President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Bannon is so damned dangerous with that "economic nationalism" nonsense.

International affairs are not a struggle between two sides, good versus evil. We are all living in the same world, and we all largely have the same goals. We all benefit when our relationships are symbiotic, not antagonistic.

Trade-driven growth has brought hundreds of millions of people out of crushing poverty over the last half century +, and even though we get caught up in the moment with all the bad there is still in the world, democracy has been on rise worldwide, and outright totalitarian regimes are actually in retreat. It is related. This guy is trying to take us back to a world of mercantilism and nationalism. It isn't possible to roll back to those bad ideas, but even if it was, it would be self-defeating. I actually think he knows it, but he doesn't give a shit. He is lobbing red meat at a mass of ignorant people and he doesn't care if he's dishonest.

But we should all be challenging his crap at every turn. Aside from the racism and bigotry that kind of "America first" crap stokes among the worst people out there, from an economic standpoint, he is advocating things that are REALLY bad for us as a country. The gains from economic liberalization (not putting the clamps on people's choices with tariffs and trade wars and czars making "policy" that limits our choices) are things we BENEFIT from. We get cheaper products. We get more advanced technologies. Our standard of living rises in the aggregate in that kind of open and free world.

There are so many people who want to try to engineer society, and to do so they have to limit people's choices -- which is a way of limiting freedom. In that regard, Bannon is really no different from the creeping socialism and nannyism that we are paying for as more and more people struggle economically as a result. People should fight his demagoguery. Aside from the practical reasons -- he wants to try to drag us backward, away from efforts to create a "free, open and level playing field in which everyone has equal opportunity," which is the basis for freedom and liberty. We have a moral obligation to stand in his way.

 

Here is the fatal flaw in the stupid rhetoric these demagogues have put in the spotlight. ... Mercantilism, which is all they are repackaging, creates this twisted world in which they feed a whole lot of ignorance with the notion that production is the goal of our economic activity -- they are selling the really dangerous idea that we need to protect producers, not consumers (i.e. -- all of us).

What is sad is that Adam Smith had this well figured out more than 250 years ago in Wealth of Nations. Production is a means. Consumption is the end. When you get it backwards, you HURT consumption. History is rife with examples. Our hunger to consume is what has given us innovations and made us wealthier and lifted our standard of living over time.

If you doubt that, consider this. Let's say I told you that I have a formula to cure cancer. Let's say that all you need to do is combine tap water and tree bark and a little salt. Pretend that it actually works. Now, let's say I published that formula on the Internet -- giving it away for free. Societally would we be better off or worse off because I didn't profit as a producer of the cure for cancer?