re: Is Reaganomics and free trade officially dead?

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Dude. No one uses the Marx definition anymore.

"The second variety of socialism is the so-cial-democratic model. Under this system, the idea of socialized production is exchanged for taxation and equalization. The means of production can be privately owned, with some exceptions, such as education, traffic, communications, central banking, the police, and the courts. Individuals have the right to own and produce, but not to keep all of the fruits of their labor. Some of these fruits belong to “society,” which means the rights of the natural owner have been aggressively invaded. Thus, the difference between Soviet-style and social-democratic-style socialism is one of degree. In the first case, private ownership isn’t permitted. In the second case, private ownership is permitted, but the state determines how much of the fruits can be kept by the rightful owner. "

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Anyone using that is either attempting to boil the frog or they are a frog already being boiled. What I mean by that is it dilutes the definition of socialism to the point where pretty much any system (outside of a completely laissez-faire system) can be described as socialism (as SFP has done above). Once you convince people they are already in a socialist system, it's easier to convince them to accept more socialism (incrementally).

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What I mean by that is it dilutes the definition of socialism to the point where pretty much any system (outside of a completely laissez-faire system) can be described as socialism (as SFP has done above)

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-Mises, to Milton Friedman, et al

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SFP, to Bard

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Fixed.

There are two problems with a purely laissez-faire system: humans and humans.

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Extremely small amounts of government manipulation of the market (domestic or international), to produce as close to a free market that avoids war.

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It’s not possible. No one is playing fair on the world stage. Not the EU, not China, and now not us. You’ve GOT to be protectionist to maintain any amount of goods manufacturing. The Chinese aren’t our only competition. The Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese melon-scooped vast swaths of the electronics and auto sectors decades ago. You don’t think those jobs were worth saving?

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The only way to justify domestic manufacturing at the bottom rung is via redistributive programs, like tariffs. That's inefficient and fricks consumers doubly

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How many consumers on the middle to lower rungs of the US have been fricked by closing down the factories and moving the jobs overseas? We literally have an entire region of the US in the Rust Belt that was gutted by these programs. You can’t just shove all of them into the service economy. Their SOL was irrevocably degraded far worse than can ever be made up by a 10-20% savings in price of goods.

The globalist free market only benefits the capital class, the local service sector elite (those who can’t/haven’t yet been outsourced to India), and the welfare class. Everyone else loses. It’s a historical fact that the US was at its richest when we were protectionist. I’m talking richest as a society. The top 5-10% might have lost a little in employee wage competition, but overall we were never better.

Naturally SFP doesn’t care about this as he’s a part of the few protected winners this system produces.

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That looks like an argument against free trade to me

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How?

Only if you redefine what "free trade" means

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(ie: no tariffs, no subsidies, businesses rise or fall based on their own management, not with any sort of government aid nor barriers

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Correct, for us. If other countries want to subsidize us, then their market isn't "free", but it's certainly beneficial to our free market.

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Uhm... that's pretty much what I proposed and you poo-poo'd it as being disastrous to the US consumer.

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You said

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One way to counter this is tariffs to encourage an increase in domestic production

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That's more government. A lot more government. With the intent to purposefully manipulate the market.

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but it's not taking money from the Chinese to do so, it's just redistributing our wealth over there. With the differences in currencies, it's increasing their SOL.

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And we still double benefit, just not quite as much.

This isn't a zero-sum game, their SOL raising doesn't impact the equation of the discussion we're having. It's related, but not applicable.

A function of more trade is raising SOLs, even with currency manipulation and other inefficient externalities.

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If we aren't engaged in at least some targeted protectionism then they will continue to eat into our manufacturing until they manufacture enough to cripple us should they so choose.

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This won't happen. Their manufacturing is already being offshored to cheaper countries and they won't survive long enough to have this impact.

We can always move manufacturing to a different (often cheaper) country.

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So we're dominant because we import more than we export?

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Look at our GDP and our PCGDP and the value of what we produce.

Those savings allow money to flow into much higher-end, higher-margin, and non-replaceable outlets. Sure, the guy who didn't graduate high school can't get a subsidized union wage paying him 10x his market value anymore, but that was a drag on the economy anyway.

Just because Midwestern white people are experiencing the economic issues of inner city black people have for decades doesn't change the issues. Make yourself marketable and avoid cultural pathologies and you can live a solid, if not spectacular life.

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Russia's SOL is hurting because they are in an unpopular war against Ukraine.

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It was hurting long before that when Putin developed his domestic-only (ish) economy to thwart sanctions he knew would come once he invaded Ukraine.

