonized Tariff Schedule for the US -- will suggest very differently.
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Originally Posted by andywire
Regarding jobs...I do believe some jobs have been coming back.
Jobs are not like tourists. You need to get that entire nonsense concept out of your head. That would be just for starters, as the rest of your post is no less an amalgamation of uninformed worthless nonsense and rant. China is about 15 to 20 years behind us in technology. Can they catch up? It depends how fast they can steal and reverse-engineer stuff as against how fast we can come up with stuff that they've never thought of yet. In any case Sino-phobia is nothing more than a little boy's preoccupation.
I think this document -- the Harmonized Tariff Schedule for the US -- will suggest very differently.
What an obnoxiously fe'd up tactic! Show a big document you haven't read, and make believe it supports your point.
It in fact proves andywire's point. US average tariffs are only 1.5%. We have unilateral free trade except for favored industries (like ag and ethanol production).
And then more blah, blah, blah, BS personal attacks with no substance. This is getting real old.
Currency exchange rates are only partially market driven. For example, China pegging the yuan to the dollar, or Japan buying US dollars and selling yen to make Japanese goods more profitable. It took a lot of activist diplomacy just to get China to let the yuan float within strict limits.
The yuan remains an insignifant regional currency. It may grow in importance, but without volume and transparency, it will never become what the world's major currencies are today. Pegging is already old hat. China cannot move forward playing those little baby games and they know that. Exchange rates are meanwhile market driven and it is pointless to try to claim differently.
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Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell
Just about every nation in the world manipulates the currency market.
They wish they could, but they can't. They can send walk and talk signals to the markets in hopes of influencing them in some way or other, but nobody can manipulate the markets anymore.
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Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell
Don't you wish you had been holding Swiss francs when they quit pegging the value to the euro?
No, and I don't wish I'd bought Microsoft in 1986 either. I've made plenty of money simply by doing what I did. Many others have accomplished the very same thing, and are similarly pleased with how things have turned out for them. The ones who look back in anger and envy are the ones who missed all the boats.
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Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell
One of the benefits of QE was to drive down the value of the dollar, which has risen a lot since the Fed ended the program.
Forex was not driven by QE when the US did it, and it won't be as the EU does it. The world is not run by any witch doctor's bag of tricks.
We had a brief period of real economic growth due to the dotcom boom. This also resulted in a dramatic reduction in our trade deficit. So we didn't need fiscal stimulus for a few years.
The so-called dot-com boom continues to this day. There was no bubble. There was no bust. The trade deficit shrank briefly during the recession of the early 1990s. It exploded over the rest of that decade and then on up to the Great Recession. You seem to be just making stuff up in an attempt to cover for earlier made up stuff.
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Originally Posted by rruff
That's great. When are they returning then? Maybe in 100 years? Why will they return? What will this "claim on the US economy" consist of?
Why not just admit that you haven't got a clue here,. If you're baffled by the concept of claims on the US economy, you're worse off that just being out in left field -- you haven't got trolley fare to the ballpark.
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Originally Posted by rruff
These US$ can run around the world indefinitely, and if they do come back it will likely be to purchase US assets. Businesses, land, resources, etc. That isn't going to do **** for the US public either.
That is called INVESTING. People like to invest in the US. We are very popular place in that regard. But at the end of the day, it's always a last resort. A country like China will use its US dollar earnings to purchase goods and services from the US, then to purchase goods and services from third parties willing to take dollars in payment, and it will then look to invest any residual. Your notions of the value of such investment are simply off-the-charts nonsense. What happens to all those dollars that China invests here? Is it your belief that someone is stuffing them under a mattress somewhere?
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Originally Posted by rruff
It's curious that you acknowledge that US oligarchs have increased their wealth massively, and that the US public has gotten the shaft for the last 40 years. Yet you still cling to the notion that it happened "accidentally". I've given you a thorough explanation of how this all fits together. I get that you don't like it. I absolutely detest it myself. If you actually have a substantive argument and facts in support of your world view, they would be most welcome. Platitudes and snide remarks are not.
To my mind there is nothing snide about pointing out the confused and even delusional notions that people here often err in. There are for instance no oligarchs. And no matter how wealth and income are distributed, there will always be a top 1%. It's simply senseless to fight against that. If one wishes to fight something, it must be via the justification of rational political means to bring about the sort of change and balance you might prefer to see.
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Originally Posted by rruff
Are you interested in challenging your world view at all? I am. It's why I'm here.
In a word, no, and I have yet to see the first sign that you could teach me anything relevant at all in this regard.
I can explain it to you again, but it won't help, as I can't understand it for you.
Again, you can't do either one. You are a non-factor and at least many of your posts are nothing but worthless tripe. Tell us again how no one knows where the estimated $150 billion in gasoline savings has gone. That was your first humiliation in this sequence and your poor bruised ego has led you only to multiply it since.
What an obnoxiously fe'd up tactic! Show a big document you haven't read, and make believe it supports your point.
Sounds like you're choking on my dust again here. It has been claimed that the US is some sort of dumping ground and has only a few tariffs of 3%, if that. That claim was a load of unadulterated nonsense as the extensive tariff schedules that you've not only never read but never heard of so very plainly point out.
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Originally Posted by rruff
And then more blah, blah, blah, BS personal attacks with no substance. This is getting real old.
What's long ago gotten old are the unending flows of economic claptrap. Somebody needs to tun off the spigot.
Again, you can't do either one. You are a non-factor and at least many of your posts are nothing but worthless tripe...
So then, you agree you are completely wrong about your post asserting China only has low-tech manufacturing.
And you agree you are completely wrong about your post asserting taxes have little bearing on decision making.
And you agree that when you are show up, you just lash out.
Got it, Babs.
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