You know all the arguments already, but let me pursue them.
If China, for example, sends us cars and fridges we must presume they will expect to be paid. So, some of the car and fridge workers will be doing that. The others will no doubt find other jobs - perhaps in service jobs selling the Chinese cars and fridges. (As you know, the more advanced an economy, the more people will be working in service industries.)
A major problem in a controlled economy is that things happen suddenly. If the market was free, imported Chinese cars and fridges would make small gains in the market - probably because of low prices. If the reception was good, the number would increase until they took over the market niche that was appropriate to them. Meantime, American prices would drop and their products would improve to get back the customers who liked the Chinese imports. American consumers - which is a category that covers every American - will be better off.
If the products were very good, the niche would expand - rather as Toyotas and Hondas have expanded into the available demand.
The original Japanese imports had two great advantages over the their American equivalents - they were of better quality and they were cheaper (no longer the case).
American car manufacturers made more money from replacement parts than from the car - which explains one point. The Japanese manufacturers made $100 profit a car as compared with Detroit's $1,200 a car - which explains the other.
As I implied, Japanese cars are no longer cheap, yet they occupy several top positions in the sales figures of cars sold in the US. Because they provided cars that didn't go wrong, Detroit has been forced to so the same.
Inasmuch as the free market is involved, so will things move in the right direction for consumers. Insomuch as government intervention and private resource monopolies get into the act, so will things change for the worse.
However, you worried about there not being jobs for those affected by the imports.
This might be true if everyone had everything. Then, we would need nothing more and no-one would need to work. But, of course it isn't true.
In fact, "people's desires are unlimited" so why isn't everyone at work fulfilling their desires? Keith has pointed often to the widening dichotomy between rich and poor, and more particularly to the gulf between the knowledgeable, skilled, educated - and the rest. This to imply that an increasing number of people will be unable to survive in an increasingly technological world.
However, this isn't necessarily so. As happened in wartime, complicated jobs can be broken down into manageable bite sized bits. Thus 6 people may plan the project, 60 people may build the structure, 600 may actually run the operation, 6,000 may handle the "bite sized chunks". The 6,000 don't need a university education.
Yet, that factory will probably never be built and many will be unemployed. So, our attention should be directed toward the factory that will not be built - along with the other factories that won't be built, even though they are needed.
Instead, our tendency is to look at the unemployed, make excuses for their unemployment, and seek help for their inability to find work. Sally presses the "Basic Income" idea, which notion assumes that people can't find work.
Why not ask "Why can't people find work?" - and when an answer is found, deal with the cause rather than the effects?
And along the way we might find out why basic wages are low.
Harry
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Ed wrote:
> Ed, > > The important part of cars and fridges is not making them, but using them. > > If people in Botswana - or more likely China - make our cars and fridges > let's use them. > > What's the problem? > > HarryHarry, I personally have no problem with it, but that is not likely to be the case with our car and fridge makers. They will have to find other things to do, and many may have a problem with that. Ed
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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