From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Newsgroups: tx.politics
Subject: Re: Protectionism and Japan
Date: 14 Dec 92 15:25:23 GMT
Distribution: usa,tx
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc

In <Bz3u5A.A3B@NeoSoft.com> hari@NeoSoft.com (Doug Andersen) writes:

>In article <1992Dec11.120804.21803@mksol.dseg.ti.com>, mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>> Ah, I see.  The organization MOST AFFECTED by these bad policies is
>> simply not sane and what they do has nothing to do with their own
>> interests.  Isn't this pretty much tantamount to saying that anyone
>> who differs with your viewpoint is simply crazy and their opinion
>> discounted according, Doug?  If not, I'm curious as to just where you
>> see the difference.
> 
>Fred, one of the reasons your argument is so flawed is that you don't
>really know what GM has done or said about steel quotas.  I don't either,
>but then again the crux of my argument doesn't rest on GM's position on
>protection of the steel industry.  Maybe GM did complain and got tariffs
>lowered on the specific type of steel they use.  Maybe they have a hard
>time giving contradictary positions.  Who the hell knows?  You sure don't.

And you don't know that the current situation is causing all this
damage you claim, either.  That would seem to leave YOUR argument
pretty flawed, too, and I would say that unless you postulate
corporate insanity that it's a safe bet to say that big steel users
would act in their own interests.  Now, looking at the history of the
auto industry with regard to getting things done by government that
are in their interests, it simply doesn't seem credible that they
would drop the ball on this one.

> 
>> >arguing some supposedly logically chain of events (This couldn't be true
>> >because if that was true this and this would happen therefore the first
>> >even can't be true) why don't you simply argue that facts.  If you don't
>> >think that steel prices in the US are higher than the world market, why
>> >don't you argue that.  
>> 
>> Gee, I don't recall arguing that that wasn't the case.  Is THAT the
>> issue?  Ok.  Granted.  Happy?  And here all this time I thought the
>> issue was the overall economic impact of that when compared to the
>> economic impact of playing by 'free trade' rules when nobody else is.  
> 
>Right.  Instead of arguing directly about whether or not the current
>situation is harmful to the US, you developed an elaborate chain-of-events
>arguments about how if that was true GM would complain about it, and since
>GM was so powerful, they would be able to get it changed, and since they
>haven't done so, protection on steel must not really be an issue. 

And all you do is assert that because we are paying more than world
price for steel that this is 'bad' for the economy.  You haven't shown
your argument, either, and I seriously doubt if you CAN in the limited
format of electronic exchange.

> 
>> Don't YOU know what YOU are arguing, Doug?  Your premise has been (or
>> I thought it was -- at this point I'm not so sure) that tariffs are
>> AUTOMATICALLY BAD for the economy.  That it's irrelevant what the
>> tariff, what the good, or what anyone else in the market is doing.
>> That ANY time we enact a tariff WE are worse off.  I'm arguing that
>> that simply ain't NECESSARILY so; that you've simplified things to the
>> point of meaninglessness.  Got it now?
> 
>OK, give me some cases where tariffs have an overall positive effect on
>the economy.  I'm not claiming across the board that all protection is
>automatically bad, I'm just saying that it has a strong tendency to be
>bad.  I certainly don't think it's the US government's job to make the
>world 'fair' for US businesses (and I say that as an employee of a company
>who competes against a foreign company that is partially goverment
>funded), especially at the expense of US consumers.

Then whose job is it, when foreign governments act to give their
companies an edge?

> 
>> >By the way, I'm still anxiously awaiting your response abou the market for
>> >sugar, where you flamed me for daring to claim that there was such thing
>> >as a sugar lobby or that it had any power.
>> 
>> Well, I don't recall 'flaming' you, except in response to similar
>> actions by you, but explain this.  If the 'sugar lobby' is so damned
>> strong in this country, just how do you explain that practically
>> everyone I know of in the middle west who used to grow sugar beets has
>> switched to other crops because there was no money in producing sugar
>> and being helped by this oh-so-powerful 'sugar lobby' you've
>> postulated.
> 
>Haha.  There you go again.  Instead of presenting evidence on the price of
>sugar or the quotas, Fred tells us about how everyone he knows in the
>Middle West stopped growing sugar beets.  So what's your argument in this
>case?  That the US doesn't have incredibly strict quotas on sugar
>imports?  That the US sugar price isn't several times the world price?

Haha.  Here we go again.  Doug asserts that there is a massive sugar
lobby because we have sugar quotas.  Where IS this lobby, Doug?  Whose
in it?  What has it done?  What's your argument now?  That these
thigns simply 'happened' now, and that all those people are getting
out of the sugar business because it is protected and so very
profitable?  

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.