Even more than that, behind this I smell the "pragmatic" fear of the Clinton wing of the party.. bend over backwards to look like Republicans, sacrificing every bit of principle, to avoid being called soft on Terror, or weak on National Security. On the basis of fear of name-calling, we'll throw away the rule of law forever. *golf clap*

..that you have to teach courses in basic logic and critical thinking merely to make your points. Well done, though.

That's right. Abandon all logic and example of history; vest all power in Our Leader, for he cares for us, and will Do What is Best for Us.

Nice!

Promises one thing, delivers another. As a, uhm, wise man once said : Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

From the mouths of babes.. ;]

Sorry for the long post.

I find it profitable to ask people who tell me "Trade is not a zero-sum game" to consider whether they're trying to address the reality on the ground in the US, or in some theoretical even playing field that never did and never will exist?

America has the position in the world that it does because, partly, we (once) had a capitalist system that encouraged competition. This allowed us to produce more cheaply, and often better products, and to ultimately make them available in much greater quantity.

Now China is filling this role for the world. They have a functional capitalism which, despite its warts, is providing cheaply much of what the world needs. Accordingly they are getting richer. Not rich.. richer. They were stone dirt assed poor to begin with, so 'richer' ends up meaning 50c/day instead of 10c/day (example only). Great for them. I wouldn't want to try to live in San Francisco on it though.

We're already rich. Our problem is keeping the wealth. How do we do that? Well, let's examine some other reasons we got so rich:

1. We used our bargaining power to create inequitable trade deals with other nations. I'm thinking of the original Mideast oil deals that locked up oil for our companies that ultimately caused Europe to pay a much higher price than they would have in a perfectly free market, African resources, various goods from Latin America (for which, when necessary we successfully replaced governments which were uncooperative. De Beers did a similar thing with diamonds-- they've kept prices artificially high for a long time and have even managed to convince a lot of people that diamond made in a lab is somehow inferior to that made in the earth and dug up by slaves. No economic theory to be found there, just reality.

To sum up, we used fear, power and information unavailable to the other parties to gain trade agreements which transferred wealth from far away to the US. This wealth then naturally diffused into the economy, making us richer overall.

2. We did basic research to continue to have a technical lead over countries that were catching up to our 1940s-era infrastructure. This provided the growth of the last half of the twentieth.. our productivity went up because we had tools and information available to outcompete others. That advantage is largely gone now. We can't just wave a hand and stupify the rest of the planet now that it's caught up, nor do we have genius juice on tap at the local Walmart to start passing out to the citizens.

Doing research and development, and doing "symbolic analysis" (a pretty good term IMO) is not expensive anymore. Countries that are willing to play looser with regulations and human life will outcompete us when it comes to new drugs and gene therapy. Countries (well, India and Russia basically) who have large technical populations of information works are currently outcompeting us in many major areas of information work.

What's left for us? I'm not aware of much. The playing field just got more level, but we are in possession of lots of wealth. Instead of foolishly spending it via easy credit and import imbalances, maybe our government ought to consider things like protectionism, which, while inefficient and historically not smart,

may have come into their own.

Some of the folks in the Middle East know these truths and they're busy investing their money smartly to at least cash in on the success of others by buying them (AMD's recent fab spinoff deal comes to mind).

The alternative is a world that is definitely richer overall (trade is not a zero sum game) but an America that is vastly poorer. There's really no other way for things to work out if we go on as we have, since we're trying to maintain a high-energy state without doing any work. Any physicist can give you a firm probability estimate of such a scenario obtaining.

Perhaps it's just the chest-thumping tribal in me that makes me think we should look to our own, but those who are powerless tend to be trampled by those who are not. Especially when they've a past habit of invading other countries, and torturing their citizens.

to get into a few choice oil stocks. I'm not telling which, though :]. Best thou hurry.