This was originally a FB response edited to fit this format. --HF
By James Fisher
I watched Peter Navarro’s state propaganda video posted here already and would have to spend hours to dismantle it.
The problem with conservatives is that when a left winger like Obama is in office you understand that government economists are really just state propagandist, but when a conservative is in office you guys lap up the exact same state propaganda posted on CSPAN and other state owned media outlets.
The problem is that you’ve never actually studied economics, and therefor have no scientific foundation to judge another economists by.
I would suggest reading Man-Economy and State by Murray Rothbard. This is a layman’s version of Mises treatise on economics “Human Action”.
Your own life has been made bounds wealthier by the Chinese. This bunk about the Chinese stealing our jobs is the same economic argument that robots steal our jobs. For example:
If you lived on an island and had to produce everything you have from food to shelter you would be extremely poor and work constantly. Then one day you found a magic robot that would do everything for you. You would not be mad that you lost your job. You would now be far wealthier. You could do anything you wanted with your time and produce far more goods for yourself.
The same is true if others will produce the things cheaper than you once did.
For those who think that the Chinese, who are producing things cheaper than we can, are stealing all our jobs, try to imagine this:
What if the Chinese tomorrow could start producing all cars for 1/10th the price of Americans?
They are just as good but instead of the average car costing $30,000 new, it was now produced by the Chinese for $3,000, and sold to Americans.
You would argue this is horrible because all Auto jobs would be lost. And yes, those jobs would be lost. But the overall wealth increase outweighs the job loss by far ($27,000 to be exact).
Those workers, who lost jobs, would eventually produce something else, and now our economy has super cheap cars and the something else those workers would have to do. And all Americans that would normally buy a car for $30,000 now buy one for $3,000 and spend $27,000 elsewhere that supports the new jobs that need to be created.
If you can’t see this and still want to argue against it.
Ask yourself, if the Chinese didn’t just make the cars for $3,000 but instead gave us all our cars for free. Would this be good or bad for Americans?
Because if you believe that allowing those who make things cheaper will only steal our jobs, and this is supposedly bad, you must also argue that if another country just sent America all its cars 100% free as gifts, this would make us poorer.
So these Chinese stealing our jobs argument makes you have to also defend the idea that you getting a car for free is bad for you and Americans.
You are basically arguing that if cars magically fell from the sky, this would make us all poorer because then there would be no jobs making cars.
I hope you can see this is nonsense.
But it must start with a knowledge of economics, if you want to avoid all these common state propaganda economic fallacies put forward by those like Peter Navarro.
This post only tackles one of them, you can see why I’m not going to dismantle the rest. Unless someone wants to bring up another.
