@Alias72, your economic view regarding international trade and labor wages is simplified to a point where what you are saying just isn't true. There are many more factors involved, and just because wages are lower in China does not mean that trading with China is hurting the U.S. economy.

you are right. I did not include the effects of transportation over distance, i mentioned labor but didn't define it so it appears like im talking about wages and i didn't clearly define supply and demand.

a better statement would be that:
Labor is a combination of the time and effort put into a product and the relative quality of the product. there is a massive supply of labor in China. We will assume that the demand for goods in the US doesn't change because production moves (in actually it diminishes as people become unemployed and can't but stuff)
the price of labor in china is low enough that it is cheaper to produce in china and ship to the US paying transport and tariff then to produce in the US. producers therefore choose to produce in china to save money. still simplified but more clear.

True, but you are only including labor in your analysis. Of course labor is cheaper in China, and thus manufactured good can be produced more cheaply there. But what about human capital? Highly skilled labor and knowledge (think white collar workers) are an immense export of the United States, much of it going to China. If you break up the trade to China, you would be hurting both China and the U.S. There would be more manufacturing jobs here (though prices of goods would rise) and we would lose much GDP in the loss of exports of human capital.

even this is slightly flawed, but i'm already pushing the boundaries of the topic and don't feel i should post about the effects of supply and demand unless people really want to hear it. plus the book only costs like $10 and isn't that difficult to read (an Inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations by Adam Smith)

I agree. Great book, though quite dated. I don't think Adam Smith was envisioning the type of international trade that is going on now lol

I am pretty sure that book is free on project gutenberg or for the kindle

Hey, hey, you know what I don't have to worry about thanks to Obama? bin Laden.

right tom. i did say that closing trade hurts in the long run, and i did simplify the economic model. i didn't pass final judgement, merely posited two solutions. and i agree that knowledge is a very valuable commodity. also i was merely trying to explain the means by witch manufacturing jobs can return, as these are the jobs that are experiencing losses. and your right to say that not all jobs will move away. the jobs that deserve higher wages are much safer.

governments in the west have effectively established a price floor on the commodity labor. people in these countries need to decide, are they willing to accept that the most mundane jobs (factory working) are not worth what the government demands, and accept less, or are they instead willing to lose these jobs, perhaps moving on towards more skilled career paths.

Trade only benefits countries too small to produce goods themselves. It does nothing whatsoever to benefit big countries like the United States and Canada, who have more than enough resources, labor, and capital to produce everything it needs for its population. The cost of trade is de-industrialization and overexposure to the vicissitudes of markets and politics elsewhere in the world. That cost far exceeds any potential 'benefit' via gaining access to markets for export.

@dubmell

actually i think it was a group of special forces that killed Bin Laden not Obama. Just don't think Obama deserves much credit for signing a piece of paper authorizing the covert operation.

That's why his foreign policy team was reluctant to support the operation but said Obama pushed for it to go forward. Nevermind, Obama could cure cancer and there'd still be people unwilling to give him credit.

Obama could have pulled the trigger and people wouldn't give him any credit.

Right, Alias, so we can blame the president for the economy, something he has little actualized control over, but not executive orders, something with his signature written by his own hand?

@Putin33
this line of thought is highly Feudal (IE it is reminiscent of the feudal system prevalent in medieval Europe.) which isn't an insult.

At first glance it may appear that producing everything you need yourself is better. after all you don't need to worry about the markets in other nations and you don't necessarily have an shortages if you have the capacity to produce everything yourself.

one assumption you made that i disagree with is that trade instantly means that industry leaves your nation which isn't necessarily true.

there are numerous downsides to this idea though.

1. you can only market goods to your own people. this means that you are disadvantaged when compared to nations who can produce for the entire world

2. it can be cheaper to produce something somewhere else and because you force yourself to produce it "here" you end up being inefficient

3. by only using domestic resources you put a limit on your nations growth.

I have an example from (the Wealth of Nations) that demonstrates how trade can help a nation.

China in the 1770's was a very large and very rich nation, but it was by no means a superpower. China didn't trade, met it's own needs, and didn't grow. because the nations economy didn't expand (all there needs were met and there supplies were all used up) china was able to do very little. there was almost no incentive to invest because everything required to do so was already being used. also who would you sell it to? when china opened up to trade it experienced massive growth because it could sell its goods to other nations, and buy goods from other nations as needed.

money is valueless unless spent. money is a representation of the value of the goods or services you produced, converted into a usable form. when money changes hands a good or service is exchanged for it. the labor that you invested into earning that money has now allowed someone else to benefit from their labor. money has value when it is spent. the more money is spent the more value it has. the more people there are the more money is spent.

when many people spend a lot of money on a good people will begin to supply more of that good such that they meet the demand.

I wasn't saying you could blame the president for the economy. I was saying you CAN'T blame him (at least not to the extent that most people do) because he has so little control. i mentioned that it was mostly banks and insurance companies who caused the mess, and it was a group of government economists who put forth the bailout, furthermore i mentioned how impractical it would be for the president to have remedied the situation.

ooh, I haven't read the tome that is this thread. Sorry for mischaracterizing your view.

On a related note, though, if you don't believe the president is not to receive credit for the economy nor for executive orders, then what /is/ he to receive credit for?