I mean, it wasn't even great before that, but that's what Putin wanted, because he knew what would happen once he invaded Ukraine.

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It showed the weakness of being a net importer.

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Rich countries should be net importers.

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Another fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad. We eat bananas from Central America, wear Italian shoes, drive German automobiles, and enjoy programs we see on our Japanese TV sets. Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports or, equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports.

The misleading terminology we use reflects these erroneous ideas. "Protection" really means exploiting the consumer. A "favorable balance of trade" really means exporting more than we import, sending abroad goods of greater total value than the goods we get from abroad. In your private household, you would surely prefer to pay less for more rather than the other way around, yet that would be termed an "unfavorable balance of payments" in foreign trade.

The argument in favor of tariffs that has the greatest emotional appeal to the public at large is the alleged need to protect the high standard of living of American workers from the "unfair" competition of workers in Japan or Korea or Hong Kong who are willing to work for a much lower wage. What is wrong with this argument? Don't we want to protect the high standard of living of our people?

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A fourth argument, one that was made by Alexander Hamilton and continues to be repeated down to the present, is that free trade would be fine if all other countries practiced free trade but that, so long as they do not, the United States cannot afford to. This argument has no validity whatsoever, either in principle or in practice. Other countries that impose restrictions on international trade do hurt us. But they also hurt themselves. Aside from the three cases just considered, if we impose restrictions in turn, we simply add to the harm to ourselves and also harm them as well. Competition in masochism and sadism is hardly a prescription for sensible international economic policy! Far from leading to a reduction in restrictions by other countries, this kind of retaliatory action simply leads to further restrictions.

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Friedman

That article covers pretty much everything ITT, including the "National Security" argument.

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Globalist", the word that can mean literally anything

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Um no.

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The pro-tariff types are literally arguing to raise prices and limit the buying power of consumers (especially the middle class).

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That is 100% false

OK.. We put a tariff on avocados, for example... The seller charges the same price, but adds the tariff. The buyer pays more, because of the added tariff, and passes the cost to the consumer.

Who pays?

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Decisions

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This guy gets it

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How?

Only if you redefine what "free trade" means

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Correct, for us. If other countries want to subsidize us, then their market isn't "free", but it's certainly beneficial to our free market.

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It's not really "free trade" if only one side is participating.

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One way to counter this is tariffs to encourage an increase in domestic production

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That's more government. A lot more government.

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Wrong again. I did not indicate any given level, you've simply inferred that. Remove what you think I meant, read my actual words at face value then compare them to the face value of what you've proposed.

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This isn't a zero-sum game

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I wasn't saying it was, but you seemed to when stating that offshoring our manufacturing to China somehow took money from them. You can't raise their SOL while also taking money from them.

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Rich countries should be net importers.

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Not if a large part of their riches are derived from manufacturing. The belief in a "service-driven economy" is a fairy tale.

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It's not really "free trade" if only one side is participating.

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Yes, it is, for us. Not them, but that's irrelevant to discussing US policy and the impact on citizens.

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Wrong again. I did not indicate any given level, you've simply inferred that. Remove what you think I meant, read my actual words at face value then compare them to the face value of what you've proposed.

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ANY tariffs are more government. If you propose tariffs, you're proposing bigger government. I'm arguing for less government.

Tariffs increase the size of government? yes or no

Tariffs increase the power of government? Yes or no

Tariffs increase the amount of government manipulation of markets? yes or no

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Not if a large part of their riches are derived from manufacturing. The belief in a "service-driven economy" is a fairy tale.

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Based on what, exactly?

Also, it's not just service, it's production of non-tactile goods like science, tech, etc. Those are the things that have set us apart and are the things that other countries cannot compete with us in creating. It makes the output more valuable and economically efficient. The excess money flowing in our economy from outsourcing inefficient economic output is what permits our society/economy to fund this output.

That's why it makes no sense to strip away the excess that provides us our biggest and strongest economic advantage to support 19th century industrial output. Why are y'all so obsessed with devolving our economy to one focused on lower-level manufacturing instead of high-end, high-margin output? It boggles the mind.

This is also ignoring scaling. You can scale tech/service/creation pretty easily, which amplifies our economic dominance. You cannot scale lower-level manufacturing other than by increasing population. It's low-margin and without technical efficiencies that can lead to scaling. This is a major reason why China is fricked, long-term, because they are going to lose population, like us, but their economy is built on a population-based industry, which our's is not. Again, it boggles the mind why we want to copy countries like China or Russia when we're so dominant being smart about our economy (as opposed to their ancient thinking)