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Rufus said...

My vote for "Immorality" would be fighting endless wars in the Middleeast for a product for which we can supply a substitute at home, but that the oil companies Won't Distribute sans "mandates."

Go ahead, tell me how many hungry people we could feed with the $150 Billion plus, we are spending in te Middle East.

About that $150 Billion. Do you know what you could buy with it?

Just about ALL of the Food Grain Crops produced in North, AND S. America.

Or, you could build enough biorefineries to replace Every Single Drop of Imported Oil we use.

But, then What would we do with our $150 Billion, Next year?

PeakTrader said...

Rufus, get real, a lot of money will continue to be spent on police, military, security at firms, households, etc. I know you won't get rid of your keys and other security systems. Protection from criminal activity or worse is not immoral.

Also, I may add, do you want a madman and his two sons, sitting on trillions of dollars of oil, who used chemical weapons before, started wars in Iran and Kuwait, killed more Middle East people than anyone in history, and created an enviornmental disaster burning oil fields, while thumbing his nose at the UN and the civilized world for over a decade to continue his regime.

Or want fanatics willing to kill as many innocent people as possible, including through weapons of mass destruction, so they can go to heaven. Or a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, etc. How many 9/11s should there be?

Oil is a cheap form of energy. It's unfortunate the world has been prevented from buying oil and peaceful people have been prevented from selling oil by a bunch of criminals and fanatics. So, we have to rely on expensive alternative energy.

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Gettingrational said...

If the U.S. had no trade deficit or even a surplus then $380.7 billion would have been added to the economy and 4.8% to GDP at the very least. That's millions of jobs and tax funding for the Treasury. That is for Goods and Services and would be considerably more if the energy trade deficit could be eliminated.

This is not the last century and economic recessions are very much harder to recover from. Is there any common sense and toughness in the population to overcome this?

PeakTrader said...

Gettingrational, countries should be exchanging goods. However, if a country decides to exchange its goods for worth less U.S. paper assets, then that's good for the U.S. The best outcome is the U.S. never exports those goods.

Gettingrational said...

Your nom du keyboard implies a confidence that might be as baseless as your assertion. Hundreds of millions of Americans work to pay the interest payments on the Treasuries that are investments vehicles for our creditors. These worthless pieces of paper enable the purchase of commodities and businesses all over the world by trade surplus nations -- paid for from U.S. bank accounts held by U.S. creditors.

PeakTrader said...

Perhaps you'll believe Milton Friedman:

In his view, the "worst case scenario" of the currency never returning to the country of origin was actually the best possible outcome: the country actually purchased its goods by exchanging them for pieces of cheaply-made paper. As Friedman put it, this would be the same result as if the exporting country burned the dollars it earned, never returning it to market circulation.

Gettingrational, the U.S. dollar becomes worth less through inflation, low interest rates, and currency exchange rates. So, Americans can work with less effort for more goods, and don't have to work providing goods for foreigners.

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PeakTrader said...

The U.S. economy is far more advanced than the charts suggest, the E.U. economy has lagged the U.S. badly, while Asia is only catching-up.

Roughly half of the world's Information-Age firms are American (in revenues and profits), and roughly three-quarters of the world's Biotech-Revolution firms are American.

The world order:

1. The U.S. masses receive free goods from the global economy in exchange for policing the world.

2. The E.U. masses receive the illusion of prosperity for being anti-war.

3. The Asian masses receive employment for political stability.

Anti-war Americans want the goods without paying for them.

Also, I may add, "Obamanomics" has rather than promoted growth and taxed it, has stunted growth, for perhaps the next 10 years.

After that, the 80 million U.S. Baby-Boomers will retire, and U.S. workers will have to provide the Social Security and Medicare, along with other goods & services, the retired Boomers will consume.

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PeakTrader said...

If it's down 10% in 2008 and up 5% in 2009, it's down 5 1/2% from 2007. Would that really be a V-shaped recovery?

