By Hunter Wallace
This excerpt also comes from the Ha-Joon Chang book and is particularly interesting in light of the fate of Birmingham:
“Korea also provides another dramatic example of a successful public enterprise in the form of the (now privatized) steel maker, POSCO (Pohang Iron and Steel Company). The Korean government made an application to the World Bank in the late 1960s for a loan to build its first modern steel mill. The bank rejected it on the grounds that the project was not viable. Not an unreasonable decision. The country’s biggest export items at the time were fish, cheap apparel, wigs and plywood. Korea didn’t possess deposits of either of the two key raw materials – iron ore and coking coal. Furthermore, the Cold War meant it could not import them from nearby communist China. They had to be brought all the way from Australia. And to cap it all, the Korean government proposed to run the venture as a SOE. What more perfect recipe for disaster? Yet within ten years of starting production in 1973, (the project was financed by Japanese banks), the company became one of the most efficient steel-producers on the planet and is now the world’s third largest.”
How did the Japanese government’s fostering of Toyota help them compete in the global marketplace? The overall success of Toyota is its ability to produce cars that meet consumer demand. How did protecting Japanese car companies domestically help them compete overseas?
This could be a part of a cultural difference between Asia and the US. From a TV documentary I watched over 20 years ago, Japanese companies took a more long term view of the company’s success. The US seems to be more focused on quarterly earnings and current stock prices. This is not a failure of the free market. People who have low time preferences will have higher success rates than those with high time preferences. Likewise, groups of people with low time preferences will generally outperform those with high time preferences.
I know bullet trains sound cool but should it be built regardless of the cost?
It seems to works fine over there, but Japan and South Korea are not burdened by America’s race problem. I wish the South had a transit system like that because the distances are so much greater here. It would certainly make long distance travel much easier.
Hunter,
We may well have bullet trains someday. It is perfectly OK with me if we are not the first country to have them. And in the meantime, I can tell you that I’d rather depend on my own car than depend on public transportation to take me places.
The Japanese government kicked out Ford and GM and protected their home market out of the belief that premature foreign competition would strangle its infant automobile industry (Toyota) before it developed the capabilities to compete with American automakers.
In their view, the consumer and the individual were not paramount. Instead, their view was that the nation needed to develop “serious industries” to raise itself out of poverty, and premature foreign competition would reinforce the status quo. The Japanese still made use of markets and trade, but not the “free-market” or “free-trade.”
Whatever misgivings GB has against slavery, is it possible for it to reestablish its mercantilist trade policy without slavery?
The sugar industry was the canary in the coal mine.
The blow struck by free-trade was just as devastating to the British West Indies as the costs of anti-slavery. The combined effect was to send the British Caribbean into a tailspin that lasted over a century. In the 1860s, Great Britain finally went full free-trade and embraced zero tariffs even after the disaster that had plunged Jamaica and other West Indian colonies into poverty.
Great Britain learned nothing for its previous experiment with the free-labor system in Sierra Leone. It learned nothing from the “Great Experiment” in the British Caribbean. Only Hitler’s decision to declare war on the US and USSR saved Britain from the fate of the Confederacy in the Second World War.
Hunter,
The sugar industry was the canary in the coal mine.
“The blow struck by free-trade was just as devastating to the British West Indies as the costs of anti-slavery. The combined effect was to send the British Caribbean into a tailspin that lasted over a century. In the 1860s, Great Britain finally went full free-trade and embraced zero tariffs even after the disaster that had plunged Jamaica and other West Indian colonies into poverty.
Great Britain learned nothing for its previous experiment with the free-labor system in Sierra Leone. It learned nothing from the “Great Experiment” in the British Caribbean. Only Hitler’s decision to declare war on the US and USSR saved Britain from the fate of the Confederacy in the Second World War.”
Don’t you think the negro population of the Caribbean might have had something to do with the poverty? Especially after the end of slavery.
The sugar industry in St Kitts collapsed AFTER BEING NATIONALIZED AND BAILED OUT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Saint_Kitts_and_Nevis
Nationalized and run by negroes. What could possibly go wrong???
Now how on Earth can you spin it to blame on free trade?
I’m talking about the British West Indies in the 1840s and 1850s in the aftermath of anti-slavery and free-trade.
Hunter,
“I’m talking about the British West Indies in the 1840s and 1850s in the aftermath of anti-slavery and free-trade.”
So is that somehow more relevant to economic nationalism for our new republic than recent history?
I’m pointing out a failed nationalized industry. You point out the successful gov monopoly steel company of SK, I’ll point out the failed gov monopoly sugar company in SK. Granted, these are two opposing ends of the hbd spectrum.
Incidentally, I’ve fact checked and South Korea (no I’m not confusing with North Korea) and Japan have made a lot more use of prison labor than the US has in recent decades, though prison labor may be making a comeback in the US.
I don’t know for certain that prisoners were made to work for POSCO or Toyota, but I suspect they were, at least for some related function, like making parts for toyota. Now if a gov monopoply gets to use prison labor, well that can be a gamechanger. It sure has been a benefit for China, whom we have a hard time competing with in trade.
If it were up to me, all healthy prisoners would be put to work doing something profitable, and it wouldn’t break my heart to make them go beyond 40 hrs/week or to get fed a very cheap diet, like heavy on the beans and rice, oatmeal, bread, water, with just a small amount of meat and veggies added to ensure good health.
Our prisoners could:
–sew shirts, pants, military and police uniforms, Confederate flags, etc.
–assemble electronic gadgets (smartphones?)
–make shoes
–make auto parts
–work in canneries, processing plants
–pick crops, mow grass (electronic ankle bracelets make chains obsolete)
Some may say that they don’t want prisoners working in the food supply, but those are already positions being filled by Haitians, Guatemalans, and everything else, so prisoners won’t be any worse imo.
I think America is crazy not to use prison labor to fullest potential. I know they still use them to make license plates in some states, but I think they should all be put to work doing something *profitable* and why not go 50 hrs/week, cause it’s not like they have a long commute.
As I said above, I was talking about the result of the “Mighty Experiment” in the British West Indies in the 1840s and 1850s, not St. Kitts and Nevis in the 1970s and 1980s:
“Wilson’s checklist consisted of a set of experiments that might be contested for one “definitional” reason or another. His final case, however, must have been the one that really caught the attention of the House of Commons. By their own immediate avowal, it bowled over its bankers, West Indians, and abolitionists alike. Wilson selected an example whose economic success was universally recognized from one end of the world to the other. Subsequent historians have verified that impression. By 1850, “its per capita output must have ranked among the top half dozen of the world’s nations,” 65 percent above that of Jamaica.
Wilson’s pièce de résistance was, of course, the island of Cuba. “Let the House,” thundered the editor of the Economist, “compare those under the British Crown with Cuba or Porto Rico: there was a material difference between the social position of the inhabitants.” In Cuba, both English and Spanish families avoided the perils of absenteeism. There was no need to look only at its economic growth, in sugar or coffee exports. The signs of contingent economic development were everywhere. Cuba had no fewer than 800 miles of railway, the great symbol of modernity and progress, whereas there were only 1200 miles of railroad in the British colonies combined. Cuba was purchasing the latest British machinery for increasing the efficiency of production and transportation. The British colonies were also admonished to follow Cuba’s stringent regulations against vagrancy and squatting – the test of a “civilized and cultivated society.”
The West Indian who replied to Wilson confessed that he was devastated by Wilson’s argument. He heard the British government’s spokesman wax eloquent on the magnificent prosperity of Cuba, saying, “See what slavery has done!” and then he heard the same speaker point to the distressed British Caribbean, saying, “Behold the result of freedom.” To what conclusion should the House of Commons come if all Wilson’s statistics on bridges, buildings, and railways pointed to the accomplishments of slave labor? Even those unconnected with the West Indies noted that an argument for the superiority of free labor based on the dynamism of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Louisiana was a peculiar message to the slaveholders of the New World. Eventually, even a free trader from Lancashire reminded Wilson that there was a free labor experiment in progress. If the experiment failed commercially, no other country would imitate Britain’s example.”
Here’s another funny excerpt:
“Embittered protectionist Tories, who had no hope of repealing the Corn Laws, took rhetorical delight in comparing the devastated sugar colonies to the government’s earlier predictions of emerging prosperity. Benjamin Disraeli found West Indian distress a convenient stick with which to beat the free trade Whigs. The great experiment, the greatest blunder in the history of the English people, had simultaneously ruined the British colonies, encouraged the African slave trade, and revealed “the quackery of economic science!”
Here is a list of now defunct US automobile manufacturers. Should they have been allowed to collapse?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States
Of note, Auburn Cord Duesenburg was a prestigious automobile manufacturer. Its vehicles were on the same level of prestige as Rolls Royce and Bentley. Packard also was very prestigious, although not on the same level as Auburn Cord Duesenburg. Why were they allowed to collapse?
