I wouldn’t be looking for a country of origin label as a safety endorsement.

Post WWII boomed because governments cut their spending, cut their rationing, stopped commandeering the economy and granted more freedoms to the market.

The market did not boom because of the war industry “building”. The market boomed because governments got more out of the way. Back then they could not easily mangle with money like they did today because the USD was somewhat pegged to gold, so they had to stop the splurge.

Surprisingly, cutting government spending has proven to be beneficial to the economy.

I forgot to add scarcasm. There is a small thread of truth to what I suggested. I was thinking of post WWII.

“May I suggest a world war? It’s easier to sell goods to the rest of the world when the world doesn’t have the industrial capacity, because it was destroyed, to produce those goods themselves.”

There are so many flaws in that argumentation, I don’t know where to start.

If you empoverish your prospective customers by destroying their industrial capacity, how will they pay for the manufactured goods you propose to sell them ?

And will they even want to trade with you after you bombed down their population ?

You risk being ostracized and blockaded by the entire world.

Remember, money only serves as a medium to exchange real savings. If you destroy your customer’s real savings, how are they going to pay you back. You can’t eat printed pieces of paper.

It’s a fatally flawed Kenesian myth to think that war brings prosperity. It doesn’t.

War is a reduction of ressources and brings widespread poverty.

You want your customers to have a robust industrial capacity, that way they will have a lot of sophisticated industrial needs you can meet with an even higher degree of sophistication than them. And they will need your natural ressources so you can sell a lot of that to them.

In fact, the USA is an exact example of why your idea will not work.

Our industrial capacity is extremely reduced but so is our prosperity. The result is that we are doing the opposite of being manufactured goods of others.

We are fast becoming too poor to afford even chinese junk.

We need a robust industrial sector to produce manufactured goods to pay for other countries manufactured productions.

Our best customers are not impoverished african states but other robust industrial countries.

Great question. May I suggest a world war? It’s easier to sell goods to the rest of the world when the world doesn’t have the industrial capacity, because it was destroyed, to produce those goods themselves.

btw..I think the tariff on Chinese tires is riduculous, and of course the Chinese are fighting back via their importation of U.S. chickens. It’s all very silly, but hey, POTUS has to throw a bone to the unions who were instrumental in getting him elected.

I have a question (or questions) that I’m hoping some of you will venture to answer:

How does a country such as the U.S. bring back parity to global trading? If countries such as China have artificially pegged their currencies lower to the USD to bring imbalanced trade, what can the U.S. do to counteract such policies?

It seems that tariffs bring negative consequences to global trade. However, the U.S. needs to produce something that the rest of the world would want to consume in order to balance out global trade. Selling I.O.U’s clearly is not the answer.

Thoughts?

William,
I suggest you use your time and energy in more productive things. After some time, simply employ the I-told-you-so method to rest your case, as Mike suggested.

How about:

- Improve your method of identifying open-minded individuals, e.g. they don’t start the conversation with a sermon.

- Try to identify signs indicating whether a conversation is destined for endless debate or a change in belief. For example, if one person is constantly speaking in vague terms while the second is always trying to get the other to commit to specific beliefs, then it is probably a fruitless debate.

- Lower your expectations until they’re satisfied. You’ll be less upset when something goes wrong if you can say to yourself, “I knew it – I’m surrounded by assholes.”

Sigh. I need new friends.

Yea, quit. It’s a waste of time arguing with people who do not listen to you.

You could do something useful instead like cutting your toenails of scratching your back.

I don’t see how the interferences of a third party will “fix” the economy.

The economy is between me the consumer and them the producers. I just don’t see where Barack Obama fits in between.