by Jerry Lobdill
6/3/2009
Beginning when Bill Clinton lied in his campaign promise to veto NAFTA, this nation has gone down a primrose path to certain destruction. I'm no Nobel Prize winning economist, but I recognized the peril when we started off down the steep path to our doom, and I screamed about it then (1992). I sent my concerns to Robert Reich, then Clinton's Labor Secretary. I was criticizing his book, "The Work of Nations", which was the work of a traitor, as it turns out. I got back a personally signed letter typical of those sent by politicians who are hell bent on doing the opposite of whatever the constituent thinks is right. But, hey, he was joined in his deliberate scuttling of the US by Paul Krugman, who did receive the Nobel Prize last year. And the NYT bought into the pitch on globalization as well.
Now, in an editorial titled "The Peril of Buy American", (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/opinion/03weds1.html?th&emc=th) the New York Times is bringing up the reasons why we can't save ourselves, pointing out that we no longer are sovereign in our ability to make choices that are necessary to save this nation. Guess what? They have discovered that we no longer can produce steel or make other materials such as vinyl pipe since we have gone down the road to dependence on other countries for our national security while chanting the mantra that "protectionism" is evil. Yes sir, the New York Times says we are in peril if we decide to make our own materials.
The fallacy lies in the deliberate misapplication of David Riccardo's 18th century unrealistic theory of comparative advantage, in which sovereign nations decide to become interdependent by using the different labor costs in the nations as a criterion for deciding who will produce what for all the nations while importing all other needs from the other members of the consortium. In theory, each country specializes in production according to the ranking of the production costs of different products in different nations, and all nations benefit because they get all their needs met at the cheapest price. As a theory it was great, but it was totally at odds with other small considerations such as national security, the reality of shifting alliances among nations, human nature...you know, little details like those.
I have pointed out this fallacy to Krugman, and he has totally ignored me while continuing to support this patently disastrous theory. String him up too.
As Stan Rogers so aptly put it in his "Barrett's Privateers",
"God damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold.
We'd fire no shots, shed no tears.
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier,
The last of Barrett's privateers."