Regarding GM, its collapse would not have spelled the end of the company. It had a bad balance sheet but it still retained numerous valuable assets including designs, numerous manufacturing facilities, well known brands and a dealership network. If they had gone into liquidation (rather than reorg) those assets would have been purchased by investors. They would have reworked the bad labor deals that put the company in its position and gone back to business building cars. The GM bailout was probably less for the company and more for the UAW. I find it odd that GM and Chrysler sought a bailout but Ford didn’t. It may have something to do with the Ford family not wanting to lose control of the company.
Not a problem.
The USPS is not private. No private company company can sustain $47B loss over ten years. Any true private company would have long since gone out of business.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-11/us-postal-service-over-47-billion-losses-past-decade-and-counting-44-billion-capital
As anyone who works for USPS will tell you, the Post Office is now the US Postal Service. It became a quasi-private agency a long time ago in order to be “run like a business.”
for clarification,
” but I think they should all be put to work doing something *profitable* and why not go 50 hrs/week, cause it’s not like they have a long commute.”
I meant to also emphasize the word *all* along w *profitable* in my original copy.
And Japan has been fostering their “infant” auto industry up until this day. When will they grow up and stand on their own two feet? There is no reason why small start up companies (with adequate capital investment) couldn’t compete with larger, more established firms.
I think any form of protectionism can look good if it is applied in a one sided manner. Japan has clearly gotten away with a dual trade policy where their markets are protected while having a mostly free access to other markets. Oftentimes the cost of protectionism is the retaliation, which Japan has averted. Japan would not have the wealth it has without its export market. If Japan cannot export its goods, it would be much poorer today. Below is a good piece that describes how Japan protects its automobile industry. Previously I asked you how does Japan’s protection of its domestic market help it compete internationally. Here is the answer
http://mwww.theamericanconservative.com/articles/japans-bad-trade/
I can confirm the sha-kensystem. There is a market for used Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) engines in the US. Tuners in the US import JDM engines that were not available with cars for the US market. People are able to get engines with low miles because the sha-kensystem and Japan’s taxation on cars push Japanese consumers to purchase new cars.
After 70 years of fostering the “infant” Japanese auto industry, they are still being subsidized by the Japanese consumer. When is it time to cut the umbilical cord? When will the Japanese auto industry put on their big boy pants?
Also note that Japan didn’t just restrict imports of foreign vehicles. They prevented foreign investment and ownership. China has taken an opposite approach and has welcomed foreign investment into their country. Which policy do we choose? And how would the South benefit by restricting foreign investment? Japan has benefitted Southern workers by their presence. If the US took the same approach to foster domestic automobile production, the South would have been denied foreign capital investments in order to protect workers in Detroit. How would Southerners have benefitted from this policy? And what’s the end game of a protectionist foreign policy? Ultimately, the purpose of production is to satisfy the needs of consumers. Producers exist for the sake of their consumers. But the mercantile industrial policy in Japan requires for consumers to exist for the sake of producers. To own a car in Japan they must pay a higher price than they would otherwise have to pay and purchase vehicles more frequently than they would have had to. How does this policy benefit the average Japanese citizen? How would it benefit the average American is they could no longer drive their older but useful vehicles in order to subsidize domestic industry? Would their standard of living be lower or higher? This fostering of domestic industry has gone on for decades. This is analogous to Great Britain fostering their domestic textile industry for 130 years where lower class people had to pay twice as much for lower quality textiles. A mercantile industrial policy benefits wealthy industrialist at the expense of lower and middle class citizens.
By different means.
Obviously, Toyota is more than capable of competing with the Big Three in 2015 (Big Two now that Chrysler is foreign owned) and has conquered a large share of the American market. That wasn’t the case for the first thirty years of its existence though. The Japanese didn’t share the neo-liberal faith in unregulated competition and the free-market.
This was discussed in detail in the Clyde Prestowitz book who was a trade negotiator with Japan in the 1980s. According to Prestowitz, the US puts up with this for geopolitical reasons.
That’s correct.
There are variations on a common theme in different East Asian countries: Japan has low tariffs, but protects its home market in various other ways whereas China follows Singapore in welcoming foreign investment on its own terms in order to facilitate technology transfer.
As part of the US, Southern state governments have no power to set tariffs, monetary policy, restrict foreign investment, which is why they offer Singapore-style incentive packages and subsidies to lure foreign industries to places like Alabama.
See above.
Because of its circumstances within the Union, the South uses the beggar-thy-neighbor strategy of industrial development. I know Alabama has been doing this since the 1920s.
No, the focus on the consumer and the individual is a foundational assumption of classical liberal and neo-liberal economics. East Asian countries are playing a very different game.
That was a debate the Japanese had in the 1950s.
Why should Japan develop an automobile industry to compete with American automobile manufacturers? Instead, Japan should have focused on its comparative advantage in seafood, opened its market to foreign investment and competition, and bought the superior and cheaper American automobiles.
I will get to this in the review which I am starting on this afternoon.
There’s a good reason why Japan is doing it. That’s why when you go to Japan you will be amazed at all the new cars and new electronics. Again, I will get to this in the review because the answer is at the heart of the Japanese paradigm.
Just the opposite is true: by strangling long term economic development in order to focus on short term profit, neo-liberal economics reinforces the status quo and keeps their citizens, particularly the lower classes, mired in poverty and working in low-wage industries. That’s why the US experienced its great industrial expansion and the growth of its middle class during the heyday of protectionism which according to the classical liberal should have devastated the consumer.
“Indeed. The earth is moving through a photon sea, and we’re still worrying about liberating photons trapped in fossils. ” – hydrocarbons are convenient and efficient energy storage, which is why they are used.
“How did protecting Japanese car companies domestically help them compete overseas?” – having a completely safe home base is immeasurably helpful in competition and conflict.
This is a straw man. If Japan were to focus on a comparative advantage in seafood it would mean that most of their capital and labor would have been dedicated to the fishing industry. Did anyone suggest this? It’s not about what a few academics or government central planners believe. It’s about what private investors are willing to invest in. In 1935 Ford was investing in building a steel mill and an auto assembly plant in Japan. If well run company such as Ford saw value in automobile manufacturing in Japan, then Japan was well suited for auto manufacturing and other industries. And note, after WWII the Japanese government purposely restricted foreign investment into their country. Investors were willing to pour money into Japan’s industries and native Japanese could have followed suit. The fisheries or industry argument is a false choice.
http://www.fairimage.org/tradewithjapan.htm
This is not a flaw of the free market. The free market does not establish the ideal time preference for investments. It allows investors to establish their own time preferences. From what I have seen, the short term profitability mindset is common in publicly traded companies. CEOs and stockholders (particularly the buy low/sell high types) are people who have little vested interest in the long interest a the company. Privately owned companies, particularly family owned companies, are concerned with the long-term viability of a company. These people are highly vested in a company’s long term performance. Both types could very well exist in free market. Free markets are not magic. They cannot fix human flaws. Low time preference (i.e. lack of patience) is a human shortcoming that cannot be fixed with any economic system. Free markets have a way of punishing poor investors and rewarding those who make sound economic decisions. Government (particularly through bailouts) help sustain companies/industries that have exhibited poor decision making. This is subsidizing bad business behavior. But human fallibility cannot be blamed on the free market.
No, it is a historical fact.
That was the sound advice given to Japan after WW2 by America’s economic sages.
Yes, America’s trade negotiators.
They were confident that Japan was incapable of producing an automobile that Americans would buy. They believed Japan was acting irrationally by defying market signals and should export tuna to the United States in exchange for American automobiles.
This shows that Ford was interested in exporting to the Japanese market which remains the case todaym
They were certainly willing to pour money into Japan in order to turn Toyota into an American subsidary like US Steel did to TCI. The Japanese wisely demurred.
Hunter,
“They were confident that Japan was incapable of producing an automobile that Americans would buy. They believed Japan was acting irrationally by defying market signals and should export tuna to the United States in exchange for American automobiles.”
There’s your answer to why the advice was wrong, the Americans had underestimated the Japanese’ ability to efficiently manufacture quality cars. It’s not an argument against free trade, it’s an argument that the Japs were smarter than Americans gave them credit for.
Without doing research to verify, I suspect that regulations, unions, and minimum wage also changed a lot in America after that prediction was made, which would make America less competitive, favoring Toyota.
Since this thread is generally about free vs planned markets, I’d like to refer you to check out the country rankings of the Enabling Trade Index:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade
Here’s the 2010 and 2014 rankings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Enabling_Trade_Report
Notice the top 20 is dominated by rich countries. Hmmm.
Singapore and Hong Kong at the top of all 3 reports. Hmmm.
Japan and Korea seem to be climbing the list. Hmmm.
Maybe they are getting dumber?