However, the U.S. economy peaked at a high level in late-'07 and descended to a low level in mid-'09, which makes a lot of data look worse than normal in historical comparisons.

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PeakTrader said...

No matter how much proof is shown, some will remain in denial that 1982-07 was one of the greatest periods of U.S. prosperity and poor economic performance over the next 10 years is completely unnecessary. Also, I may add, U.S. health care and education are expensive, because of heavy government intervention.

U.S. households are paying-down high-interest rate debt first the hard way, without a large tax cut:

Fed report: Consumer credit card balances keep plummeting
By Jeremy M. Simon

"Consumers slashed their credit card debt levels by nearly $1,700 per household in 2009, according to the Federal Reserve."

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Sethstorm said...

Why is it that about every offshoring strategy seems to lie to the displaced until they are unable to object to the measure? Nobody has given me a straight answer in that respect.

Foreigners also offshored jobs to the U.S..

For the 2003 era of offshoring, it was done only as a political reaction. Damage control, if you will.

Secondly, that was used as a way to train non-citizens. Enter Grigsby & Cohen (et al) to make sure US citizens could not get those jobs. What incentive is there to train/hire a citizen when you can use it to culturaly immerse a non-citizen? What incentive is there to do so if the non-citizen can be treated like an indentured servant with none of the protections of citizenship?

Why stop or slow globalization, including open markets, free trade, and unrestricted capital flows?

Right now, it is being used as a weapon against US citizens. That is, it is used as a threat against US citizens who wish to speak up wrt working conditions. Same for the folks on the other end.

If the citizen had the ability to negate that threat as it is presented to them(and not at a time when they are "more skilled"), then I might be more sympathetic to your cause.

As things stand, I only will support such when the citizen can expect the following:

1a) Follow their job, compensation level(in their favor, not the business's) and skill level around the world.

1b) Do so without worry as to any non-economic freedoms being revoked (as done frequently in Third World countries that defer to multinationals)

1c) Be able to work in a country of their choice and not have to fear the use of trade as a threat to speaking up.

1d) Entrepreneurial ability is not required nor is given preference over those whom are averse to it.

1e) Staffing firms are considered a temporary measure, not a permanent end-run.

1f)Citizenship of a First World(as initially defined by NATO) nation is not a penalty.

PeakTrader said...

Seth, the question should be how to place those displaced workers. Perhaps, students who want to study fields in demand should receive more federal aid, while students who want to study fields in less demand should receive less student aid.

You say globalization or offshoring is a "weapon," which implies destruction. However, offshoring benefits both trading partners, e.g. through the Law of Comparative Advantage, although one side may "win" more than the other. Hostility towards business is not a solution to help society.

Sethstorm said...

That's about any hard science or law degree. The issue is that not all are amenable to these higher-skill fields. That would be condemning them to a short and painful future.

Consider the idea that business can afford to be a bit more hostile to its employees in order to cut costs. The way that the hostility is justified is to use the threat of offshoring or large numbers of applicants towards the person who raises the issue. That also provides incentives to thwart anything that would block such hostility. Finally, should the bluff be called, it is used against the complainant(s). They are out of a job and may not be able to collect unemployment due to a legal technicality(read: a policy violation will be used to get around any legal roadblocks).

That is what I consider weaponized use of trade. Where it might be mutually beneficial for parties A and B, it can be used against C. For all purposes and intents, C is treated as a roadblock.

PeakTrader said...

Seth, the fact that society has shifted from an agricultural economy into the industrial-information-biotech revolutions prove people are capable of improving their skills, and there are many more economic revolutions to come. Afterall, economies are made up of people.

Normally, cutting costs is not "hostile." In a competitive market, the top priority of business is to survive, and that may require offshoring. If a worker objects to offshoring, why should the entire business be at risk on one objection or the objection of a group of workers?

Globalization is not a "weapon" that destroyed economies. It improved economies substantially.

Also I may add, your example is unrealistic, because the top priority of a business is to survive. If a business doesn't pay a competitive wage, then its top workers will leave, e.g. to a competitor, and the business will fail.