To be clear, I'm a white collar yuppie.
Look at that overdose map. That is the area of the USA that NAFTA and the Bush-era free trade agreements hollowed out. In many of those places, there is nothing left but the people who are too shell-shocked to do anything other than collect government checks and watch the city/county rot back into the earth. Rural America is in a heap, deep trouble. And nobody really cares about "Fly-Over Country." The factories that used to power these small towns and counties are gone; our government makes it cheaper to raise chickens in Arkansas, freeze them whole, ship them to China for butchering, then ship them back. NOT FUCKING KIDDING. So all those low-education jobs are washing away into the hands of our economic adversaries. And the local US tax payers that were employed and paying into the system, buying furniture, and homes, and cars are now barely making ends meet and on food stamps, if they are lucky. The factories that made furniture out of wood and leather that lasted long enough to give to your kids is now made out of pressboard and falls apart in 10 years. But that disposable cheap crap is 1/3 as much as the "real" stuff. The author of the article comes off at tone deaf, out of touch, in the dark and condescending. The author almost certainly lives in either Brooklyn or Portland or any of the other Hipster havens that have been mostly spared from the knee-capping of large parts of the country.
There's an interesting book called 23 things they don't tell you about capitalism that makes a pretty good argument for trade protectionism and tariffs. I like to buy my furniture at Dania/Plummer's/Scandanavian Design/whatever they call themselves where you are. It costs about 20-30% more than Ikea and looks about 70-80% better. Best of all, probably half the shit they sell is American... and the American stuff isn't more expensive, it's just different. It's largely made of wood. Slap a 30% tariff on imports and all of a sudden we have a furniture industry again. Lather, rinse, repeat for all durable goods. Behold. The midwest makes stuff again.
We can also remove subsidies and raise taxes on oil at such a rate that we use that money to invest in non-fossil fuels, making the shipping more expensive which adds a taffif-by-another-name to the costs of imported goods. Same way that we can make a major dent in the obesity epidemic by cutting corn and sugar subsidies.Slap a 30% tariff on imports and all of a sudden we have a furniture industry again. Lather, rinse, repeat for all durable goods.
Personally, I don't believe we should be using tax dollars to subsidize anything. But then, here in reality, that ain't going to happen. So, let's subsidize the stuff that is going to make the country better in the long term. We blow $80 Billion on corn every year. King Corn For what? We spend upwards of $100 billion a year on oil subsidies. $20 billion on sugar. What good do these things do for us long term? I'd rather be investing that cash into molten salt thorium reactors, solar panels, high density battery technologies, asteroid mining and stem cell organ growing. We have a ton of money in the USA, we just are not good at spending it wisely.
Ahem The United States blows a shit-ton of money on corn because corn is a ridiculously shippable, storable source of calories that can be used in soft power diplomacy. "Hedgerow to hedgerow" was about carrot-sticking the Soviet Union during their catastrophic draughts. 'member back in like '06 or whatever when the Bush Administration was all about gasahol and there were food riots in Venezuela and China and shit? Or the rice riots in 2008? The US subsidizes the fuck out of grain so that we can splash it around like a whale in Vegas. I'm not as up on the sugar subsidies but I'd reckon it's something similar. As far as oil, that's a little trickier because the US only started exporting oil recently... but in addition to being the world's largest oil and gas producer, four of the eleven largest refinery complexes in the world are in Texas or Louisiana. It's mostly foreign oil they process, too - the US has far more control over the world's energy supply than people give it credit for. By design. The defense budget for the United States in 2016 is $598 billion. By way of comparison, we spend a third of that on food and energy subsidies. Which do you think is a more cost-effective method for exercising foreign policy? Now - I'm not saying this is moral. I'm not saying this is ideal. I'm not saying I wouldn't change it - I'd want to talk to a whole bunch of smart people before I even thought about it. But I've found that the more I dig into things, the more the stupid ways of our world make sense.
So, my brain is odd. What follows is stuff that you almost certainly are familiar with, but I am going to type this out for my benefit, as well as the audience if interested. Time had this debate in 1980. For some reason, in my head I don't equate corn as 'grain' even though corn is a grass, a grain and a basic food staple. When I think of grain, I think of wheat, rye, barley, rice, but for some reason, not corn. One of the really great things that Carter did was use grain to drag the Soviets to the SALT II table and agree to end new missile developments. This plan was so successful you end up with TIme talking about weaponizing food. I once heard a great talk from a guy who lost everything in the Reagan Farm program where the government auctioned off family farms left and right who said that Reagan shot them all in the back after Carter's Embargo cut them off at the knees and left them with tons of high-interest debt and suddenly no customers. But these guys were all wheat and 'grain" farmers, and I never in my head made that link to corn. Found a page that does not look like a 90's Geocities regect Sugar subsidies, bty, are solely to fuck Cuba. They started in the late 50's as a way to hurt Cuban exports when the Castros took control of the country. This is why I tell people that the world is not black and white, never was that way and can never be. Tom Freidman has a point that the increase in global trade has done more for world peace and an end to major wars than anything else, and I tend in very broad strokes to agree with him. China is not going to go to war with the US any time soon... not to say there will be pot shots here and there, but it is too profitable to stay in the WTO framework. Its one of these things that now we are stuck with and it gives the impression that no matter what we do we end up just punching the tar baby harder. Hopefully I won't be around if the whole thing goes off the rails or we get a set of incompetent egomaniacs in charge.Now - I'm not saying this is moral. I'm not saying this is ideal. I'm not saying I wouldn't change it - I'd want to talk to a whole bunch of smart people before I even thought about it. But I've found that the more I dig into things, the more the stupid ways of our world make sense.