I’m going to stick by my guns. Free trade brings the most prosperity, as long as you have something you can produce competitively for export. The problem is that the more free trade you depend on, the more susceptible you are to trade disruptions, such as sanctions/embargoes/foreign wars/having your trade routes blocked by a hostile enemy/etc. So we need our basic necessities (food, energy, minerals & steel, car/truck/farm machinery manufacturing, chemicals & pharma) to be homegrown as a national security concern, whether it is the economically superior model or not, and I think the most efficient way to accomplish this is by tariffs, deregulation (min wage, environmental, unions, etc.), low taxes (for domestic production), not by quotas, subsidies, or gov run monopolies.
The Americans underestimated the ability of the Japanese to defy market signals and restrict competition for the sake of investing in their future by developing new industrial capabilities that contributed to long term economic growth. In light of their free-market ideology, they couldn’t understand why the Japanese had forsaken cheaper, higher quality American automobile imports in the 1950s that would benefited the all important “consumer.”
If getting rid of regulations, unions, and taxes are the true path to prosperity, why did Alabama enter and exit the 20th century as one of the poorest states in the country?
Hunter,
“If getting rid of regulations, unions, and taxes are the true path to prosperity, why did Alabama enter and exit the 20th century as one of the poorest states in the country?”
I can answer this question in one single word:
Negroes.
Ok, maybe I should flesh out my answer a little more:
Free negroes who can’t be discriminated against and have to be paid a federal minimum wage.
It can’t be due just to blacks. The same is true of Whites. Arkansas, the capital of poultry processing in the South, is worse off than Alabama. Why didn’t the low wage, low tax, low investment paradigm catapault Arkansas or Alabama into the top tier of states in the 21th century?
We can easily open our history books and see what it was like in Arkansas and Alabama before the income tax, the Federal Reserve, the minimum wage, unions, worker safety laws, the EPA, child labor laws, the FDIC, Medicare, Social Security, etc. messed it all up.
The paradise that was Alabama and Arkansas in 1908 is there for anyone with a library card to see.
Hunter,
“It can’t be due just to blacks. The same is true of Whites. Arkansas, the capital of poultry processing in the South, is worse off than Alabama. Why didn’t the low wage, low tax, low investment paradigm catapault Arkansas or Alabama into the top tier of states in the 21th century?”
It’s also due to Mexicans, Guatemalans, South Asians, etc. Having them in your state depresses that state.
Well, obviously it would be hard to compete with the fracking revolution in Texas, North Dakota, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma. And there is the possibility that Arkansas and Alabama might be brain drain states. Not exactly flattering to think about but we’re obviously not here to flatter ourselves and tell ourselves that there aren’t any problems ahead for our people. If you want to point out how poorly AR and AL are doing, why not just as easily point out how well FL is doing compared to NY. Texas is a gimme since again, they got the oil boom going on.
In both Arkansas and Alabama, the Hispanic population is highly correlated with the presence of the poultry processing industry, which is why we kept protesting it. Regardless, Arkansas and Alabama entered the 20th century in roughly the same position and exited In roughly the same position long before Hispanic immigration started to become a problem in the 1990s.
West Virginia and Kentucky are also two of the poorest states in the country, and two of the whitest as well.
I will grant that millions of White people left West Virginia, Kentucky and other parts of Appalachia to work in the Northern manufacturing belt in the 20th century, but doesn’t that show how much more dynamic a manufacturing economy, how many more jobs it produces, than an agricultural one?
Florida was the smallest Southern state until the 1950s. The invention of the air conditioner changed that. Millions of people move to Florida because of the weather and proximity to the coasts. Like Saudi Arabia, Texas was fortunate enough to be blessed with a sea of oil and natural gas.
Hunter,
“In both Arkansas and Alabama, the Hispanic population is highly correlated with the presence of the poultry processing industry, which is why we kept protesting it.”
I suspect so. It’s probably the same here, except that we have so many Hispanics without the plant that it’s harder to see the difference. Again, the problem is with immigration laws and lack of enforcement. You act like they are coming from abiogenesis where chicken carcasses spawn Hispanics. I promise, if you have effective anti-immigration and deportation laws, and if those laws are adequately enforced, then you can fix the Hispanic problem while keeping the processing plants.
“Regardless, Arkansas and Alabama entered the 20th century in roughly the same position and exited In roughly the same position long before Hispanic immigration started to become a problem in the 1990s.”
My guess is that if you looked at ranking by race, they would enter and leave the 20th century in roughly the same position also. More Hispanics, yeah, but group them in with blacks as “nonwhite” and see what happens.
“West Virginia and Kentucky are also two of the poorest states in the country, and two of the whitest as well.”
There’s not a lot of agriculture in WV and not much in the eastern half of KY. These are mostly mining and timber based economies. Are you against mining also?
“I will grant that millions of White people left West Virginia, Kentucky and other parts of Appalachia to work in the Northern manufacturing belt in the 20th century, but doesn’t that show how much more dynamic a manufacturing economy, how many more jobs it produces, than an agricultural one?”
Again, Appalachia isn’t exactly the breadbasket of America is it?
“Florida was the smallest Southern state until the 1950s. The invention of the air conditioner changed that. Millions of people move to Florida because of the weather and proximity to the coasts.”
Air conditioning may be a factor in this but I think it’s a bit silly to claim it’s all because of air conditioning.
Jeff,
All right.
If you would like to try this experiment, I would support it. By restricting immigration and abolishing refugee resettlement, I predict the magic of the “free-market” and “free-trade” would send the poultry processing industry to Mexico. That would be fine by me. It would count as a small tailwind for free-trade.
Arkansas and Alabama are whiter than the national average. The black population is also relatively smaller than it used to be. The low-wage, low-tax, low-investment economy kept both states mired at the bottom of all states. That remains true if we compare just Whites in the Deep South with Whites elsewhere.
No, there are lots of good jobs in the mining industry. West Virginia and Kentucky are located in Central Appalachia which of all the sub-regions of the South had by far the greatest problem with extractive industry and absentee ownership.
The free-market is responsible for making eastern Kentucky and West Virginia what they are today. All those great investors you keep talking about pretty much sucked the region dry.
If agriculture is so dynamic as you keep saying, why did millions of White Southerners leave these areas to move to the Northern manufacturing belt or even the South’s own cities? Why didn’t the reverse happen? Why didn’t people leave the cities and manufacturing belt to move to the dynamic sharecropping economy of places like West Alabama or the Arkansas Delta?
Try living in Florida without air conditioning and you will see why so few people lived there until the 1950s.
Hunter,
“If you would like to try this experiment, I would support it. By restricting immigration and abolishing refugee resettlement, I predict the magic of the “free-market” and “free-trade” would send the poultry processing industry to Mexico. That would be fine by me. It would count as a small tailwind for free-trade.”
The experiment has been run. It’s what we had before the invasion, except that technology (including agricultural tech) has advanced a great deal since then, which mitigates some of the economic damage of immigration.
“Arkansas and Alabama are whiter than the national average.”
Now I have a hard time believing this!
“The black population is also relatively smaller than it used to be.”
The Hispanic influx reduces the percentage of the population that is black, just like it reduces the percentage of the population that is white.
“The low-wage, low-tax, low-investment economy kept both states mired at the bottom of all states. That remains true if we compare just Whites in the Deep South with Whites elsewhere.”
If this were true, then the people would abandon their jobs and revert back to hunter-gathering.
“No, there are lots of good jobs in the mining industry. West Virginia and Kentucky are located in Central Appalachia which of all the sub-regions of the South had by far the greatest problem with extractive industry and absentee ownership.”
I never got past the first few slides in the link you gave explaining “extractive.” It’s hogwash. While you’re at it why don’t you quote “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond as an explanation for why white countries invented so much more than black countries.
Just because an investor is rewarded for his homework and his risk that he took up front, does not mean he gets **all** the profits or that he exploits his workers, unless they are slaves who are not free to quite and do something else that gives them a better deal. Believe it or not, the profits really are shared between every party that voluntarily works for the business, even if they are not shared equally. Therefore, it does not matter how much the leaders of Peabody Mining get to keep, but rather how much they share with the local people.
“The free-market is responsible for making eastern Kentucky and West Virginia what they are today. All those great investors you keep talking about pretty much sucked the region dry.”
I have not been talking about any “greatness” of investors. They are businessmen, who looking for a profit, make proposals that they think will work, but in order to get other people to join them in their endeavor, they have to offer them some of the profit. I suppose they might ve great minds, but I don’t ascribe them any great moral virtue.
It is interesting that you credit oil for helping to make Texas rich in another post, but you credit coal for keeping KY and WV poor! What’s the magic difference between coal and oil?
You think coal has kept KY and WV poor all these years? Are they not richer than they were without any industry?
Please explain how rich the region was before the coal industry came and took all they wealth away.
“Try living in Florida without air conditioning and you will see why so few people lived there until the 1950s.”
I actually did live in the Caribbean for over 2 years with no AC. It was great because I didn’t have a heating bill, and I could go swimming in the winter. I didn’t spend much on hot showers either since the only heat was ambient temp, plus a small electric heating element for the water that I turned on when taking the shower.
