ATL Bear said:Just a question. Are we stronger today than we were when Reagan was President? Militarily? Economically? Is life a multitude easier than it was in 1986? Technology not outsourcing has been the killer of the manufacturing worker, and the driver of our innovation that has propelled us. It's in a constant pursuit of minimizing human necessity in repeatable process tasks, and as AI progresses it's going much more complex.Redbrickbear said:ATL Bear said:RINO. Reagan In Name Only…boognish_bear said:
Reagan was not a demi-god
He was right about a lot
But he was dead wrong about amnesty for millions of 3rd worlders and was wrong about the de-industrialization of the USA
A USA without powerful manufacturing and production capabilities could never have defeated the communists in the USSR
And if America is going to defeat the communists in China it has to change course from the failed orthodoxies of the past few decades
Sending 50,000 factories and millions of jobs overseas does not in fact make us stronger
Where you and others are lost is what Reagan and others like Milton Friedman understood. Trade, even if on unequal terms, pushes companies to innovate around it. Where we failed was being unwilling to actually deregulate to the level necessary to compete. We continue to hang onto labor value perspectives that are becoming obsolescent. Our auto industry still languishes in these historical burdens. We don't need more metal press operators, we need engineers. That's where China, India, Europe and elsewhere beat our butts. And now we want to limit our labor supply shortage through Visa limits.
We've gone next level in complaining about our lot ( which is pretty damn good comparatively), but we have a long way to go in actually trying to make the necessary changes if we want to get back to the low ends of the supply chain. Take mining for example. We don't need to buy Greenland to get into rare earth minerals again. We just need the fortitude to change our laws. Are we ready? Words are cheap and easy, actions not so much.
1. It actually debatable if we are stronger than during the time of Reagan
We do not yet have a major peer super power competitor to challenge us (though China is trying to get there)
[More than 60,000 manufacturing plants have closed in the United States since 1998. This has led to the loss of millions of jobs. The decline in manufacturing has devastated local economies and workers in industrial areas. Rural areas have been particularly hard hit by the closure of small factories.]
A great power war would tell us very quickly if we are stronger or weaker since the 1980s
2. De-industrialization of the American heartland was not just the work of dispassionate market forces....it was deliberate policy in many cases.
[Across the manufacturing sector, sophisticated industries that once served as the backbone of U.S. economic prosperity are dwindling in terms of both output and employment. Evidence of this U.S. deindustrialization should be raising red flags for U.S. policy makers, given manufacturing's long-recognized contribution to economic growth and prosperity, as well as the problematic manufacturing-driven trade and current account deficits (for more detail, see Hersh 2003). But rather than suffering through sleepless nights, U.S. policy
makers have met manufacturing's decline with a series of public policy choices that place U.S. manufacturing at a competitive disadvantage against foreign producers and provide perverse incentives for companies to relocate manufacturing overseas. In other words, U.S. deindustrialization is not simply a result of natural economic evolution, but also owes to policy makers' remarkable indifference to the manufacturing economy]
file:///C:/Users/James/Downloads/1285-Article%20Text-1766-1-10-20150205%20(2).pdf
3. Tariffs are about equalizing trade.....not killing free trade
You can still buy, sell, trade what products and services you want.
[New reciprocal Trump tariffs aim to match the already existing tariffs other countries place on U.S. goods]