Interesting that you think that they are any better than Ikea. Last time I was there (about a year ago) I actually though their quality was worse than IKEA. Agree on the trariff thing. Its time we started bring them back to fight unfair competition from the 2nd and third world.I like to buy my furniture at Dania/Plummer's/Scandanavian Design/whatever they call themselves where you are. It costs about 20-30% more than Ikea and looks about 70-80% better. Best of all, probably half the shit they sell is American... and the American stuff isn't more expensive, it's just different.
Dania still sells the bedframe, dresser and nightstand I bought in 2001. The difference between the ones you buy now and the ones in my bedroom is mine are a little darker; they're solid oak and have had some sun over the past 15 years. They're also made in Corvallis. I suggest you give 'em another look.
Oh, man, I've got one better. This is my bedroom set. I got the bookcase bed, two of the open nightstands, and the six drawer dresser. I was called insane when I bought it. This shit will survive nuclear winter, outlive me and anyone I will this to and will be the last bedroom furniture I ever buy. My next splurge is going to be this maybe later in the year. They have some killer computer desks as well that are going to cost more than my first car. The side benefit of this is that the stuff is made local, to spec, and I was able to request the stain, build, etc. Say what you want about the Amish guys, but man those guys build great stuff.
Roger clocks out at the end of his shift at the North Carolina furniture factory and changes into his jeans (made in Vietnam) and Budweiser t-shirt (made in China). He gets in his Dodge (made of parts from around the world) and heads home. Life sure is better having a job, thanks to the Buy American program, backed up by taxes Americans now pay on the cheaper imported furniture they used to prefer. Roger arrives at his home (made with Canadian timber) and gets a cold beer (aluminum from Iceland) and a chicken drumstick (butchered in China!) from the refrigerator (made in Taiwan). He turns on the TV (made in Japan) and gets ready for an evening of entertainment (made in California). But first he takes a break to use the toilet (made in Mexico). Buy American worked. Now that American consumers, rich and poor alike, have to pay more for their furniture, Roger enjoys a better quality of life with more security. He never really worried about getting food to eat, having access to a refrigerator and indoor plumbing, or losing access to a warm, dry place to sleep. His greatest fear was having to sleep on someone else's sofa and share their toilet, and maybe getting sick and not having access to excellent, modern medical care. On the other side of the world, a Chinese furniture maker is now out of work, and has moved back to the village where he sleeps on a mat on the floor, under a leaky roof, and urinates in a hole outside. So far so good, Roger is taken care of. But what about American producers of textiles, lumber, refrigerators, and toilets? Fair's fair, Roger, you should be buying American too. America has the resources and ingenuity to produce all of these goods; all have in fact been produced in America. But Roger isn't getting rich making furniture, and the reason he selected imported products for his home, though it sometimes meant compromising on quality, was to save money. Roger is going to have to give some things up in order to Buy American. If the "buy local" idea is a good one, we should go all the way and refuse to take advantage of the efficiency that a country like Iceland has in smelting aluminium. Iceland should grow it's own food and manufacture its own cars, too. So should Fiji! When a Fiji native buys a German car, that means fewer manufacturing jobs for native islanders. There's plenty of space for an automobile plant on Fiji, what's stopping them?