I grew up doing farm labor in NC, and during and after college in KY, so I know what hot weather is. Coastal NC was hotter than Eastern KY.
Nevertheless, some people seem to think AC is a fundamental necessity, right alongside food, clothing and shelter, but I doubt that accounts for all of Florida’s growth.
As Chang points out, Britain embraced free-trade in 1846 and the peak of its prosperity, and the US embraced free-trade after 1945, also at the peak of its prosperity. When countries become rich and powerful, they shift toward free-trade, but they don’t usually develop and become rich and powerful on the basis of that model.
In the US, free-trade brings cheap consumer goods, but also stagnant real wages, increased household debt, and lower average household income. Most Americans now believe they are worse off and that their children will be worse off than their parents. This is because most people are not just “consumers,” but also workers.
I generally agree, but I would argue low taxes, low wages, deregulation and so forth leads inexorably to an economy built on low skilled, low wage industries where wealth is concentrated at the top and is more vulnerable to financial shocks.
Hunter,
“As Chang points out, Britain embraced free-trade in 1846 and the peak of its prosperity, and the US embraced free-trade after 1945, also at the peak of its prosperity. When countries become rich and powerful, they shift toward free-trade, but they don’t usually develop and become rich and powerful on the basis of that model.”
How are you measuring prosperity? The average person has much more material wealth now than back then.
“In the US, free-trade brings cheap consumer goods, but also stagnant real wages, increased household debt, and lower average household income.”
How does free trade increase household debt?
And how can it cause both “stagnant real wages” and “lower average household income” at the same time? Is free trade keeping us single so that we earn the same amount, but have lower household income?
“I generally agree, but I would argue low taxes, low wages, deregulation and so forth leads inexorably to an economy built on low skilled, low wage industries where wealth is concentrated at the top and is more vulnerable to financial shocks.”
Any economy is based on low skill, low wages. Some people will rise up from there to form an upper class, but you can’t have an upper class without a lower class. Do you prefer communism where everybody is poor? (Unless they have contacts in government of course.)
The low skill labor force is going to be the backbone of most any economy, whether there are high earners or not. And of course wealth is concentrated at the top–that’s what makes it the top!
That’s true.
Science and technology continue to advance. Even the poorest nations in the world like Congo now have access to things like cell phones and computers and cheap apparel. Technological progress will always flow downhill and improve life at the bottom.
At the same time, Americans are working longer hours, real wages have stagnated for decades, women have entered the workforce en masse, and household debt has exploded as Americans are struggling harder to maintain their same standard of living. That’s the other side of all the cheap consumer imports at the local Wal-Mart.
By suppressing wage growth due to outsourcing and the decline in bargaining power among American workers. Families compensate by women entering the workforce, mortgaging their homes, or taking out credit cards to pay their bills.
By sending millions of manufacturing and service jobs overseas and reducing the bargaining power of American workers.
Free trade is a great boon to businesses which gives them far more leverage over their workers. Because they end up paying their workers less (if they don’t replace them altogether) and wages fail to track productivity growth, real wages in America stagnate while the benefits of free-trade are captured by employers and investors.
That’s true of Arkansas, which is one of the poorest states in America, and which has remained that way for over a century in spite of becoming the capital of poultry processing in the South. It is not true of, say, Germany or Sweden.
Again, I will just say if we want an economy like Arkansas, or even better, Guatemala or Bangladesh where there are fewer environmental, worker safety, and labor regulations than in Germany or Sweden, then that is the model to follow. It is a model which keep the South mired and poverty and lower the standard of living for the vast majority of our population.
Sure it is.
If the market is free, then it is by definition open to foreign competition, but sometimes competition is like a school yard bully that picks on younger and weaker kids and robs them of their lunch money. One day those younger and weaker kids might grow up and develop the capacity to throttle the bully.
If we apply this reasoning to economics, sometimes it is a better idea to defy the market and restrict competition in order to nurture infant industries. This is what Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have done in sector after sector: automobiles, semiconductors, and consumer electronics to name a few. It is what the US did in the 19th century to foster industrialization.
The free-market and free-trade leads to competition that punishes weak firms, but just like I cut my grass it also cuts down infant industries and stifles long term economic growth in the process. A cornucopia of cheap consumer goods might have the opportunity cost of the innovation, new technologies, industrial processes and wages that advanced manufacturing generates.
It would keep, say, Arkansas stuck producing chicken broilers while, for example, Japan leaps from textiles and seafood to automobiles and semiconductors and robotics. The free-market is a conservative force that reinforces the status quo whether it is cotton monoculture in the Old South or banana republics in Central America.
Hunter,
“It would keep, say, Arkansas stuck producing chicken broilers while, for example, Japan leaps from textiles and seafood to automobiles and semiconductors and robotics. The free-market is a conservative force that reinforces the status quo whether it is cotton monoculture in the Old South or banana republics in Central America.”
I can’t help but get the idea from this post and others that you have made, plus your comment on snradio, that you seem to resent Southern agriculture and seem to have a strong like for manufacturing. If growing broiler chickens is profitable then let’s have lots of it! If peanuts are profitable, then let’s have it! Same w cotton, poultry processing and potato chips. What better sector could you possibly dominate in than food supply!!! (junk food not so much, but you get the idea)
It just seems somehow that you have some disdain for agriculture, like it’s something to be scoffed, and that we should move on to something more noble, like making cars. I would much rather live in a country that dominates in food supply than in a country that dominates in manufacturing. I can go a lot longer without buying another car (10+ years maybe) than I can go without buying food (except maybe beans and rice stored in mylar bags in plastic buckets). In fact, if all of a sudden we couldn’t import any more cars, we could make the ones we have go a hell of a lot longer than 10 years!
Agriculture and energy are by far the most important industries to have onshore, and thanks to fracking we’re doing sublimely in both! Sure, I’d like to add cars, electronics, and clothing to that list, but it’s the single use necessities that we better be producing at home!
During time of war or sanctions, would you rather be in a country that produces food and energy and trades for everything else, or would you rather be a country that produces cars and electronics and trades for food and energy?
We’ve been all over the South – Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee – protesting those chicken plants which are magnets for illegal immigration.
Less than 20 minutes from here, Wayne Farms has a chicken processing plant in Union Springs, AL. Every single time I drive through Union Springs I see how many illegal aliens it has brought to my area. There’s another plant nearby in Baker Hill, AL. In fact, it was that specific plant and the demographic changes it brought to my hometown which first got me interested in illegal immigration.
There are two more chicken processing plants nearby in Enterprise and Dothan, AL. It is the same story there. That’s just in Southeast Alabama closest to home. The poultry processing industry is based in North Alabama where it has had an even far more devastating impact on cities like Albertville and Russellville.
Why do I oppose the poultry processing industry? Just look at Bullock County, AL which is one of the absolute most poorest counties in the United States. The chicken plant there imports people from Guatemala who are poorer even still because local labor is too expensive. The Guatemalan peasants who live there grow corn in the front yard of trashed old Southern homes on main street.
Where do I start? It is an extractive, low-wage industry. The only spillover effect it has is illegal immigration which shifts the burden of its workforce onto local taxpayers. Far from creating jobs for locals or encouraging economic development in the area, it has had the opposite effect. It exploits illegal aliens and virtually all the profits from it are pocketed by absentee owners.
Should we have an economic policy that fosters that type of industry here? Yes, if our goal is to become more like Guatemala, or to remain one of the poorest states in the country for another century.
“We’ve been all over the South – Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee – protesting those chicken plants which are magnets for illegal immigration.”
Please do not protest at the [name omitted] processing plant in North Carolina. My brother and some of his white Southern friends work there and I don’t want you to make them late for work.
Of course these places are magnets for immigrants. They create lots of low skill (and other) jobs, and low skill jobs attract immigrants.
The immivasion crisis is because of this recipe:
–lots of wealth, including steady low skill jobs
–failure of border control
–failure to deport
The solution to this is a change in laws, not a change in industries. They don’t come here because they love cutting chickens. They come because they are poor and there are good paying jobs here. Now if you want to build a strong economy that doesn’t provide good paying jobs, I’d like to see our plan!
What caused the Great Migration of negroes from the South to places like Detroit? Was it processing plants or manufacturing jobs?
“Where do I start? It is an extractive, low-wage industry.”
How is poultry processing an “extractive industry”?
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=extractive+industry
“The only spillover effect it has is illegal immigration which shifts the burden of its workforce onto local taxpayers. Far from creating jobs for locals or encouraging economic development in the area, it has had the opposite effect.”
The problem is the undesirable immigration, not the industry! It does create jobs for locals, but the immigrants are willing to work cheaper and the company isn’t going to have to pay retirement to them bc they will churn at a higher rate than whites. Also sometimes they get gov subsidies for hiring refugees. That’s a problem with the government, not the chicken!
Should we have an economic policy that fosters that type of industry here? Yes, if our goal is to become more like Guatemala, or to remain one of the poorest states in the country.”
