AMosely

Did anyone else catch this Ben Stein editorial? I thought it was right-on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/bu...=1&oref=slogin

xTYBALTx

Xenophobic liberal + knee-jerk conservative = this editorial

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A policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy. -F.A. Hayek

TheFatKidDeath

There is nothing Xenophobic or knee-jerk about this piece. The US is spending 8 billion a month in Iraq, money which is borrowed from it's economic rivals. The US is dependent on the rest of the world to finance it's budget and trade deficits. Real incomes are falling for the majority of Americans and the loss of manufacturing jobs have and are leaving this country at a freighting rate.

I'd hardly call that alarmist.

AMosely

USA! USA! (honks horn)

leejo

I sorta think of the trade deficit as a good thing. We have a $12.5 trillion dollar economy. The trade deficit can also be described as creating jobs overseas. We want that, right?

One might haggle about the size of the deficit, but a net deficit is a good thing IMO. I don't see it as trading our future away because I don't think it's necessarily a zero sum game. I'd like to see a free and prosperous China in the future, and this helps. In my mind it's an investment.

The money flowing into Iraq is also an investment.

With regard to petrodollars flowing into the middle east, I'm all for opening up ANWAR and drilling off the coast of CA and FL while we jack up investments in future energy sources, but try selling that.

TheFatKidDeath

Yikes! Shipping jobs overseas, creating a massive debt for our children and pissing away hundreds of billions of dollars into a debacle that has no end in site as a sound investment?

Can anyone recommend a tall bridge I can jump off?

leejo

Sure!

AMosely

I think the editorial had a lot more to do with American values and way of life than it did with the realities of the US trade deficit, but that's just my take.

Regardless, viewing the growing trade deficit as a good thing is a very odd point of view, running contrary even to the sagelike Alan Greenspan. China will most likely overtake the US economy as the largest in the world in a very short time. Our growing deficit (and their shrinking one) is not helping us keep pace. These are not good things.

xTYBALTx

Odd point of view? Oh noes!

Running contrary to the sagelike Alan Greenspan? Well, I'd rather run contrary to Alan Greenspan than Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, so you're not exactly winning the battle of the experts.

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A policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy. -F.A. Hayek

Arf

There's more complexity to it then the deficit simply being money owed to other nations. As we need those nations to lend us money they also need that transaction to help feed their economies.

A trade deficit is intuitively bad but the reality of it is that the American market is enormous and unmatchable by any other market. China lacks the wealth to buy as much from us as we buy from them but by buying from China we can pump up their economy.

As Leejo said before it’s a system of investment. By increasing the economic strength of other nations we create new markets that we can sell to. In that way we can increase our economy despite a continued deficit.

We will have a much easier time in the future if we treat countries like India and China as economic partners instead of competitors. It is much better for us not to fight the natural economic tide and instead learn to gain from it.

Edit:
I'd just like to add that even if the US were surpassed by another nation economically that doesn't mean Americans will suffer. We can have a better economy without always being on the top. Speaking specifically of China it has its own problems to deal with before it can truly challenge the US.

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