Is the dollar REALLY in this much trouble?

[Scout101]

^ I think if you remove the jingoism that clouds our judgement you might appreciate Holdfast's view under a more objective light. It is, in essence, a final, stable economic equilibrium state.

Attempting to maintain the status quo would surely doom those in second and third world countries to stay there, as they would be too far behind the curve to have any hope of catching up with the first world (which does include countries other than the US).

Nope, still a terrible idea. They need to build their economies for themselves not tear ours down.

It's not so much "tearing us down" as a matter of them integrating themselves into the global market, which WILL happen. As more things are able to cross borders, or work internationally, things will naturally level out. And those with viable skills will earn more, and those that are at the bottom of the barrel will find increased competition for low-skilled jobs.

Why should someone continue to pay you more for a job when someone else can and will do it for less? Only way to stay ahead in this one is to market ourselves as the higher-skilled workforce, and be the people inventing and developing the item rather than the one tightening the bolts or sweeping up after.

 

[Holdfast]

Attempting to maintain the status quo would surely doom those in second and third world countries to stay there, as they would be too far behind the curve to have any hope of catching up with the first world (which does include countries other than the US).

Yes.

But my motivation for advocating free trade is actually SELFISH - it will ultimately do more to drive up the standard of living in the West, including the USA, than following the path of economic isolation caused by restriction of free trade.

No, not deprivation, just in relative poverty. And I'd pitch the figure as probably closer to between 80-90%.

Deprivation would be absolute poverty, and the percentage of the population in absolute poverty worldwide would be a LOT lower than currently. The main extra difference would be that the distribution of socioeconomic stratification would be a lot more even worldwide, rather than very unevenly distributed as at present. So, yeah, I think it's a better future than the present.

If you're in the 2nd or 3rd World.

Bottom line, full globalisation would lead to several consequences: a) a reduction in global absolute poverty; b) a relative levelling of the differences between First and Third Worlds; c) as a result of a & b, a relative expansion of the working & lower middle classes.

Why should the workers of the first world be brought low just to raise up the workers of the 2nd and 3rd? Let them be raised up by their OWN nations instead of stealing from us.



In otherwords America and the First World must be made to suffer for your "meritocratic" distribution to occur.



Speaking as a member of those being asked to give up even my current low standard of living...piss off! Let them build up THEIR countries instead of tearing ours down!

Those with higher skill levels will also see a relative increase in their value, due to greater ability to sell their services worldwide without current barriers to trade.

And those without access to high skill jobs can just go live in hovels, right?

*shrug* we're a century or two off this sort of lifting of trade barrier restriction, and a lot can happen in that time. But as an outcome I think it has net benefit and is probably the "least worst" economic outcome for the most number of people around the world, since there isn't actually any existing economic model that provides for a very high standard of living for everyone. That would take something major like a lifting of energy restrictions on the growth of an economy (eg through widespread cheap/commercial fusion power for instance).

Then let us work on such things, instead of pitting good honest, hard-working God fearing US citizens against the destitute masses of other countries in a struggle for jobs they cannot win with a biased playing field.

You're making several related assumptions that I think are fundamentally flawed and run contrary to accepted economic wisdom across the mainstream economic & political spectrum. Stripped of the amusingly purple prose you make the following points:

a) it's possible to raise tariffs to levels sufficient to economically isolate the USA from the global economy
b) isolating the USA from the global economy would actually lead to an increase in economic wealth in the USA
c) this increase in wealth would drive up the standards of living across the spectrum of population in the USA

(if you don't realise you're making these points, analyse whether there's any other way to to achieve the unlinking of the USA from globalisation you're recommending)

From the subtext of your post and forgive me if I misread the subtext, but I suspect you're coming at this situation from a moderately right-wing populist perspective. Leaving the rhetoric to one side, you should realise that you're actually advocating a quasi-communist policy for the USA akin to pre-Xiaopeng China. It would lead the the ruination of the USA's (still thriving, viewed in the long term) capitalist market economy, which absolutely relies on free world trade.



Ultimately, this discussion is rather academic, since it's completely impossible to reverse the globalising trend anyway - each major trading country in the world today holds FAR too much of other countries' currencies to effectively disengage from the rest. That includes the USA. Like it or not, it's here to stay and will inevitably increase over the longer term since the more countries that trade with each other, the more they eventually realise that free trade makes them more net money than unfree trade.

Even traditionally closed economies eventually fall to the seductive nature of free capital flow (cf China again).