By Ajax the Great (Pete Jackson)
(Original posted on the True Spirit of America Party blog)
One, two, three, four, let's start a trade war!
Or, how about we DON'T! Seriously. Imposing punitive or even so-called "protective" tariffs on goods imported from other countries, which then provokes them into imposing retaliatory tariffs on goods exported from our own country, is a negative-sum game. In other words, it's a lose-lose proposition all around, shrinking GDP on all sides. And who actually pays for it all? Ultimately, we all do, as the higher costs inevitably get passed onto consumers.
A few seconds of Googling "Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act" should be enough to make even the numbest of numbskulls reconsider their appetite for tariffs and similar beggar-thy-neighbor policies. If this trade war continues, the best we can hope for is a bad case of stagflation, and it goes downhill from there. All the way down to full-blown depression.
Just like a few seconds of Googling "Recession of 1937" should be enough to make even the numbest of numbskulls reconsider whether fiscal austerity (*cough* DOGE *cough*) or monetary tightening from the FERAL Reserve is really such a wise idea. Spoiler alert: it really isn't.
No wonder Trump's two harshest critics lately have been......Chuck Dow and Edward Jones. And that's just a leading indicator.
P.S. It is entirely possible to have protectionism without tariffs or any other trade barriers, by the way.
Rasa says: It’s just another way men use their violence or aggression: Hurt the other guy, make him/her do WHAT I WANT. But apparently it doesn’t work, because of the righteous retaliation, as Ajax smartly explains. But they continue doing it – why? Numbskulls……. On another note Ajax, you wrote a lot about the minimum wage for everyone – forgot what it’s called – giving a stipend to everyone, a low one. I thought it was a bad idea as I have trouble trying to get people to WORK right now & imagine it would be worse. But what about if they tried it in one state or one area, to see if it does work?
ReplyDeleteVery well said, Rasa. Indeed, it is a negative-sum game what they do.
DeleteAs for your question, what I and others have proposed is called Universal Basic Income (UBI), where everyone gets some amount of free money, no strings attached. It can also be called a citizen's dividend. It has actually been tried to varying degrees in various small- to medium-scale pilot projects and studies around the world, and also the state of Alaska has had something similar (Alaska Permanent Fund dividends) since the 1970s, and it seems to work well overall. And the results? The upsides greatly outweigh any downsides, whether real or theoretical.
Yes, you may have to pay employees a bit more to get them to work, as they will no longer be desperate enough for money to take anything they can get, but of course employers will be getting the free money too, and ultimately a rising tide will lift all boats, as the saying goes. (And as Mother God said in her latest advice to you, most of the current trouble you have in getting people to work for you has little of anything to do with money, and in any case She will see to it that such trouble is resolved soon enough, God willing.)
Here is a page from one of my blogs that goes in more depth about UBI:
Deletehttps://truespiritofamericaparty.blogspot.com/p/why-ubi.html
I also posted a recycled article of mine on the topic of UBI just now as well:
Deletehttps://rasavonwerder-william.blogspot.com/2025/03/why-we-still-need-universal-basic.html