Absolutely we should want to keep those industries! Just get rid of the invaders that come to get a piece of the wealth generated! It’s ours!
I would love to see 1.) the racial demographics of the surrounding area and whether there is a positive correlation with Hispanic immigrants, 2.) the average wages paid at the aforesaid chicken plant, and 3.) the impact that the chicken plant has had on property values, unemployment and the public school system.
In other words, a place like Bullock County, AL, which is one of the poorest counties in America. Union Springs is 20 miles away and anyone passing through the city Conan behold the greatness that the poultry processing industry has led to there.
Maybe so.
If you look at where Hispanics live in Alabama, you will find that the cities with the highest percentage of Hispanic residents are typically located near a poultry processing facility. The industry is a magnet for illegal aliens because it depends on the cheapest, most pliable labor. Like dollar stores and title pawn stores, it is typically a sign you are in a poor area.
I’ve never seen a place that hosts the poultry processing industry and thought to myself: this area looks like it has a strong economy. Instead, these places usually look like Clio or Union Springs, AL, which have descended into Third World poverty complete with Spanish speaking stores and the Spanish language.
The difference is that those industries produced good jobs that paid relatively high wages and spawned new technologies and industries whereas the poultry processing industry does neither.
It creates benefits that are overwhelmingly captured by employers and investors. Basically, it is an industry that benefits very few people, which is why you find those industries in the poorest parts of the South like the Ozarks, Mississippi Delta, Alabama Black Belt, the Lowcountry and Appalachia.
http://www.idea.int/upload/Keynote-Lecture-James-Robinson.pdf
Precisely.
It creates a handful of low-wage jobs for locals at the cost of attracting hundreds, even thousands, of illegal aliens to the area. The burden of those illegal aliens falls on locals, who are paid lower-wages, because they are in competition with illegal workers who, as you say, aren’t paid retirement, who aren’t taxed, who don’t benefit from worker safety laws, etc.
The burden falls on local governments which are denied tax revenue, but which have to pay for schools, infrastructure, police, fire, etc. It costs more than it is worth, but the worst aspect of it is that all the profit goes to absentee owners and investors who ruin, say, a place like Enterprise, AL, but who don’t live there themselves.
Hunter,
“It creates a handful of low-wage jobs for locals at the cost of attracting hundreds, even thousands, of illegal aliens to the area. The burden of those illegal aliens falls on locals, who are paid lower-wages, because they are in competition with illegal workers who, as you say, aren’t paid retirement, who aren’t taxed, who don’t benefit from worker safety laws, etc. ”
How many ways can I say it, man.
1) The industry creates lots of wealth to be had.
2) Some of that wealth may be earned by the local people by getting jobs at the plant.
3) Immigrants are willing to work cheaper and don’t burden company w retirements, but create other problems not shared by the company.
4) We do nothing to keep them out.
The solution is in fixing #4, not in getting rid of #1 and #2!
The problem is in #3 and #4 on that list, not #1 or #2.
We can’t easily do much about #3, but we can do a hell of a lot about #4!
1.) If this industry creates so much wealth, why are so many of its workers on food stamps because their income falls below the poverty line?
2.) The same is true of workers in Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador and other Third World countries. They are paid extremely low-wages. The owners and investors pocket virtually all the profits, but the workers get a small share of the wealth generated.
3.) I’m failing to see how this economic model is supposed to raise living standards when you keep endorsing low-wages, low-taxes, low-investment in infrastructure and education and the abolition of environmental and worked safety regulations.
It sounds to me like you are describing Third World countries or Alabama and Arkansas circa 1908. Most people are workers, not business owners or landowners, and the low-wages will be reflected in relative poverty when compared to wealthier, more advanced areas.
Even if the borders were closed, the low-wage, terrible working conditions, and extractive nature of the industry would remain. It wouldn’t lift anyone out of poverty, but would likely keep them there.
Hunter,
“1.) If this industry creates so much wealth, why are so many of its workers on food stamps because their income falls below the poverty line?”
Yes, you are right. They would make so much more money if they would just quit work and scratch the ground or roam around the forest looking for food.
“2.) The same is true of workers in Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador and other Third World countries. They are paid extremely low-wages. The owners and investors pocket virtually all the profits, but the workers get a small share of the wealth generated.”
Yes, you are right. The fact that some rich investor/CEO makes six or seven figures a year makes Central American countries poorer. These countries would be so much better off if they would just bomb those fabricas and talleres out of business. After all it is a zero sum game, just like Michael Moore would probably agree. There is no way possible for it to be a mutually beneficial endeavor where the profits are split, albeit unequally. If you see a white collar man that makes a lot of money as head of a processing plant, it is necessarily true that he is hurting the people working there. It is simply impossible for new wealth to be created, where that new wealth is apportioned to different people in different quantities. When one man gets richer, another gets poorer. There is no other way. These so called “virtuous industries” that create a product are no different from a casino that creates no product, only redistributes wealth from the peasants to the casino owner. It is always a zero sum game.
“3.) I’m failing to see how this economic model is supposed to raise living standards when you keep endorsing low-wages, low-taxes, low-investment in infrastructure and education and the abolition of environmental and worked safety regulations.
It sounds to me like you are describing Third World countries or Alabama and Arkansas circa 1908. Most people are workers, not business owners or landowners, and the low-wages will be reflected in relative poverty when compared to wealthier, more advanced areas.
Even if the borders were closed, the low-wage, terrible working conditions, and extractive nature of the industry would remain. It wouldn’t lift anyone out of poverty, but would likely keep them there.”
Yes, again, you are right. Everybody must make a high wage. We should raise minimum wage even higher to bring more good jobs to our country. After all, the presence of low paying jobs destroys good paying jobs. Having lots of people making 20K a year means that nobody can make 100K a year. We have to get rid of all those 20K a year jobs, so that 100K jobs ca be planned by the gubmint.
Also, math is wrong. Yo are right. Extractive industries make everybody poorer because the wealth is being taken away to a greater extent than it is being created. If an industry generates $100 million dollars, and the remote CEO gets $1 million, that makes everybody poorer. the $9 million leftover wealth is thrown into the sea to keep the low wage earners from getting any of it. The CEO’s job is to keep them poor by stealing the profits, not to manage mutually (even if not equally) beneficial transactions.
That’s why a steel industry in Alabama would be such a horrible thing for the people there. All those miners would keep getting poorer and poorer, the more they worked for the company and all the mining company would do is suck all the money out to an office in NYC. Nothing would be left for the benefit of the people in Alabama. The steel industry would create poverty by all the money being sucked out by remote investors. They would be much better off growing their own food in small gardens and making all their own tools from sticks and rocks.
What if the federal government built a military base and pumped defense spending into the local economy? That would explain much of the difference between Enterprise, AL and Union Springs, AL which both have poultry processing plants.
It certainly matters a great deal if a country is like, say, a “banana republic” as Guatemala and Honduras were through much of the early 20th century and suffer from absentee ownership and extractive industries – their “comparative advantage” was in banana plantations – where the profits flow upwards and out of the country to a small class of foreign investors.
Alternatively, you will find in Western Europe that workers are paid much higher wages and the disparity between CEO pay and worker wages is nowhere near what it is today in the US.
Hunter,
“It certainly matters a great deal if a country is like, say, a “banana republic” as Guatemala and Honduras were through much of the early 20th century and suffer from absentee ownership and extractive industries – their “comparative advantage” was in banana plantations – where the profits flow upwards and out of the country to a small class of foreign investors.”
The banana/pineapple industry worked wonders for Honduras. It brought them out of the fourth world (jungle tribes) and into the third world. It is still working for them today. They aren’t exactly rich, but the bananas help a lot. I actually spent a summer in Honduras when I was in college. I spent most of my time on the North Coast in La Ceiba and took the bus cross country to Copan. The fruit and palm oil industry was mostly in the North (Atlantic coast) and the Mayan ruins were in Copan. I can tell you hands down that the “Banana Republic” North Coast was way more developed than the Jungle territory of Copan where the indigenous people were still planting heirloom corn by hand. The only thing in that part of the country was the Mayan ruins that brought in tourists. The rest was jungle and jungle people.
La Ceiba, on the North Coast on the other hand, while being much poorer than the US, did have paved roads, sidewalks, a partially functioning public sewage system, a big bank downtown (with lots of armed guards) modern taxis (Copan had 3 wheel carts for taxis on cobble type roads), some shabby stores, a dairy, a pizza hut, a Church’s chicken, a bicycle repair shop, lots of hole in the wall bars, a discoteca, at least one brewery, several Internet cafes, and of course lots of cheap fruit. Some American and Canadian retirees were living down there because it was so cheap compared to the US, and I suppose they liked the climate.
Comparing the “Banana Republic” side of Honduras to the “no Banana Republic” side was a clear winner for free trade banana industry. No question about it.
Of course they don’t get to keep all the money, because shippers and foreign investors get their chunk too. So what.
