THE ERA OF TRUMP

[Smitty-48]

Once we finally crack this supply/demand curve, and get higher prices to equal higher demand, we’re all going to be kings!

“Hey everyone relying on steel, you buy American, or pay American prices for foreign steel. That’s a 20% increase”

“Hell yeah, I’ll take double my normal order!”

“Only double? Fine. We’re adding a 15% tariff on top of that!”

“Shit, TRIPLE my order, then!”

It’s going to be glorious guys. Just like before the 90s.

I'm not saying big Canadian lumber companies are not nefarious, they are, but they've got the tariff scam all figured out and play it their advantage, they're so big that they can collect the windfall profits on the American side by buying up American mills, then they turn around and lobby the Canadian government to retaliate and give them more subsidies so they can double dip on both sides of the border.

[Speaker to Animals]

God, you're an idiot when it comes to economics. You do not even grasp the distinction between macro and micro demand and supply curves, and you possess no concept of the problem of trade deficits . You probably don't know how to calculate a GDP either based on your inability to grasp a core feature of the problem.

You have this one partisan neocon book, though, and fuck anybody who suggests you get an actual macroeconomics textbook so you don't look like such an idiot.

Imagine in a history thread somebody shows up with zero exposure to actual history other than reading The People's History of The United States, and proceeds to lecture those of us who took several courses in American history in college and, you know, actually bothered to read about differing perspectives on history rather than just that one Marxist book. You might call that guy an idiot, no?

[DBTrek]

I’d rage at a guy too, if I claimed a minor in a field yet couldn’t counter-argue a single point when push came to shove.

You and read-my-book Hash. Two geniuses who can’t be bothered to demonstrate the skills they claim to possess. Ah well.
/shrug

[Speaker to Animals]

I feel particularly calm, actually. I think it's amusing when people try to lecture everybody about a whole topic after reading a single book that's not even a textbook.

So what does the Sowellverse say about trade deficits?

It's almost like you don't realize there are different schools of economics with completely different takes on these things, and no way to "prove" one is right and the others are wrong.. It's just all Sowell.

[DBTrek]

He says plenty about trade deficits, and I’m aware that there are several schools of economics. I’m surprised to hear you are though, as you keep calling Sowell a NeoCon, which he’s not, nor is NeoCon a school of economics. Sowell subscribes to the Chicago school of economics.

[Smitty-48]

Tariffs are just taxation on behalf of entrenched interests at the expense of everyone else, lumber duties is the perfect example, Americans pay the tax on the price of their home, Canadian taxpayers are then bilked to "compensate" these companies when they didn't actually take a loss but rather made out like bandits.

I don't care if Americans are dumb enough to throw up protectionist barriers, that doesn't harm me, that harms them, I caution against it, but that's all I can do, what I care about is the Canadian retaliation, that is what harms me, so if I had my druthers I would drop all protectionist barriers in ostensible defense of Canada, even if the Americans raise more barriers on the American side, because protectionism does no good, it only does harm, but it doesn't harm the people it is supposedly protecting you from, it only harms you, the person it is ostensibly protecting.

[Speaker to Animals]

Another problem is that the Chinese are treating economics as a form of nationalistic warfare, and the neocons and libertarians (liberals) that completely trashed the GOP over the past forty years are operating like stabbing their countrymen in the back is good economics. Whether or not it's good economics is clearly debatable, but the fact that it is rendering us weaker and making China into a superpower is indisputable.

When the war comes, it will be men like Sowell who are responsible for making it possible in the first place. China is not a thing without feeding off the decay and decline of the United States, and that decay and decline are the direct results of this kind of mammon-worship we see from the neoclassical and monetarist schools.

The world is using all these different liberals who got a lock on both political parties to slowly destroy the United States. They profit by it and they love it, for now. But nations like Canada, who were actively stabbing us in the back with the steel and aluminum exploitations of NAFTA won't be laughing when China is the sole superpower.

There won't be a repeat in China. People who stab their countrymen in the back like this get put in front of a firing squad or their organs harvested in China. Chinese at least know how to deal with the traitorous man.

[Smitty-48]

Being a Great Power is a fool's errand, Great Powers do not deliver a better life for their people, all being a Great Power means, is you have created a super elite in your country which are beyond the control of you or anybody else, they bring misery and woe to foreigners, but they bring misery and woe to their own people as well, I wouldn't trade places with a Chinaman for all the tea in China, and when a Chinaman has enough money to do it, they flee to where again? Oh yeah, Canada. Why? To escape the clutches of their unchecked super elite upon them.

[Speaker to Animals]

Yeah, we should be like snow niggers feeding off the American working class like parasites.

[DBTrek]

Ah yes, that great devil known as neo-liberalist economics (aka Orthodox economics). Been plaguing America since rising to prominence in 1932. We’re all constantly wishing we could return to pre-1932 America, after all.

And China! Shit, China. They aren’t rising to economic greatness by embracing the same economics that made us world rockstars post-1932. Nope. Mammon, the demon, is actually using our fantastic economic model to feed China our corpse ... even though China is increasingly using our model and prospering ... it’s a model demon-built to kill us, not them. Absolute coincidence that both nations prospered by turning to it.

Sounds like a realistic worldview. Though after hearing it I understand why you might want to round up all the economists who don’t see your truth and have them shot. Nothing advances the right idea like executing the competition.




Whooo!