01-15-2013, 08:28 PM
quasarvs Wrote:It would definitely help our own infrastructure here at home if we encouraged more homemade goods instead of buying them from China. I don't do my mainstay shopping at WalMart because I don't like their stock of everything made in China.
It's sort of like our foreign oil imports I would like to see America be self-sufficient in both those areas.
I really hope not to see a libertarian party gain strength. The reason being that it doesn't respect the Constitution in the way that it should and it doesn't have the core beliefs to carry all republican voters. It would be more practical if conservatives and libertarians worked to reform the current republican party.
Buying U.S. manufactured goods which either are higher priced or inferior is counterproductive. If we are going to have a capitalist, market economy then we need free trade for it to be even moderately efficient. British economist David Ricardo wrote about the key economic concept of comparative advantage about 200 years ago. It is one of those concepts, like Einstein's Theory of Relativity, that you either accept as a valid theoretical underpinning of an entire discipline, or everything else that follows appears to be nonsensical. For example, if you assume that Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage is true, then free trade between countries should be a net benefit to the people of all countries involved. If you think that Ricardo was incorrect, then you would favor managed trade between countries in which each sovereign country only imported an amount of goods equivalent to the amount they exported. It really is either one way or the other.
David Ricardo: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty
Tutor2u - Trade - Comparative Advantage and International Trade
With respect to libertarians, despite all the current angst that the Administration is causing to libertarians, most libertarians are probably more afraid of conservatives like Rush, Hannity, Savage, et al. than they are of liberals like Obama and Hillary C. The liberal agenda will primarily hit you in the pocketbook; the self-described "conservatives" seem to focus on all types of social issues (drugs, abortion, gays, military intervention) that will affect a lot more than your bank account. I consider myself a libertarian and don't particularly care for the Administration's fiscal policies but I certainly don't fear them. They are misguided and wasteful of the taxpayers' money but not especially threatening. The conservatives are correct on economic issues absolutely frightening on social issues and foreign policy. Given the two alternatives, I'd hold my nose and vote for the libs.