FYI, average per capita income in Honduras rose from $1,165 in 1960 to an impressive $1,495 in 2014 almost fifty years later. It has the highest murder rate in the world and over half the population lives in poverty.
Honduras reminds me of Alabama in the way that it has stubbornly held on to the title of fourth poorest country in Latin America. Here in the South, there is always Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/honduras/gdp-per-capita
“Average Gross Domestic Product per capita in Honduras was last recorded at 1495.06 US dollars in 2014. The GDP per Capita in Honduras is equivalent to 12 percent of the world’s average. GDP per capita in Honduras averaged 1165.49 USD from 1960 until 2014, reaching an all time high of 1557.99 USD in 2008 and a record low of 801.77 USD in 1961. GDP per capita in Honduras is reported by the World Bank.”
Hunter,
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/honduras/gdp-per-capita
You are pointing out that the GDP is lower than in the US. I am pointing out that the “banana republic” side of Honduras was much richer than the “no bananas” side of Honduras. Standard Fruit Company brought lots of wealth into the North Coast region. It elevated the area far above its neighbor. It is not the fault of the banana or pineapple industries that mestizo Hondurans have lower IQs and shorter time preferences than Anglo Americans. It is up to the people who work in low skill jobs whether they spend their money on booze and prostitutes or some long term investment like a small business or a house. And believe me, if you have a house in Honduras, it better have a fence or a wall around it!
Jeff,
In fifty years, average per capita income in Honduras has barely budged, and it is stuck at the bottom of Latin American countries with the likes of Haiti. Again, this is exactly what is objectionable about extractive industries which enrich a tiny elite and leave the bulk of the population writhing in poverty. We have the same problem in the South in overwhelmingly White areas like the Ozarks, Appalachia, and the Alabama Hill Country.
It seems you have taken to attacking a straw man argument here. I’m just pointing out the obvious difference between the poultry processing industry in the poorest parts of the South and other parts of the United States or foreign countries where per capita income is much higher due to rejecting this model.
Who wants the South to be more like Mexico, Guatemala or Bangladesh? Not me. For the obvious reason that it lowers the average standard of living here and leads to greater disparities in wealth.
Hunter,
“I’m just pointing out the obvious difference between the poultry processing industry in the poorest parts of the South and other parts of the United States or foreign countries where per capita income is much higher due to rejecting this model”
No. The per capita income might have been higher, but that doesn’t mean that processing plants, or coal mines necessarily make a region poorer, unless you count the third world immigration. Minus the immigration, these industries create wealth, some of which stays local, some of which goes away to far off investors. The investor is only taking part of the new wealth, not all of it.
Jeff,
If you look at the Mississippi Delta which is the poorest part of the United States, you will find an extractive economy based on agriculture. Sure, the Delta’s cotton crop produces great wealth for a few rich landowners who live in cities like Jackson and Memphis, but drive through the region and you will be left with the unmistakable impression that the whole region has sunk to the status of a Third World country.
Come over to the Alabama Black Belt and the Hill Country which are the two poorest regions in Alabama. You will find the Alabama Black Belt is sparsely populated and heavily forested. Once again, a few rich landowners dominate the forestry industry, which is an extractive agricultural industry that produces some low-wage jobs and which enables a few rich people to live off their inherited assets. The same landowners also lease the hunting rights of their timber plantations to out-of-state hunters.
In the Alabama Hill Country and Arkansas Ozarks you will find the poultry processing plants, which is yet another low-wage extractive agricultural industry. Poultry processing is far more of a magnet for illegal aliens than cotton, forestry or mining. Again, the costs of the industry are absorbed by local communities while a few low-wage jobs are produced and the profits flow to the owners and investors.
In Central Appalachia (eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, parts of East Tennessee and southwest Virginia), the Northern-owned coal mining industry was also an extractive industry owned by absentee capitalists. The profits of all that coal mining in non-unionized fields made Northern owners and investors in Pittsburgh, Ohio, and the Northeast very rich. That’s why the rest of Appalachia is far wealthier than Central Appalachia.
Of course all these extractive industries – coal mining, poultry processing, forestry, cotton, peanuts, etc. – produce wealth. Yet that wealth seems to translate into low-wage jobs for workers and great wealth for owners and investors. In Guatemala and Honduras, banana plantations enriched foreign capitalists while leaving workers mired in poverty.
Is that a wise development strategy? It has left most of the people who live in these regions with an average per capita income on par with Mexico. 90 percent of other Americans are wealthier and more successful. What are they doing that generates relatively higher living standards?
Hunter,
You seem stuck on this “extractive industry” business. Even if these industries are run by far away investors that take their cut, only a portion of the profits leave the region. Do you actually understand that? Wealth was created from scratch, then some of it the local southerners get to keep, while some of it goes to who knows where. It doesn’t matter if some of it left. It only matters that before you had none, and then afterward you have some. That is good business.
Do you believe that American oil companies operating in the Middle East are making the Middle East richer or poorer? I guess by your logic they are getting poorer with each barrel of oil they sell because American oil companies are sucking them dry. Draining every bit of the money right out of the Middle East.
Jeff,
No one is disputing that.
I’m just pointing out the differences between industries. Some industries like poultry processing produce low-wage jobs and concentrate wealth in a small number of hands. At the same time, other industries pay higher wages, generate more tax revenue, and distribute profits more equitably.
Southerners are free to decide if they want to model their economy on the Mississppi Delta or something else.
I don’t think there is any comparison between oil and poultry processing. The price of oil is set on the international market and generates far more wealth than chicken broilers.
Jeff,
It was thought at the time that trade is always a win-win and the Japanese consumer would help sustain American economic growth. A prosperous Japan would also be resistant to communism.
The Japanese are here to sell their automobiles in the largest, most profitable market in the world. We forced them to build their plants here in 1981 with a VRA.
Hunter,
Ok, we’re getting somewhere.
–We agree that poultry processing creates wealth from scratch, and while some of it leaves the area some of it also stays, meaning that it increase the wealth of the area rather than making it poorer.
–We both agree that the problem associated with poultry processing is the undesirable immigration.
–Now I think we also agreed that the problem of immigration is best fixed by attacking immigration head on and accepting that some, but not all of the plants will close rather than closing all the plants in hopes that some of the immigrants will leave.
“I’m just pointing out the differences between industries. Some industries like poultry processing produce low-wage jobs and concentrate wealth in a small number of hands. At the same time, other industries pay higher wages, generate more tax revenue, and the profits are more equitably dispersed.”
I am arguing that in an independent South any industry is a good industry, except maybe we don’t want to major in a prostitution, gambling, or human trafficking industry. I’d say with very little exception, take every industry we can get, perhaps using tariffs to make sure we are going strong in our “core necessities” like energy, agriculture/food, forestry, mining, chemicals&pharma for national security purposes. The market manipulation would be the price we pay for increased national security–at the expense of reduced overall wealth.
Luckily since we are naturally strong in agriculture, and getting stronger in energy due to fracking, half the battle is won for us. With a great potential for Alabama steel and NC Triangle area pharma, and chemical plants going into Louisiana to use some of that gas, we are sitting pretty strong in those areas also.
If for no other reason than for the energy wealth alone, I’d sure try to get Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, Southern Ohio to join us. Getting a little bit of the breadbasket states would help a lot too because a lot of our animal agriculture needs their grain, and of course we humans eat grains too.
Jeff,
Returning to the example of Honduras, even the poorest countries have some wealth generating industries. These are usually extractive industries which enrich a small elite while failing to raise the living standards for the bulk of the population. That’s the nature of those industries and the relative poverty of these places reflects that.
Immigration is the effect, not the cause. The magnet is the poultry processing industry itself.
Because I don’t admire the Third World development model, I would be happy to see them go.
I’m arguing that an independent South should emulate East Asia or Western Europe, not Third World countries like Honduras. I want to raise living standards for the bulk of our population, not enrich tiny elites with extractive industries. Again, I see what that model has done to the Alabama Black Belt and can’t fathom why anyone would think it should be the way forward.
As California illustrates, we don’t have to choose between agriculture and advanced manufacturing.
The oil industry generates plenty of high paying jobs. So does mining. I wouldn’t compare either to poultry processing. I think it is great that Missouri grows so much corn, but agriculture there is hardly laissez faire.
I can’t think of any place in the United States, or elsewhere, where there are not low-wage and high-wage jobs. However, there are regions, cities, entire countries where the mix of industries vastly differ and where the state, local, or national government has different economic policies.
Why doesn’t anyone look at the Mississippi Delta or the Ozarks or Central Appalachia or the Alabama Black Belt and see these places as a model for economic development? It is because no one is trying to achieve a low-wage economy where so many people are mired in poverty thanks to industries like poultry processing.