The point about bin Laden is the info had been being collected for months, even years, and no matter who was the President, they would have signed that piece of paper.

I don't think that was Alias' point, Draug. That may be your point, but reviewing what Alias said, I think his point was that "the buck [doesn't] stop[] [t]here."

@Draug

Yes, I understand. I was just asking you a different, yet relevant question.

So who will you be voting for?

Adam Smith looks nice on paper but in fact not even England and the United States became the economic powerhouse they came to be via his policies. In fact they became industrial powerhouses through strong protectionism. It was Alex Hamilton's Report on Manufactures, not Adam Smith, that guides US economic policy in the early republic. It was the protectionist policies of Henry Carey that guided US economic growth in the post-civil war era.

Similarly, it was English protectionism that led to the rise of the textile industry, and replaced Belgian cloth for English, and the Navigation Acts (copied from the Hanseatic merchants) which led to English commercial supremacy. Not free trade.

"one assumption you made that i disagree with is that trade instantly means that industry leaves your nation which isn't necessarily true."

No, it doesn't necessarily leave, but in order to keep it from leaving you have to make a conscious effort to specialize in it, like for example Germany has. Notice how Germany is one of the few industrialized countries which isn't being de-industrialized. This is because it specializes in making high-end manufactured goods for export and created a technical education system geared for this specialty. But few rich countries have done this and instead specialized in providing financial services, like the US & UK, because that is where they had a 'comparative advantage'.

"when many people spend a lot of money on a good people will begin to supply more of that good such that they meet the demand."

The power to produce wealth is more important than wealth itself. For example, Germany has suffered many a century from war, famine, pestilence, etc, but it has been able to rebound very quickly after each calamnity. Why? Because it maintained its power of production. Ditto France in the early 19th century, suffered a great deal after losing the Napoleonic wars. Yet rapidly grew due to its powers of production.

"you can only market goods to your own people. this means that you are disadvantaged when compared to nations who can produce for the entire world"

Disadvantaged when it comes to one particular kind of market/good, but on the other hand you have the advantage of having many more types of markets & goods produced. The strength of the national economy is the total amount of goods & services produced, so it doesn't follow that just because markets to the goods & services you specialize in might not be maximized, you won't have an overall greater level of productive capacity.

When a country specializes, it is making a choice between either sacrificing labor intensive production in favor of capital intensive production, which means greater structural unemployment; or sacrificing greater capital intensive production for labor intensive production; which means a less advanced level of production, less technical know-how, and a lower standard of living. This is why despite the fact that African economies have been plugged into the global 'free trade' system for decades, they can't raise the foreign exchange necessary to industrialize or create a manufacturing sector. They have to export at a very high level to get the kind of foreign exchange necessary for industrialization, and that just isn't possible since there are too many competitors.

@Abge - Haven't decided for certain, but I know it won't be from the Republicrats or the Democans.

@dubm - I was responding to the point that someone said he should get the crtedit for signing a piece of paper. If any president in power would have signed the same piece of paper, then there is no credit to give. That would be like giving him credit for walking to Marine One on the way to a vacation, something every president since the Marines began escorting the President to Airforce One.

If it is something different than the other guy would have done, then the credit or blame goes to him. But if it is what abyone in his place would have done (not even a tough decision), then there is no credit or blame to give.

I guess today Draugnar decided to discard his Republican underpants and put on his anti-establishment underpants. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Ah, I see the distinction you're drawing. I'll grant to criticism as valid, but I don't think it advances any discussion. Considering that the op is still classified, we cannot say for sure if /any/ other president would have signed the order. I recall a lot of press about bin Laden hiding in Pakistani mountains and Bush not wanting to provoke a war, which if true, means that not /any/ other president would have signed the order. Perhaps a pedantic point, but one we cannot verify nor disprove, until it becomes declassified. (Of course, Jefferson would have totally signed the order since he authorized the first American war on terror. :)

Quick, who said this?

""It's not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.""

If you said Mittens Romney, you'd be correct. If you still argue 'any President' did what Obama did, then you'd be flat out wrong.

Lincoln signed the order declaring war on our own States when they decided to leave, so he *definitely* would have said "blow him to hell!"

Um, Romney isn't president?

The claim is that Obama did what anybody would have done. Clearly not. Had Romney been President, he wouldn't have done it. Nor would Bush obviously since he was in office for 8 years and didn't do it and claimed finding Osama wasn't a big deal.

Putin - Please prove that Romney wouldn't have done iut.You can't! Please prove Bush wouldn't have done it had the military provided solid evidence of where he was. You can't!

Two. Epic. Fucking. SillyPutty. Fails!

I just did. God you are illiterate.

""It's not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

Mitt Romney, 2007 with Liz Sidoti.

Bush on Bin Laden:

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/05/02/162774/bush-bin-laden/

No, Putin. That doesn't prove that if evidence were presented to them that bin Laden's existence were known, they wouldn't have followed through. You really need to consider the evidence you provide as proof. This proves they would not, at that time, made the hunt a priority. But it does not prove they wouldn't have acted if the evidence was presented to them. Two different subjects altogether and so you still Epic. Fucking, SillyPutty, Fail.