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Protectionism --- Free Trade Poll

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Lugnuts, Mar 5, 2008.

?

Which most closely describes your political ideology and where you stand on trade?

  1. Conservative Protectionist

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. Conservative Free Trade

    27.3%
  3. Liberal Protectionist

    21.2%
  4. Liberal Free Trade

    15.2%
  5. Independent Protectionist

    12.1%
  6. Independent Free Trade

    24.2%
  1. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Forced legislation?
     
  2. JR

    JR Well-Known Member

    Yes.

    Did you miss that class on 19th century industrial relations?

    Workers stormed Parliament, put guns to the heads of elected representatives and said, "Either your signatures or your brains will be on this legislation"
     
  3. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Oh, well.

    That part wasn't in my book. Ripped out by an Unseen Hand, I'm certain.
     
  4. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    What can I say? Milton Friedman was a lunatic. Of course, when he wrote what I simply paraphrased, those who wanted to challenge it tried to ffer rational argument backed with empirical evidence, not "I don't have to bother because that is blatant lunacy."

    Maybe the Nobel Prize and the recognition as the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th Century earned him that small amount of respect.
     
  5. JR

    JR Well-Known Member

    And waiting....and waiting.....
     
  6. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    Stronger security innovations (frisking and bag checks) that kept immigrant employees from stealing buttons and thread following the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire finally allowed employers to keep more than one factory exit open, which in turn led to increased productivity, which in turn led to the end of 80-hour workweeks (at $7 a week) for women in the U.S. garment industry. Those of you who think improvements in working conditions had anything to do with the rise of the garment workers' union or Al Smith's push for labor reform are sadly mistaken. In fact, that was just the type of regulatory intervention that impeded the Invisible Hand from working its magic and improving lives for the vast majority of workers. Those labor laws, of course, led to artificially inflated wages in the garment industry and, in turn, led to the garment industry moving its manufacturing to third-world countries where the industry could get back to women and children laborers working 80-hour work weeks at "market" prices. It's all very simple, really.
     
  7. writing irish

    writing irish Active Member

    I don't care who you're paraphrasing. If you think that market forces rather than political reform ended child labor in the United States, you're either crazy, wrong or both.
     
  8. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    But naked appeals to non-existent authority are fun, dammit!
     
  9. writing irish

    writing irish Active Member

    Amusingly, the year before Milton Freidman won the Nobel Prize in Economics, that honor was shared by Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich...not an exile, but an economist in pay of the Soviet government. And no, he didn't have to turn down the prize like Pasternak...he was a communist in good standing. So I guess communism's correct...after all, Kantorovich won the Nobel Prize. But wait, Friedman won the Nobel Prize, too! Aaaagh, my appeal to authority brain is melting! Wait, wait...I'll steady myself with thoughts that child labor was the result of government intervention, not the market...and that the market, not social reform, is to be credited with child labor prohibitions and all other rights that workers enjoy. There, I feel better. Nothing like a little rational argument to steady one's nerves.
     
  10. writing irish

    writing irish Active Member

    Just for fun, here's the link to the U.S. History Page of the University of Iowa's (apparently much-needed) Child Labor Public Education Project.

    http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html

    And Ragu- this is a project of a UNIVERSITY...you know, people with DEGREES and AWARDS. They're RESPECTED and INFLUENTIAL. Oooooh, academia! Academics...they're RECOGNIZED.
     
  11. writing irish

    writing irish Active Member

    Milton Friedman says that if the women at the Traingle Factory had deserved safe working conditions, the market would have provided it. Any unsafe conditions at the facility were the result of the market not giving a damn outside influences interfering with market forces.

    Online exhibit about Triangle tragedy
    http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

    Ooooh, more ACADEMICS at work! Ivy League, even! Cornell! Ivy League!
    (BOIIIIINNNNNGGG!!!) <-sound of appeal-to-authority boner suddenly arising
     
  12. Inevitable. Sad, really.

    [​IMG]
     
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