Resolved: The U.S. should allow all imports of goods and capital.

Thank you Con. On Con"s "loop-hole", stating that "any" laws, including past ones, would be followed; this is one absurd legal theory. Slavery would still be illegal, discrimination would be illegal, etc. The whole point of "lawmaking" involves changing bad laws made before. It can be safely assumed that "follow the laws" means the current ones that cops will arrest you for and juries try you for. On con"s second point; Con points out that some states legalize certain things on Con"s "ban" list. The laws of the other states and the federal governments would still apply; colarado police won"t arrest you for possession of marijuana, but federal agents will, and any state you try to transport it to will. So, in essence laws are tricky. However, the merits or lack thereof of marijuana or whether exotic animals should be owned are all rich topics in and of themselves; arguing that the import is wrong for those reasons is to argue that the domestic law is wrong, something that would still be a problem if imports are not around. Since imports have to legally go through customs, legally all products sold by foreigners must be legal. Con"s argument simply does not follow. So then we get to the crux of the issue; economics. Con argues that free trade hurts American jobs. Firstly, even considering the larger 700,000 number con used, and assuming, despite this assumption being entirely in Con"s favor, that each person had 3 dependents, that would be 2.8 million Americans affected negatively by the free trade...and 297.2 million Americans would benefit from this freer trade. However, it is easy to forget human suffering when dealing with statistics, so let"s deal with another one; that jobs created from the import of foreign capital into America. The Japanese car industry, while not yet the level of the "domestic" industries, employs many people and keeps most of the money it invests in the U.S. [1] This is just from one country and one industry! And consider the price of cars because of the competition; how many people would be worse off because they could not afford a vehicle? However, "what about the 700,000?" one may ask. The question here is whether the correlation is the cause. In the U.S, both employer and employee pay for food stamps, WIC, and unemployment insurance, to name just a few. This increases the cost of employing someone and creates an artificial floor of productivity a worker must reach; an employer has to attract a potential worker with a really high wage to off-set the problems the employee will face in collecting as much money as the employee needs. However, if an employee does not produce enough wealth to justify that wage, then it is not a lasting arrangement. The jobs lost were using scarce resources in a way that was not economical, and the whole point of the lay-offs, from a macro-view, is to free up labor for more urgent tasks. The 400,000 seemingly chronic loss of jobs, then, is where the insidious effects of the welfare system come into play. Unemployment insurance, in paying for time laid off from work, incentivizes staying unemployed longer than if one did not have unemployment insurance. Food Stamps, WIC, etc. pay based on income level; this means that there is a gap between a welfare-eligible income and a welfare-free and living with more benefits than welfare would provide. Within that gap is a place where, after taxes and accounting for the lack of welfare, a person is poorer than a person earning less and accepting welfare. This incentivizes under-employment, or part-time jobs. Add this deleterious effect with the problem of central banking; inflation increases imports as substitutes in foreign countries become cheaper by comparison [2]. So, again, the U.S. is responsible for it"s economic woes; we have only ourselves to blame for not competing in a competitive market. And on a final note, the welfare issues and the central banking issues would still be problems without any imports at all. The imports at least help the common citizens of the U.S. in providing new capital and selling cheaper alternatives, both of which help to fuel an American economy that continues to be hampered by her government. I turn this back to Con. [1]http://www.edmunds.com... [2]http://www.colorado.edu...