Reductio ad absurdum is no way to conduct a debate. You're mixing commodities, durable goods and consumer goods as if they're all the same, as if a chicken is the same as a TV is the same as a house. And you're studiously ignoring cost of living. An American-made recliner cost the equivalent of $610 in 1976. A similar "made in America with American and foreign parts" recliner is $650 now. Fact of the matter is, shipping armchairs across the ocean isn't cost-effective. Washing machines, on the other hand... The first VCR my family owned was a $400 GE. It lasted ten years. The second VCR my family owned was a $100 Toshiba. It lasted two. We now live in a world with disposable cell phones. A lot of that is related to the fact that the cost of living in Shenzhen is half what it is in Chicago so wages can be half - and Shenzhen is were the supertight tech shit is made. Bangalore? Get outta here. Capitalism will argue that Indians will only be competitive until their cost of living increases and eventually everything will be equal. Capitalists, on the other hand, will open and close factories in order to maximize their margins and please their shareholders. Meanwhile, it does ME good to have beds made in Corvallis rather than in Manila because I live in an extended trade ecosystem that swaps cash, food, tourism, and all sorts of other things up and down the I-5 corridor that has nothing whatsoever to do with the myriad overseas trading partners that make the shit I use. It's better for my community to purchase community goods. But this is Econ 101 shit. You know it. I know it. Yeah - it's better for the Fijians to build cars. Who's stopping them? Capitalism. Now - throw in some repressive isolationism and trade tarrffs and who knows what can happen.
—Paul Krugman, Economics (High School Version), p. 37 But I know you’re not really questioning the truth of comparative advantage; you tipped your hand by forbidding reductio — it’s a classical Greek rhetorical technique, and we Americans don’t need no foreign rhetoric! I get it.Bangladesh, though it is at an absolute disadvantage compared with the United States in almost everything, has a comparative advantage in clothing production. This means that both the United States and Bangladesh are able to consume more because they specialize in producing different things, with Bangladesh supplying our clothing and the United States supplying Bangladesh with more sophisticated goods.
Were living in interesting times for sure. Were transitioning to the post industrial economy and eliminating factory jobs at a crazy rate but no new jobs are appearing to take their place. Its not even that bad in the united states. Take a look at some of the countries in the euro-zone and the youth unemployment there This shit cant continue forever but it can probably hang toughener for another decade or two. Not sure what happens after but nothing good and Im sure Europe will pave the way.
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Yeah fuck this guy. Fuck everything about him. I, too, was alive during The Great Gay Plague. So were a lot of us. And yeah - it killed a lot of amazing people. but these "communities" the author talks about, as if the "gay community" were the only community of note before or since, were insular by design. Homosexuals hung out with homosexuals, talked to homosexuals, ate with homosexuals, had sex with homosexuals. This allowed the heterosexual majority to point to AIDS as a disease of sin, and its victims as reapers of what they sowed. It still is - people won't say it aloud anymore, but there's an implied guilt in an HIV-positive status that you've done something to deserve it. And Tammy Faye had gay AIDs patients on the PTL club and it was scandalous. And Princess Di visited an AIDS ward and you'd think she was curing leprosy. And it got Rock Hudson and that meant that Rock Hudson was a sinner, not that AIDS got everybody and even when Magic Johnson announced his HIV status there was an implied "wages of sin" to his exposure. Suicide? Wages of sin. Overdose? Wages of sin. Nobody accidentally commits suicide. You can't catch a drug overdose from a transfusion. And white women are dying in droves and they're dying in the middle of the country and they're dying in record numbers, but somehow that's MY FAULT: What the FUCK do you think I owe "Youngstown Sheet and Tube?" See, I have nothing against the Ohio river valley. Given the choice between helping the Ohio river valley or hurting the Ohio river valley I'll take help, every time. Most people would. But it's not like I don't have my own problems. Do they matter? Is it your fault? No. But is it MY fault? HELL no. And if you want to assume a pure position in which narcotics don't play, don't for a second assume I'm after your shitty land, bitch. Assume that maybe I don't know the magnitude of your problems, maybe you don't know the magnitude of mine, but maybe we oughtta put heads together rather than declare war if you want help finding a way out of your mess. I didn't vote for NAFTA, bitch. And in my home town, the 50-under-50 obituaries meant drug-related murder. The suicides? That shit was spelled out. 'cuz apparently the desert Southwest is less passive-aggressively dickish than wherever you're at.Utopians on the coasts occasionally feel obliged to dream up some scheme whereby the unnecessariat become useful again, but its crap and nobody ever holds them to it. If you even think about it for a minute, it becomes obvious: what if Sanders (or your political savior of choice) had won? Would that fix the Ohio river valley? Would it bring back Youngstown Sheet and Tube, or something comparable that could pay off a mortgage? Would it end the drug game in Appalachia, New England, and the Great Plains? Would it call back the economic viability of small farms in Illinois, of ranching in Oklahoma and Kansas? Would it make a hardware store viable again in Iowa, or a bookstore in Nevada? Who even bothers to pretend anymore?
This isn’t the first time someone’s felt this way about the dying. In fact, many of the unnecessariat agree with you and blame themselves- that’s why they’re shooting drugs and not dynamiting the Google Barge. The bottom line, repeated just below the surface of every speech, is this: those people are in the way, and its all their fault. The world of self-driving cars and global outsourcing doesn’t want or need them. Someday it won’t want you either. They can either self-rescue with unicorns and rainbows or they can sell us their land and wait for death in an apartment somewhere. You’ll get there too.