Hunter,
“I’m just pointing out the obvious difference between the poultry processing industry in the poorest parts of the South and other parts of the United States or foreign countries where per capita income is much higher due to rejecting this model”
Poultry processing did not make them poor. It is better than sharecropping which you have already argued against. Sharecropping keeps a much higher percentage of the profits local because the owner of the land was traditionally a local person who lived in town. No big city investors from NY. According to the model you preach, you should prefer sharecropping because it uses local capital, and doesn’t send money out to some far off place to get equipment or supplies, unless the farmer buys a tractor. Better stick with local bred mules to keep it all local.
Jeff,
I’m delighted that “big government” during the New Deal cut the checks that allowed farmers to purchase the machinery – tractors and mechanical cotton pickers – that ended sharecropping in Alabama and drove millions of blacks out of the Deep South.
Shouldn’t you be a fan of sharecropping? Why isn’t sharecropping a triumph for agrarianism? It had over 50 percent of White farmers in Alabama working on someone else’s land. Most people worked in agriculture. Before the New Deal, the government wasn’t subsidizing agriculture or telling Alabama planters how much cotton they could grow. There were no annoying minimum wage laws, labor laws, or environmental laws.
It was a free-market paradise.
Hunter,
“I’m delighted that “big government” during the New Deal cut the checks that allowed farmers to purchase the machinery – tractors and mechanical cotton pickers – that ended sharecropping in Alabama and drove millions of blacks out of the Deep South.”
I just checked, and “The New Deal was a series of domestic programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1938, and a few that came later.”
and the Great migration started in 1910. According to the graph it even looks like the New Deal might have slowed it down for a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American)
“Shouldn’t you be a fan of sharecropping? Why isn’t sharecropping a triumph for agrarianism? It had over 50 percent of White farmers in Alabama working on someone else’s land. Before the New Deal, the government wasn’t subsidizing agriculture or telling Alabama planters how much cotton they could grow. There were no annoying minimum wage laws, labor laws, or environmental laws.
It was a free-market paradise.”
Sharecropping used the technology of that era. Now we have today’s technology. What we look on as sharecropping is not some big triumph or loss as far as I am concerned. It was just a phase in the evolution of an industrial sector, just like there were phases in the evolution of the textile industry or in the auto industry or any other. Of course agriculture has come a long way since the 1930’s. So has the automobile, commercial aviation, our understanding of genetics, biotech, etc. Of course our standards of living are higher now. This comes in spite of the “tax and spend” strategy, not because of it.
What we call sharecropping is no different from the days of dial up internet. The technology changed so that one farmer can produce a hell of a lot more food than he could back then, so we don’t need as many farmers to produce the same (or twice as much) food. That frees some would be farmers to work in assembly lines making cars and car parts, or maybe some of the brighter ones will work on chemical engineering , biotech, mechanical engineering, or whatever, which in turn will help agriculture to become even more efficient.
It is a free market paradise!
Jeff,
The trickle of blacks heading north started decades before the New Deal. Lots of blacks and Whites left the South to work in the North’s wartime manufacturing industries during World War I and the Roaring Twenties. The great flood of them north, however, was caused by the demise of sharecropping after the late 1930s.
Actually, it didn’t.
Southerners were too poor to afford the technology of their era. They lacked access to credit. That’s why the South had the retarded, backward sharecropping system for generations whereas Midwestern states like Iowa and Nebraska had tractors and all the latest farm technology. They didn’t have sharecropping. Fortunately, the federal government intervened and put an end to it along with diseases like malaria which stiffled urbanization.
No, it was very different.
See, we were engaged in sharecropping because we were poor, lacked access to credit, and couldn’t afford the technology to mechanize. The magic of the free-market had left the vast majority of our population destitute, suffering from diseases like pellagra and hookworms (shoes were a luxury item), and without access to electricity. This was not the case elsewhere which is why all the “Tobacco Road” stereotypes about the South came from that era.
I’ve already explained how Birmingham is one of the most fortuitous places on earth to have a steel industry because of its unusual geological circumstances, but because of the magic of the free-market the Alabama steel industry was strangled when it fell into the hands of Northern investors during the Panic of 1907 and finally destroyed by free-trade in the late 20th century.
The US federal government financed the creation of Japan’s post-war steel industry through the Marshall Plan. Japan, which has utterly no reason to have a steel industry, is now one of world’s leading producers of steel, and the same is now true of South Korea. Both have automobile industries now and manufacture cars here now by virtue of defying the free-market and rejecting laissez faire.
Hunter,
“I’ve already explained how Birmingham is one of the most fortuitous places on earth to have a steel industry because of its unusual geological circumstances, but because of the magic of the free-market the Alabama steel industry was strangled when it fell into the hands of Northern investors during the Panic of 1907 and finally destroyed by free-trade in the late 20th century.
The US federal government financed the creation of Japan’s post-war steel industry through the Marshall Plan. Japan, which has utterly no reason to have a steel industry, is now one of world’s leading producers of steel, and the same is now true of South Korea. Both have automobile industries now and manufacture cars here now by virtue of defying the free-market and rejecting laissez faire.”
Free market includes more factors than just local mineral deposits. It includes the political climate, access to ports, railroads, human capital, and probably a lot of other things I can’t think of now. Based on what you say, Alabama probably has an advantage in steel production, but that doesn’t mean it has ALL the advantages. Perhaps Japan is less regulated than Alabama, or doesn’t have to deal with a negro problem, or maybe Japan just wanted steel bad enough to subsidize it (kinda crazy not to when US is paying for it) where Alabama didn’t. That doesn’t mean it will necessarily be economically feasible to subsidize steel in Alabama. If the right mineral deposits are in Alabama, then they will probably get extracted and exploited at some point.
I think it’s pretty important to point out again that Japan was using US money to subsidize their steel industry. That was foolishness on the part of the US. I wonder if they would have been willing to subsidize it with their own money?
Here’s an idea. Once we are independent, you can talk to Japan to get them to subsidize Alabama steel production.
That’s true.
Alabama’s disadvantage was being of the United States. J.P. Morgan bought TCI during the Panic of 1907 which was made into a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. The absentee owners of Alabama’s steel industry in Pittsburgh didn’t want a competitor in Birmingham and crippled Birmingham’s steel industry with the “Pittsburgh Plus” pricing scheme.
Thanks to the magic of the free-market, Alabama couldn’t have prevented this from happening. Unlike Japan, Alabama was fully open for business to outside investors, which was a greater liability than South Korea’s lack of iron deposits. It never had any ability to impose tariffs on Pittsburgh steel and expand out of its home market. It never had any ability to set trade policy either. As a result, Birmingham became a stillborn industrial city.
Now that you mention it, there are foreign steel companies in Alabama. ArcelorMittal has a steel plant in Calvert, AL.
http://m.nwitimes.com/business/local/arcelormittal-completes-purchase-of-alabama-plant/article_4c6a5fcf-5d47-5d4c-b103-c513ad01b400.html?mobile_touch=true
Arcelor started out as a French state-owned enterprise:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usinor
Hunter,
“Alabama’s disadvantage was being of the United States. J.P. Morgan bought TCI which was made into a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. The absentee owners of Alabama’s steel industry in Pittsburgh didn’t want a competitor in Birmingham and crippled Birmingham’s steel industry with the “Pittsburgh Plus” pricing scheme.
Thanks to the magic of the free-market, Alabama couldn’t have prevented this from happening. Unlike Japan, Alabama was fully open for business to outside investors. It never had any ability to impose tariffs on Pittsburgh steel and expand out of its home market. It never had any ability to set trade policy either. Birmingham never lived up to its potential as a stillborn industrial city.”
This isn’t exactly an example of free trade. I just looked up the Pittsburgh Plus and it’s a wonder they got away with it. Imposing a higher cost for freight from Alabama as if it were from Pittsburgh is like paying a subsidy to get foreign goods in the market. That’s not free trade at all. It’s a cartel that penalizes its competitor in its own country by bribing (or manipulating somehow) the railroad. The taxi industry is trying to do this to uber right now, and the hotel industry is trying to do it to airbnb. Alabama leaders should have written to yankee investors that hated Carnegie and had them to either put opposite pressure on the railroad or to finance some new competing rail in Alabama.
It doesn’t look like the Alabama steel industry is stillborn, but overdue to be born. I am glad to report that there is a strong future for the steel industry in Alabama.
Jeff,
Because of the free-market, Alabama’s steel industry feel under the control of absentee owners and investors. They crippled the growth of the industry by turning TCI into a subsidiary of US Steel. The Japanese were much wiser and avoided making the same mistake.
Thanks to the magic of the free-market and free-trade, foreigners now produce steel in Alabama. The world’s largest steel company started out as a French state-owned enterprise.
No, we really shouldn’t.
If Union Springs, AL didn’t have a poultry processing plant, it would still be poor, but at least it wouldn’t be burdened with illegal aliens and local workers would have more bargaining power.
Hunter,
“If Union Springs, AL didn’t have a poultry processing plant, it would still be poor, but at least it wouldn’t be burdened with illegal aliens and local workers would have more bargaining power.”
