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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2861 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: UNNECESSARIAT

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.





wasoxygen  ·  2861 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    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.

—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.