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I have the feeling that the whole trade war starts from a pile of nonsense.
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soldar:

--- Quote from: james_s on May 25, 2019, 05:13:20 pm --- The problem is that we've become addicted to cheap toys here. Goods are absolutely absurdly cheap, and because everything is so much cheaper people here can't make a living selling or servicing these goods. All this non-essential stuff is so cheap that it makes essential things like land, housing, food and stuff that cannot be outsourced to cheaper places seem much more expensive in comparison. It's not sustainable, we are going to have to get used to paying a lot more for stuff and having a lot less of it, the way it was up into the 90s.
--- End quote ---

It is socially unsustainable that a minority waste a lot in the rich world while a majority live in misery in the poorer countries. We can try to prolong it but it will only create more problems. Trying to maintain the status quo creates resentment in the poorer nations and leads to wars. 

The cheap stuff we import has a big environmental impact. We buy toys, clothes, electronics, etc. like they are disposable. We use clothes very few times. Clothes are fashion statements to be used and discarded but the manufacture of those clothes pollutes a lot. Same thing with toys, plastics electronics. So cheap we can replace them much more often than we really need. As an example I can say I have half a dozen mobile phones and an iPad and I have not bought a single one, they were all items being discarded by people getting newer devices.

Food I consider to be pretty cheap.  The reason housing is expensive is not because of the cost of building as much as the natural scarcity. You can get extremely cheap housing in places where nobody would want to live. The cost is determined by location, location, location.
magic:
There surely is more than left-right but I think one distinction can be made along the lines of "world should be made better" vs "world shouldn't be made worse" which I think a lot of the left-right stuff boils down to.
And the EU is undeniably on the "progress" side of things. They always want to change something: poverty, inequality, racism, hate, gender gap, you name it.
Their goals aren't far from the USSR: establish one huge government for people of many nations and races with democracy and equality for all.
Skeptics say the outcomes will be similar too :P In fact, some erosion of civil liberties can already be observed in localized areas.
james_s:

--- Quote from: soldar on May 25, 2019, 07:22:25 pm ---I share your low opinion of Trump and I disagree that tariffs are a good idea but, in any case, even if you think tariffs are a good idea, there are ways and there are ways to implement them.

--- End quote ---

Well I'm not an economist and frankly most aspects of business and finances make my eyes glaze over so unlike Trump I'm not going to belligerently push to implement things I do not fully understand. It's just that on the surface they sound like a reasonable idea, a way to even out the playing field a bit given much of the reason China is able to be so competitive is that they are allowed to trash their environment and abuse the workers who do not enjoy nearly the standard of living or the protections those of us in many of the places buying these cheap goods have come to expect. Again though this is not my area of expertise so I'm not flat out saying I think they're a good idea, but I do feel the pinch of competing with people overseas who can live for a fraction of what it costs me and I'm frustrated by the race to the bottom with a lot of formerly good quality products being steadily cheapened to compete with low cost garbage.   
bsfeechannel:

--- Quote from: blueskull on May 25, 2019, 10:00:29 pm ---Free trade and money first ideologies existed long before as soon as currencies were invented. Even before money's era.
And FYI, paper money was invented by the Chinese.
--- End quote ---

Last time I checked, Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism, was Scottish. I'm looking at his book, "The Wealth of Nations", right in front of me, while I write this.


--- Quote ---Modern communism proposed by the German is a challenge to capitalism, but the original concept was way before capitalism.
--- End quote ---

Yeah. Germany. A Western country.


--- Quote ---What makes the Romans so special?
--- End quote ---

Nothing. Only that we are using their script and they are at the origin of the Western civilization.


--- Quote ---Should we boycott "colonized science"?
And FYI, short hair was nothing new to China. Qing dynasty was a minority ethnicity, and they had long hairs.
The traditional Han Chinese were not known for having long hairs.

As for the clothes, it's more of a material limitation than design limitation.
If you create a civilization from the middle of nowhere, and give them modern textile technology, they will come up with the same dressing style.
It just naturally converged to this point.
--- End quote ---

What I mean is that the Chinese, willingly or not, ended up looking like the Western, not the other way around. This speaks volumes about who has been assimilated.


--- Quote ---Western products = products the West want?
"Western" attributes "products", so the phrase should be understood as products belong to the West, or products originate from the West.
You might be able to say something more intelligent with more education.
--- End quote ---

What products we buy from China that we can identify with an original modern Chinese culture?


--- Quote ---We are NOT trying to reshape Western culture or to replace it. We are trying to create one that runs in parallel.
--- End quote ---

How? What is in the Chinese culture that represents an alternative to the West, if China does what the West does or did?


--- Quote ---Arrogance seldom go hand in hand with success.
--- End quote ---

Pointing the finger to a fact is arrogance?

Have you stopped to think that we are talking in English, not Chinese?
windsmurf:

--- Quote from: james_s on May 26, 2019, 12:10:36 am ---
--- Quote from: soldar on May 25, 2019, 07:22:25 pm ---I share your low opinion of Trump and I disagree that tariffs are a good idea but, in any case, even if you think tariffs are a good idea, there are ways and there are ways to implement them.

--- End quote ---

Well I'm not an economist and frankly most aspects of business and finances make my eyes glaze over so unlike Trump I'm not going to belligerently push to implement things I do not fully understand. It's just that on the surface they sound like a reasonable idea, a way to even out the playing field a bit given much of the reason China is able to be so competitive is that they are allowed to trash their environment and abuse the workers who do not enjoy nearly the standard of living or the protections those of us in many of the places buying these cheap goods have come to expect. Again though this is not my area of expertise so I'm not flat out saying I think they're a good idea, but I do feel the pinch of competing with people overseas who can live for a fraction of what it costs me and I'm frustrated by the race to the bottom with a lot of formerly good quality products being steadily cheapened to compete with low cost garbage.

--- End quote ---

If you're talking truly about competitiveness, tariffs make us less competitive, and slows down innovation.
It also increases cost to persons and business (reduces buying power), lowering our standard of living.
Economists will tell you overall, its a net negative for the U.S. 

So why do this?  It's designed to hopefully change the behavior of a trading partner (China).   

Cheapening of products... well its what the market demands. If folks are willing to pay more for high quality U.S. made products, then industry will be there to fulfill that demand.  Fluke comes to mind... but they're constantly criticized for being too expensive or not a "good value" etc.   
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