This one is a bit sticky. Not too much, but a bit.
LITD stands for free-market economics, which, in general, means unregulated international trade.
The problem is that a truly level playing field would cause the cast of players with which we could trade to shrink from its current big-and-ever-widening scope.
For years, for instance, I've long had reservations about corporate America's headlong rush to get as deeply involved in China as possible. I've talked to economic-development types, and they tell me that it's simply too big a market to ignore, that to decline to engage in all the plant-building, joint ventures, and technical and educational collaboration would amount to a serious sidelining of our country.
And now China is showing its hand in ways it hasn't in decades: the construction of islands on which to put runways and barracks in the South China Sea (in waters that its neighbors all assert are under international jurisdiction), the hacking of our government's information-storage system, currency manipulation, human-rights abuses, military buildup.
And it's not like China is the only questionable trading partner. On several continents, American companies are doing business with some unsavory elements.
Big bureaucratic financial and political institutions skew the terms as well. The Ex-Im Bank, the IMF, and the UN are unhelpful parties at the table.
But why I ultimately come down on the side of giving what is coming to be known as Obamatrade a big thumbs-down is that its namesake has such a zeal for it, coming on the heels of his zeal for executive-order amnesty, tyrannical EPA regs and executive-branch tinkering with Freedom-Hater-care.
Some people I generally respect are in favor of it. Then again, a lot of Republicans I've come to detest - think John Boehner - are for it.
And this business about having to go to the basement of the Capitol building to read it and leave your phone and any notepads outside the room is creepy indeed.
The fact that the Most Equal Comrade is upfront about the fact that it includes provisions related to "climate change" pretty much seals the deal. We can be sure it's rotten now.
No, this thing is bad news. Anything that makes it easier for the MEC to make big moves without the involvement of Congress is plainly deleterious.
There's nothing freedom-enhancing about it.
Remember their Olympic opening ceremonies? I fancy myself as somewhat intuitive and I intuited trouble ahead with all their displays of militaristic aplomb. There's dozens of recent books out about the China peril. I see so many Chinese, Indian and of course Mexican people at Total Fitness when I swim and sauna when back home in Columbus. More so than any place I swim and sauna and I've been around over the past 10 years. I have initiated cheerful conversation with all at some time or another but sense an underlying aura of perceived superiority about it all from even the Mexicans. I think the perception is that America is up for grabs. Frankly, your ilk's squawking does not help matters. Most of our problems stem from bringing Africans over 5 centuries ago. Scary that China, with 1 Bil plus of the world's population and still crawling out of the agrarian age, openly plans to replace workers with robots. As we know, not good for the people to have no purpose. What then? Lots of drone fodder to win a terrible war of attrition? Even Ike did not want to mess with them 3/4 of a century ago. 2 options: 1) cooperate (get along) or KABOOM KABOOM. China has been preparing for the latter for centuries. Their sense of superiority runs deep, but generally their philosopy internally is definitely more "get along." The first neighborhoods to rebuild after the great quake of 1906 in San Fran were the oriental ones. Go figure? That was over a century ago. They beat out capitalism then (bickering, fighting, swindling), although there are many signs of the corruption of greed now in their modern moves toward capitalism, they still cooperate much better than we whities do. I think I liked them better on bicycles and rickshaws. There may not be man-made global warming, but their pollution problems kill. We did not really dig our own Clevelands, Pittsburgs and Birminghams back in da day either. They smile in your face, all the time they wanna take your place....
ReplyDeleteThey cooperate better because the Party apparatchiks will haul them off to the hoosegow if they don't.
ReplyDeleteBut the Great Quake of 1906 preceded Chicommunism and these Chinese then were Americans.
ReplyDelete