http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=2736

"Interdependence" is now the desired end of the new elite.

And so we have become again a dependent nation. We borrow from Europe and Japan to defend the oil of Europe and Japan in the Persian Gulf. We borrow from China to buy the goods of China. We are as dependent on foreign borrowing as we are on foreign oil.



Some great things from Pat.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27360

I think you dropped a 0 on the link.

Pat's too protectionist for my taste.

Machiavelli Wrote:And so we have become again a dependent nation. We borrow from Europe and Japan to defend the oil of Europe and Japan in the Persian Gulf. We borrow from China to buy the goods of China. We are as dependent on foreign borrowing as we are on foreign oil.

You hit on one very interesting point there. The oil that we are supposedly fighting for in Iraq is not oil that WE use. Europe, India, China, and Japan get the majority of the oil from the Mideast. I don't think this is well understood by anyone who is debating the policy issues there.

So why are we the ones there fighting for it, and they're not?

As I understand it, oil is considered a fungible commodity. Once it leaves the ground it's pretty much exactly the same, regardless of where it came from. Even if we don't get our oil directly from the Middle East we are still just as affected by the Middle Eastern oil supply as those countries that do.

This is also why it doesn't make any economic sense to boycott companies that get their oil from Chavez or the Middle East. If we shift our purchases away from these companies, the purchasers we are displacing will simply fill the void.

jh Wrote:As I understand it, oil is considered a fungible commodity. Once it leaves the ground it's pretty much exactly the same, regardless of where it came from. Even if we don't get our oil directly from the Middle East we are still just as affected by the Middle Eastern oil supply as those countries that do.

This is also why it doesn't make any economic sense to boycott companies that get their oil from Chavez or the Middle East. If we shift our purchases away from these companies, the purchasers we are displacing will simply fill the void.

That's generally true, with a few quirks. For example, Venezuelan crude pretty much comes to the US because we have refineries set up to handle it. Nigerian crude works well in some, but not all, US refineries. So there are some restrictions on true fungibility, but as a rule if nothing else the prices are going to move in concert with adjustments to reflect those quirks.

Still, when we get 10% of our oil from the mideast, and when whoever runs any of those countries has to sell the oil to get money to stay in power, it's hard to see how we could be this worked up over oil.

I think it's something else, and I think I know what it is, and I'd be more comfortable if it was about oil.

Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:Still, when we get 10% of our oil from the mideast, and when whoever runs any of those countries has to sell the oil to get money to stay in power, it's hard to see how we could be this worked up over oil.

I think it's something else, and I think I know what it is, and I'd be more comfortable if it was about oil.

This I agree with completely. Shutting off the spigot hurts them more than it hurts us.

I'd be curious to know what you think the reason is.

Our obsession with micro-managing the world. Same thing that inspired the resentment that led to 9/11.

It gets more complicated than that, too complicated to get into on here, but that's a pretty good way to express it pithily.

Machiavelli Wrote:http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=2736

"Interdependence" is now the desired end of the new elite.

And so we have become again a dependent nation. We borrow from Europe and Japan to defend the oil of Europe and Japan in the Persian Gulf. We borrow from China to buy the goods of China. We are as dependent on foreign borrowing as we are on foreign oil.



Some great things from Pat.

Don't get me started on this, I differ greatly from the "neocons" on this. Free trade has resulted in the import of foreign goods record trade deficits and of course our #1 export jobs. Pat would have been my #1 choice for president, but the drive-by media is terrified of him and keep the Republican party afraid of him. The Republican's best aren't running Pat, Newt, and Huck. I think Huck hit on something a populous message with a conservative social slant. Let's be honest, we know we'll have to pay taxes to fund things like the military and national infrastructure (highways, mass transit, airports, water/sewer) we just need an equitable structure and for government to get out of the earmark aka pork barrel business.

THE NC Herd Fan Wrote:I differ greatly from the "neocons" on this. Free trade has resulted in the import of foreign goods record trade deficits and of course our #1 export jobs.

I differ from the neocons on most everything--my brother describes a neocon as someone who is conservative on every issue where he is liberal, and liberal on every issue where he is conservative, and that works for me too.

But free trade is getting a bad rap here.

First, the biggest single factor in the trade deficit is our oil imports (40%), which are due to go up significantly at current prices. This has NOTHING to do with free trade.

Second, free trade is a factor, but hardly the only factor, in our negative balance of trade for other products and the loss of jobs. Tax policy, environmental regulation, litigation risk, labor price vs. productivity, and currency risk are other factors in the decision to locate a business here, and once you've located the plant, you've determined who are going to be exporters and who are going to be importers. A lot of the jobs that we've supposedly "lost to NAFTA" were actually going somewhere else for other reasons; the impact of NAFTA is that the somewhere else ended up being Mexico rather than Thailand. Given the pressure for illegal immigration, something that creates jobs in Mexico is not totaly a bad thing.

We could remove one hurdle that American companies face by replacing part or all of our existing tax structure with a consumption tax/value added tax (VAT)/general sales tax (GST). We are the only developed country that doesn't have one (our states do, of course, but not at the levels as for example European countries do). The reason this would help is that under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), to which we are a signatory, jurisdictions that impose a VAT/GST are allowed to rebate it on export sales and to charge it on imports. That means that US companies are giving away a 15-20% advantage in competing for international sales. The other guys get a subsidy of that much on their sales to us and we pay a penalty of that much on our sales to them, and it's all perfectly legal under GATT. There's nothing we can do about it, except to impose the same kind of tax ourselves, and get the same advantages for ourselves.