Would it help our "economy" if we forced each other via the coercive monopoly of the government to only buy products "we've" made in "our" country? If so, then shouldn't we also restrict sales to only those things made within our own state? Why not our own county?
This plan has worked well for Iran and North Korea - I mena, it has worked well for keeping the masters of these nations weathy and relatively unchallenged in their tyranny.
That aside - assuming we only got coercion in who we could buy and sell from and not in other arenas - would "buying American" help or hurt?
"If we restricted trade to just the 50 states, what would happen immediately -- and would increase over time -- would be a huge reduction in our standard of living, because we wouldn't have access to the cheap goods we get from other countries," Perry said. "We also wouldn't have any export markets, so companies like Caterpillar and Microsoft would have a huge reduction in sales and workforce." (Microsoft is the publisher of MSN Money.)
what do we make of heartfelt pleas to save U.S. manufacturing by buying American, or the many websites (see one here) that catalog U.S. sources for an array of products? Or the Buy American Act, which curbs government purchases of products that are made overseas?
Do such efforts actually hurt the country they're trying to help?
Marc Kruskol, 53, a publicist based in Palmdale, Calif., goes out of his way to purchase products that are made in the U.S. because of his concern over the decline in manufacturing employment.
"I truly believe that we could go a long way towards fixing the economy if we would just put people to work making things in this country that are made in other places," said Kruskol, who spends hours scouring made-in-America websites or visiting brick-and-mortar stores in search of U.S. products.
He recently spent $10 on a pair of salad tongs made in America, which he tracked down in a restaurant supply store, after rejecting 99-cent foreign-made tongs. And he was happy to spend $650 on a domestically produced barbecue grill rather than a $450 imported one, just to support his countrymen.
http://money.msn.com/how-to-budget/what-if-you-had-to-buy-american.aspx
It might be argued that over time "we" would develop domestic manufacturing capacity that "we" don't have now. But it leads to the question of why it's so expensive to make things in "our" country that someone else can make things thousands of miles away, pay to export them, pay to ship them, and still get the products to market at a price "our" manufacturers cannot match? OSHA, a sluggish, expensive, over-regulated, unresponsive to consumer needs power system, artificially high labor costs including the costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, expensive and ineffective public schools, a remarkably foolish tax system for a nation which states it wants more manufacturers making more products with "US" workers, and a psychotic regulatory scheme that meets politicians needs to be re-elected while repressing business activity and confusing good intentions with environmental care. Much of the political landscape is schizophrenic as it on the one hand decries tax subsidies for those who "off shore" manufacturing, while claiming to be outraged when a "wealthy" corporation makes money and doesn't pay massive taxes, and then arguing for hokey nonsense like "cap and trade" which will do nothing for carbon emissions but will again ratchet up the incentives to hire folks elsewhere to build things for our markets.
In short - the "buy American" argument is as economically illiterate as the rest to the discussions taking place in our political gestalt. We have a literal case of the economically blind leading the economically blind.
This plan has worked well for Iran and North Korea - I mena, it has worked well for keeping the masters of these nations weathy and relatively unchallenged in their tyranny.
That aside - assuming we only got coercion in who we could buy and sell from and not in other arenas - would "buying American" help or hurt?
"If we restricted trade to just the 50 states, what would happen immediately -- and would increase over time -- would be a huge reduction in our standard of living, because we wouldn't have access to the cheap goods we get from other countries," Perry said. "We also wouldn't have any export markets, so companies like Caterpillar and Microsoft would have a huge reduction in sales and workforce." (Microsoft is the publisher of MSN Money.)
what do we make of heartfelt pleas to save U.S. manufacturing by buying American, or the many websites (see one here) that catalog U.S. sources for an array of products? Or the Buy American Act, which curbs government purchases of products that are made overseas?
Do such efforts actually hurt the country they're trying to help?
Marc Kruskol, 53, a publicist based in Palmdale, Calif., goes out of his way to purchase products that are made in the U.S. because of his concern over the decline in manufacturing employment.
"I truly believe that we could go a long way towards fixing the economy if we would just put people to work making things in this country that are made in other places," said Kruskol, who spends hours scouring made-in-America websites or visiting brick-and-mortar stores in search of U.S. products.
He recently spent $10 on a pair of salad tongs made in America, which he tracked down in a restaurant supply store, after rejecting 99-cent foreign-made tongs. And he was happy to spend $650 on a domestically produced barbecue grill rather than a $450 imported one, just to support his countrymen.
http://money.msn.com/how-to-budget/what-if-you-had-to-buy-american.aspx
It might be argued that over time "we" would develop domestic manufacturing capacity that "we" don't have now. But it leads to the question of why it's so expensive to make things in "our" country that someone else can make things thousands of miles away, pay to export them, pay to ship them, and still get the products to market at a price "our" manufacturers cannot match? OSHA, a sluggish, expensive, over-regulated, unresponsive to consumer needs power system, artificially high labor costs including the costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, expensive and ineffective public schools, a remarkably foolish tax system for a nation which states it wants more manufacturers making more products with "US" workers, and a psychotic regulatory scheme that meets politicians needs to be re-elected while repressing business activity and confusing good intentions with environmental care. Much of the political landscape is schizophrenic as it on the one hand decries tax subsidies for those who "off shore" manufacturing, while claiming to be outraged when a "wealthy" corporation makes money and doesn't pay massive taxes, and then arguing for hokey nonsense like "cap and trade" which will do nothing for carbon emissions but will again ratchet up the incentives to hire folks elsewhere to build things for our markets.
In short - the "buy American" argument is as economically illiterate as the rest to the discussions taking place in our political gestalt. We have a literal case of the economically blind leading the economically blind.
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