I think the classical liberal angle is simple. It’s to favor trade which takes place in a context of peace and honesty. Take poisonous toys, for example. HR 4040 (and related Senate bills) is an attempt to require the Consumer Product Safety Commission to crack down on toy imports from manufacturers who demonstrate a “persistent pattern” of child safety recklessness. This is important to the classical liberal, because he believes that goods represented and sold as safe for children should be, well, actually safe for children.
But the Bush adminstration was quick to put the smackdown on conferees in both the House and Senate by dispatching reminders about stipulations in WTO agreements that forbid applying sets of standards for one trade participant without applying identical standards to all trade participants. In other words, whatever you put into place to ensure the safety of Chinese products you must also put into place to ensure the safety of products from all participants, including yourself. It makes no difference whether Swedes or Germans already produce to the world’s highest standards. Nor does it matter that US toy manufacturers have all but abandoned making any toys in the US for inspectors to inspect.
If protectionism means protecting the health and safety of American consumers, then I suppose you could say the classical liberal favors protectionism. Austan Goolsbee answered a reporter’s question (paraphrasing here) about NAFTA by pulling out the document’s executive summary — ! — a thick tome in its own right, and pointing out how the language about free trade ends on page eleven, followed by twelve hundred pages of exceptions, loopholes, special favors, and limits. Now I’m sure you’ll find something in all that to pick at, but in case you were really interested, that’s the gist of it.
Yeah, I’ll find something to pick at. I posted about labor and environmental laws. That has nothing to do with either of those.
No biggie, though. I’m not asking you defend Obama’s trade policies here. I just said I thought a townhall type meeting would be useful in that it would allow both candidates to explain, in some detail, why they take the positions they do. And, btw, I suspect McCain shares some of the “fair trade” ideas of Obama. Or at least he’ll say he does. But I don’t expect either candidate, if elected, to change our trade policies significantly.
While I agree that America is a country of whiners, I am confused by the OP. I thought Liberal was a conservative and his name was just ironic? Is he now actually a real liberal? Did I miss some kind of tectonic shift in the SDMB political spectrum?
If he picks her, I’m reserving my Obama inauguration tickets today. I know lots of people at HP/Agilent who hate her guts without having been laid off. In fact, I think the dislike was pretty universal. This is not a hating management thing - those who went to Agilent like the guy who took over there, who actually practiced the HP Way.
Oh the stories that would come out …
BTW, does she have a job yet - not just on some boards somewhere, but a real job?
Yeah, Carly is a pretty controversial figure. Isn’t she planning to run for governor, though? Meg Whitman would be a better pick, if he wants to go with a female businessperson.
Well, I don’t agree with Liberal’s “context of peace and honesty”; I think Obama’s more pragmatic than that. To me, it’s simply about not having US producers fight with one hand tied behind their back. We have labor and environmental laws for good reason and that shouldn’t be a factor for other countries to “take” our jobs simply because they’re willing to exploit their people and trash their environment. It’s about providing a level playing field (where other countries will still have cheaper labor, but at least the market will be based on competition and not which government can race to the bottom the fastest).
While I’m sure environmental rules are a cover for protectionism in some cases, a better justification is that not having them adds hidden shared costs to outsourcing, in terms of environmental damage. If we’re not going to let a factory in Texas puff pollutants in the air, why let one across the border in Mexico do so? Labor laws are more of a human rights thing. There are certainly arguments against these, but it isn’t necessarily purely protectionist.
Liberal is a libertarian not a conservative (as was evident in his old name), and his name refers to classical liberalism not the philosophy most Americans think of when they hear the word. So it’s not intended to be ironic. That said, some of the positions he’s taken since becoming an Obama booster have me really confused.
I think the US is a nation of whiners. People falling on hard times after living outside of their means for years during the economical upswing hold most of the blame for their own problems.
They should have been paying down credit cards and putting money away in case they get laid off(3 months take home is the minimum you should have in case of an emergency/lawsuit/layoff). Instead they were too busy pushing iphone and RV sales through the roof. Now the economy is not growing as fast, that is nothing new or unforeseeable, the economy does that about 30% of the time. Some people do get into dire financial straights through no fault of their own, but most of the bitching now if from the Joe’s that should have been checking up on their savings and 401k contributions instead of boozing in front of the TV after work.
They are saying “what am I supposed to do?”. Now they are supposed to foreclose and move to a crappier neighborhood. They should be asking “what was I supposed to have been doing during the last few years when the economy was good and I didn’t give a crap?”
CT: While there are no doubt many people who fall in that category, the situation is a lot more complicated than that. There are plenty of people who worked hard, did what they thought was right, but just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What we do or don’t to help them is certainly debatable, but it doesn’t help to simply castigate people and tell them to buck up.
If you go back to what Gramm actually, said, he was talking about people whining about globalization. I think that’s a legitimate point, as many of the people mouthing off don’t know the first thing about how trade and economics works. But telling someone who just got laid off to quit whining (in general), however, isn’t constructive and isn’t helpful.
Tying environmental and labor protections to trade pacts is justifiable on economic efficiency grounds, and there’s nothing inherently protectionist about doing so (although a specific implementation might end up being protectionist). I’ll grant, though, that almost no politicians (including Obama) use economic efficiency as their justification for such policies.
Perhaps. I’m wondering which classical liberals, though, would make that argument. IOW, what would Milton Friedman or David Ricardo do?
But just to be clear: I agree with McCain about certain things, and I’m probably closer to him on trade than I am to Obama. But there are lots of issues that I disagree with him on, and on balance, I favor Obama even if I think he’s wrong on some aspects of his trade policy. Partly because the other things are more important, and partly because I think he won’t really make any significant changes to our trade policy. Presidents can only do so much.
Well, classical liberalism tends to be more focused on property rights than economic efficiency, but my experience is that in practice, most classical liberals will make economic efficiency arguments for various types of things (such as, say, patents).
Friedman and Ricardo, IMO, have a tendency to pay short shrift to things like information assymetry problems, unequal bargaining problems, and negative externalities, so I think their efficiency arguments are going to come out on the other end of the spectrum than mine.
I agree with BrightNShiny, it’s all about property — hence, the peace and honesty context. As Ludwig von Mises put it “The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production… All the other demands of liberalism result from his fundamental demand.”
Miswrote. I left to play racketball. As I was driving away I thought I wrote that. Sorry. It is however a big .big jump from last year and a clear indication all is not well with the economy.
