This thread strikes at the heart of the difference between the conservatism versus liberalism argument with which I struggled in the 50s and 60s.
There is no doubt a clinical perfection to the free market as outlined by Milton Friedman and others. Conservatives, very generally, prefer that clinical perfection to the more interventionist and often intrusive efforts of liberal big government to mitigate suffering.
Both create/allow suffering, but in my opinion this endless tug of war between the two is the good and necessary struggle that truly makes America great.
They should have warned the world and told told the W.H.O. it was contagious in the early stages when they knew it was. They should have also stopped international flights at the same time domestic flights were stopped that doesnât seem like and unreasonable argument to make, and they are models out there that show if these two steps were followed the virus would have hit the rest of the world as less by 95% is allowed to prepare.
Great observation and I generally agree. There has to be balance. The tension is not a bad thing.
Great post.
One thing I think we need to be wary of is the drift over time. Balance in the short term is relatively easy to sense. Over the long term is more difficult. The reset is never back to neutral.
I donât know what the clinical perfection is. I do know laissez-faire capitalism is a disaster, as is socialism.
Actually, the EU[quote=âWildRose, post:139, topic:230875, full:trueâ]
We are the number one importer of Chinese goods on the planet by far, they cannot replace us period.
They also starve without US ag imports. Weâve always and the leverage and the advantage and we need to use it to our advantage instead of continue to aid China in their quest to become the most dominant country on earth economically and from the aspect of industrial production.
[/quote]
The US is less than 20% of Chinaâs total export business, and given that the government in China does not have to answer to the people, they would easily survive that belt tightening.
When the Chinese greatly reduced agricultural imports from the US in retaliation for the Trump Trade War, they had no problem replacing that product on the global market.
Complete nonsense. Jay intentionally misrepresented what I said by pulling a single sentence out of a post explaining how we can identify and protect the vulnerable while getting everyone else back to work.
Heâs now had repeated opportunities to correct it and wonât which shows just how dishonest he is and just how intellectually bankrupt as well.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Friedman or Free Markets.
If this were true China would not have buckled in the trade war.
They cannot feed over 2/3 of their 1.7bn people without us.
Without exports to the US and imports of our Ag commodities, their people starve and their economy collapses.
Chinaâs Top Trading Partners
Top 15
Deficits
Surpluses
Companies
Below is a list highlighting 15 of Chinaâs top trading partners in terms of export sales. That is, these countries imported the most Chinese shipments by dollar value during 2019. Also shown is each import countryâs percentage of total Chinese exports.
United States: US$418.6 billion (16.8% of Chinaâs total exports)
Hong Kong: $279.6 billion (11.2%)
Japan: $143.2 billion (5.7%)
South Korea: $111 billion (4.4%)
Vietnam: $98 billion (3.9%)
Germany: $79.7 billion (3.2%)
India: $74.9 billion (3%)
Netherlands: $73.9 billion (3%)
United Kingdom: $62.3 billion (2.5%)
Taiwan: $55.1 billion (2.2%)
Singapore: $55 billion (2.2%)
Malaysia: $52.5 billion (2.1%)
Russia: $49.5 billion (2%)
Australia: $48.1 billion (1.9%)
Mexico: $46.4 billion (1.9%)
HK is actually part of China so take them off the list and we outpace any other country for Chinese imports by over 3x.
They cannot replace the US as either a source of food or as a source for buying their products.
Remove as much US manufacturing from China as possible and find other sources for the remaining things we import from them and we crush them economically which is exactly what we should have done long ago.
You can assert that China cannot replace the US as a source of food imports but they already did two years ago. Chinese actions speak loader than your words.
All around the world, ordinary citizens dealing with this virus are very well aware of where it originated. The question then becomes was this virus spread due to gross negligence or some evil plan? Either way, China has shot themselves in the foot and will financially pay for decades to come as countries unite in condemnation IMO.
Wasnât replying to that but now youâve piqued my curiosity and Iâll have to read your entire dual with Jay. Apparently a slow entertainment day in my house.
No they didnât, they tried and could not. There is no excess of ag commodities around the world and even if there was the supply chain doesnât exist.
What ended up happening is that they bought our grains through S. American brokers who then added their own markups plus the added shipping costs.
In the end it was costing them more going that route than buying directly from us and paying the tariffs.
