Astrallite, I missed the announcments from Japan and China about their policies of not buying US government debt. Can you post a link to an article?? Thnx.
Not to quibble, but even gold and silver is not real money. Oh ... sure in the short run, sellers of goods and services will accept precious metals and gems for barter. But in the long run, even if a country has an endless supply of such barter currenecy, prices would still increase. The same occurred when Spain "imported" gold and silver from the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries. I recall reading that Europe experienced inflation because abundant amounts of gold and silver were chasing a fixed amount of goods and services.
I posit that the real strength of an economy isn't measured in print or mine barter currency, but rather in its ability to produce valuable barter goods and services. All that barter currency does is set the exchange price -- not set true value. After all, a loaf of bread is still a loaf of bread, no matter how much it costs.
The reason our country is in its current state is because we have allowed our real economic strength to wain -- that is the capacity to produce goods and services of real value. It's really an old saw. Manufacturing has gone offshore; our skilled labor force has shrunk, and so on and so forth. Archie Bunker is flipping burgers rather than making stuff.
I assure you that notwithstanding what the limosine liberals tell you, the problem is not about taxes. Oh sure, taxes may push a company's decision one way or the other. The real underlying reason that a company goes to China, India, Mexico, and so forth, is because the cost of manufacturing and complying with social benefit costs is simply cheaper.
Sooner or later, market forces will drive the cost of imported goods to increase. And there will be a tipping point where companies will either produce here, or in the **less** likely case, just abandon our marketplace.
A case in point is oil production. For the first time in a long time, the US is producing more than 50% of the crude oil we consume. Reason: the price of imported crude has increased to the tipping point where it is economical to drill domestically. And where is this happening? North Dakota.
You want to fix the situation and save Archie Bunker, our kids, and ourselves?? Our government needs to fix GATT. A suggestion -- treat goods imported from abroad as being unlawfully subsidized and therefore subject to counter-vailing duties if a producer country does not maintain various labor protection laws that we have come to accept as non-negotiable, e.g., minimum wage, health and welfare benefits, OSHA, EPA, ERISA, wage and hours, retirement benefits, etc.
Frankly, if I know a suit was made in a country where the laborers lived in cardboard boxes, and drank polluted water, I would become ill.
I surmise the push back is that the cost of imported goods and services will increase. True ... it's going to happen sooner or later, and probably sooner. Heck, as Astrallite just posted, some countries no longer want our T-Bills. Just wait until the US dollar is no longer a respected reserve currency. All hell will break loose.
Better to engineer a controlled economic rebalancing than than wait for another explosive crash. What happened in 2008/9 was an explosive rebalancing of economic forces.
Just sayin'
