[QUOTE="gameeer1"]Twas with me...:P
Again, I thought they would, seeing all the lawn signs with grren on them, but whatever, I don't even like the Greens anyways.:P
clicketyclick
Because Green supporters are students and students don't vote. :P
For example, union jobs in fields like automobile manufacturing in Ontario, metal smelting in BC and Ontario, are disappearing from Canada because it's much less expensive for a multinational to relocate resource processing and manufacturing to 3rd world countries where labour laws, environmental standards, and safety standards are lax or non-existent.
Under our old tariff based system, if it cost us $10 to produce say, a boot in Canada, we'd say to a company "sure you can relocate your plant to Vietnam where it costs you $2 to make the boot, but we're going to charge you an $8 tariff should you try to bring that boot into Canada."
Under free trade, that protection is gone and now the Canadian worker has to compete on the world market against countries where the costs of living are much lower. It's a race to the bottom. Sure, we might have cheaper goods under the free market system, but what good does it do us if fewer people can afford to buy them? Lower wages in Canada means less tax revenue for the gov't, which means cuts to our commons, our social safety net, and our infrastructure. It also means a rise in social problems like property crime, drug use, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, etc.
Also, it's not true that low paying jobs are the ones lost. Take a look at the Sept job reports. 90% of the new jobs created were part time jobs in the service industry. Minimum wage work with no benefits. At the same time 35,000 full time manufacturing and forestry sector jobs were lost.
bogaty
Ah, I didn't know you meant manufacturing, forestry, and other low-skilled labour as "high-paying jobs". I thought you were talking about doctors, lawyers, etc. It still doesn't make quite sense under your claim that labour isn't allowed to move freely though.
I think you're reaching when you draw a causative link between free trade and social problems like substance and spousal abuse. With just as much evidence as you have, I could claim that free trade has caused to decrease in violent crime. And it's my understanding that spousal abuse has decreased anyway.
There are very strong reasons why tariffs are a bad idea, and at the base of it is that it creates a false economy, artificially propping up local producers - and at some point this is bound to collapse. It also reduces freedom of choice for consumers and reduces competition in the marketplace. It's generally agreed upon by economists that tariffs negatively impact the economy.
I didn't launch into writing a scholarly essay with all sources cited as this is a gaming forum, but the information is out there regarding causative links between rise in poverty and rise in crime. There are also studies out of the UK and Australia which show crime rates under Conservative gov'ts a much higher than under Liberal ones and this has been the case for 100 years.
As for tariffs, most economists do NOT agree that tariffs are bad. Only the economists who support Milton Friedmann's school of thought do. You know, supply side economics, "free trade/free markets", deregulation, and the whole trickle-down theory.
It's been in practice in the US, The UK, and Canada since the early 80s under Regan, Thatcher, and Mulroney and during that time, the US has gone from being the world's leading creditor to the world's biggest debtor. From being the leading importer of raw materials and exporter of finished goods to being the leading in importing finished goods and exporter of raw materials. The manufacturing base in all three countries has been gutted and most of the economy relies on artifically creating money (fractional reserve banking system) and arbitrage.
As we've recently witnessed, the system doesn't work and the school of thought is rapidly being rejected. I hope to see a return to the Keynesian school of thought. The demand side theory that proved so successful after WWII. Seeing as how Paul Krugman just won the nobel prize for economics, I hope we've reached a turning point.
As for artifically propping up local producers, I don't see what's wrong with that system. It worked very well for us in the past. It works great for Scandinavian countries now (the ones with the highest standards of living in the world) and it seems to have done wonders for China, S. Korea, and Japan in the past. All of these countries saw their economies thrive under a protectionist system. There may be less freedom of choice for the consumer, but I'll take a stable economy with a thriving middle class if it means I have to choose between 5 types of cell phone instead of 20.
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