[QUOTE="Dalo12345"]There's a reason that Honda and Toyota would not allow unions in their American plants. There's a reason they weren't running to mommy government for a bailout, while the Big 3, who caved into union demands everytime, were. There's a reason that manufacturing jobs have moved to places where there is little regulation. If you'll notice, the economic principles that FDR put forth have never significantly changed. We're now feeling the fallout of this Keynesian garbage that all started in the 1930s. The government has been and still is heavily involved in our economy, and THAT is the problem. I would also like you to specify a time protectionism actually helped our economy, considering it was a major cause of the Great Depression that your hero FDR "saved" us from.
These "invigorations" of the middle class you speak of were all government-fueled bubbles, and they all popped, just like the one that popped last year.
bogaty
Factually incorrect on every point.
Toyota and Honda would never have existed in the first place had not the Japanese government booted out US automakers in the 1950s and heavily protected the industry.
A lot of Japanese auto companies had been founded before the 50s, so this doesn't make much sense.
As for them demanding non-union plants. Well, if we're dumb enough to give it to them, who's fault is that? Further, you know that state had to woo those plants to come in, right? I believe the cost runs each state with a foreign auto plant roughly $200,000 per worker. By getting these sweetheart deals, companies like Toyota are ensuring themselves a workforce made up of a perpetual under**** They get massive tax breaks from state governments, so money that should be going into state coffers for things like education and infrastructure instead leaves the state and the country and goes straight to Japan.
It's hard to go to the fancy new public school and walk over the nice new bridge to get to it when you're homeless because your parent was laid off from the Toyota plant due to higher taxes on the company.
Secondly, the Big 3 did not cave into unions. In fact, it was the unions who caved into the Big 3's demands. They voluntarily accepted wage cuts and agreed to fund their own healthcare and pensions. The wage disparity between a worker in a union shop and a non union shop is $0.50/hour. The reason the Big 3 failed is precisely because they cut the feet out from under the union members. Amazing that when you pay a pittance, suddenly people can no longer afford to buy your product, isn't it? Same thing's happening in Japan, BTW. They moved their production offshore and, shock of shocks, the Japanese can no longer afford to purchase products and Japanese auto makers are posting losses for the first time in a generation.
Read this article. http://mises.org/story/2124
As for a time when protectionism actually helped the economy. I'd say roughly the first 200 years of the nation's existence. You know, when tariffs made up the majority of government tax revenue. When protectionist policies ensured that people were employed and, once unionization took hold, could earn a livable wage and drag people up from a Dickensian working ****miserable standard to a vibrant and flourishing middle ****
Subsidies, tariffs and quotas serve to give special treatment to special interests. This is simply corporate fascism so they can strangle foreign competition. Tariffs do nothing to protect a worker, at all. I have no clue where you came up with that idea. Besides, if we had job security in the stone ages we'd still be living in caves.
Keynesian economics did wonders for the country. We need a return to it.
As for government intervention causing the Great Depression. Exactly the opposite is true. It was deregulation under Hoover that lead to a speculation bubble in Florida real estate in the 1920s. It was the collapse of that bubble that lead to the great depression. Just as deregulation lead to rampant speculation that caused the crash we're experiencing now.
Florida real estate caused the Depression? wtf?I have honestly no clue how to respond to that, but the most major cause of the depression was the expansion of the money supply in the 20s (due to the FEDERAL RESERVE, formed in 1913) that created a (you guessed it) credit bubble that could not last forever. Kind of sounds like another economic crisis you might have an interest in. History repeats itself, they say. Even Wilson realized, albeit too late, that in his signing of the FRA of 1913, he had doomed the USA.
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