Again, the answer is to get rid of the immigrants, not to get rid of the industry! Your argument essentially says, “We shouldn’t have an abundance of jobs because jobs attract immigrants and immigrants take our jobs.”
I checked and Bullock County, AL is ranked 2,662 out of 3,143 counties in average per capita income. That places Bullock County in the ninth tier of US counties. It is one of the poorest places in the United States.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_counties_by_per_capita_income
Hunter,
“I checked and Bullock County, AL is ranked 2,662 out of 3,143 counties in average per capita income. That places Bullock County in the ninth tier of US counties. It is one of the poorest places in the United States.”
Yes, Hunter, you are right, those processing plants are sucking money right out of our pockets. My brother keeps working there year after year because it is making him poorer. He’s bought a small piece of land, several cars over the years, a doublewide, added on a nice porch, brick underpinning, has never been without cable/satellite, cell phone, raised a son, wife has been a housewife most of the time, and they go on multiple vacations per year to places like Disneyland, and NYC, etc. He was making so much more money without a job. I don’t know what his problem is, but they just keep taking money from his bank account every week, and he just keeps going back to work. Go figure.
If he had been a hunter gatherer or gone self sufficient in his backyard by growing everything he consumes, then he would have been so much better off. I’m sure he could have had a much bigger, fancier house if he had not chosen to work at one of those poverty inducing processing plant jobs. It’s worse than a drug problem.
Hunter,
“If Union Springs, AL didn’t have a poultry processing plant, it would still be poor, but at least it wouldn’t be burdened with illegal aliens and local workers would have more bargaining power.”
I’m glad you are no longer arguing that the industry made people poor. To the contrary it has made many whites richer, even if not as much as you would like. The problem is that immigrants want to come and get a piece of that wealth and that we are doing nothing to stop it. The solution that you seem to be proposing is that we get rid of undesirable immigration by keeping these small towns nice and pooor with no jobs available to attract immigrants.
Let’s do a thought experiment:
You are having a League picnic in a park with a smorgasbord of delicacies, but the neighborhood dogs smell the food and crows around the food, some of them even snatching the food off the tables.
Do you suggest that the problem be resolved by not having any more food at your picnics or do you resolve the problem by getting rid of the dogs?
If you think it will help, you might call for animal control to come and “deport” the dogs, or you might advocate for leash laws, or “border fences” or to somehow reduce their fertility, but I seriously doubt you will advocate for a local ban on food. If you think you can get away with it, and all your other options have failed, you might try shooting the dogs.
It certainly doesn’t look that way to anyone driving through the area or analyzing statistics. Instead, it looks like what you would expect to find in a Third World country. What chicken processing plants are you referring to in your area?
There’s a reason why the immigrants are there: the poultry processing industry pays low-wages and it requires a pliable workforce. The working conditions are terrible and most Americans have better options even it means the welfare state or selling drugs. That’s why illegal aliens and refugees work there.
If the illegals and immigrants were all deported, that would raise labor costs and the magic of the free-market and free-trade would assuredly move the while industry to Mexico. The only reason it is here is that there are parts of America like the South Carolina Lowcountry or the Ozarks which are effectively as poor as Mexico.
Hunter,
“There’s a reason why the immigrants are there: the poultry processing industry pays low-wages and it requires a pliable workforce. The working conditions are terrible and most Americans have better options even it means the welfare state or selling drugs. That’s why illegal aliens and refugees work there.”
If welfare is a better option, then we offer too much welfare.
“If the illegals and immigrants were all deported, that would raise labor costs and the magic of the free-market and free-trade would assuredly move the while industry to Mexico.”
Correction: The magic of the free trade market would move *part* of that industry to Mexico at most. If they were deported, it would raise the wages for processing plant work and improve conditions so that a lot more whites would be willing to work there. The shipping of live and fresh slaughtered chickens is a little more problematic than the shipping of cloth, and clothing, so it probably wouldn’t be quite so bad in the case of processing plants as textiles, but yes, the cost of chicken would go up a small amount and a small number of least competitive plants would close. I think it would be well worth it if we can get rid of the immivasion in the process, but the best method is to take on the immivasion head on, rather than close processing plants in hopes that they will leave.
“The only reason it is here is that there are parts of America like the South Carolina Lowcountry or the Ozarks which are effectively as poor as Mexico.”
I am honestly glad to hear you acknowledge that they were already poor (by American standards) and fully acknowledge that they are not poor today because the big company came and stole all their wealth. I guess the argument is getting somewhere after all.
That’s one point of view.
The low-wages, terrible working conditions, and pliable workforce are a feature of the industry. That’s what attracts the most desperate, easily exploited workers like a magnet who tend to be illegal aliens. As you have noticed, sometimes they are refugees.
Two years ago, the League of the South had a protest in Shelbyville, TN. Jack Ryan even paid for a billboard that went up on the interstate outside Murfreesboro attacking the CEO of Tyson Foods. In Shelbyville, Tyson was prosecuted by the feds for recruiting illegal aliens in Mexico and smuggling them into Tennessee.
The poultry processing plant in Shelbyville was and remains the worst of both worlds. It attracts both illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America and large numbers of Somalian refugees who have brought Islam into the area. The costs of healthcare, schools, law enforcement, infrastructure and so on for illegal aliens and refugees all fall on Bedford County taxpayers.
Even if the refugee program was ended and illegals were deported (this would have to be done against the ferocious lobbying of the poultry processing industry which supports open borders), the nature of the industry would become a magnet for criminals who have a hard time finding employment elsewhere and fail to qualify for welfare state programs.
Hunter,
“The low-wages, terrible working conditions, and pliable workforce are a feature of the industry. That’s what attracts the most desperate, easily exploited workers like a magnet who tend to be illegal aliens. As you have noticed, sometimes they are refugees.”
No, you have cause and effect switched. They are generally low wage jobs because hordes of immigrants are competing for them. Get rid of the immigrants and the going rate wages for whites in that industry will go up, but some of those plants would have to shut down, and chicken would get more expensive in the grocery store, but it wouldn’t double in price or anything like that.
Same with fresh produce picked by Mexicans. If they all got sent home, the going rate for picking produce would go up. Some produce farming would get outsourced to Mexico, but not all of it, and produce would be slightly higher in the grocery store, but only slightly higher. It would be a small price to pay for having our country back, I’m not arguing with you there!
“The poultry processing plant in Shelbyville was and remains the worst of both worlds. It attracts both illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America and large numbers of Somalian refugees who have brought Islam into the area. The costs of healthcare, schools, law enforcement, infrastructure and so on for illegal aliens and refugees all fall on Bedford County taxpayers.”
The same thing is going on where my brother works. The solution is to attack immigration/refugeeism head on, not to close the plants in hopes that they will go home. Send the invaders home first, and some, but not all the plants will close. The ones that stay open will offer higher wages to unskilled whites who due to their limitations probably can’t do much better than cut up chickens anyway. Sorry, but we all know that not all whites are intelligent.
Hunter,
Oops, I forgot to include this snippet in my last post:
“Even if the refugee program was ended and illegals were deported (this would have to be done against the ferocious lobbying of the poultry processing industry), the nature of the industry would become a magnet for criminals who have a hard time finding employment elsewhere and fail to qualify for welfare state programs.”
Yeah, the poultry (processing) industry would lobby against it, no doubt. They like the cheap labor and they like gov subsidies for giving jobs to savages. That’s true.
Also, it would attract low skill workers, many of whom will be on and off drugs, drunk, in and out of jail, etc. But they are already here anyway. I would like to think that all whites are fine men and fine women, but we both know there’s a left tail on the IQ curve whether we like it or not. Those people are already among us and should we count all our cousins, we’re probably related to some like this. But this argument that processing plants attract them is only a “not in my back yard” argument, not a “not in our country” argument.
Believe me, my brother isn’t any happier about immigration (or our homegrown negroes)than I am. He’s always had plenty of stories about the lowlifes that he works with at the plant. According to his synopsis, Haitians are the dumbest, most obnoxious, filthiest savages out there and the Chinese (probably not the Han Chinese, but somewhere in China) are the worst drivers in the parking lot. One of them tried to get him to sire a baby for her. I suspect she wanted an anchor/welfare baby. None of the white men were willing to do it. I told him he should have referred her to the Haitian men–I’m sure they would have done the job for her.
The thing is that he had similar stories, though not quite as bad, when he worked at textile mills before they went abroad. Back then the culprits were usually black, but occasionally a white dopehead. Those were the good ol’ days I guess.
Jeff,
All the more reason we should be happy to see them go.
I’m skeptical of reaching for genetic causes. Family breakdown, for example, is a recent phenomenon.
I’m sure your brother would recognize my portrait of the poultry processing industry. The presence of Haitians at this plant is predicted by my theory of how they draw immigrants and refugees like a magnet. If your brother is like anyone else I know, he probably wishes there were more and better employment opportunities in his area that don’t attract immigrants.
Hunter,
You quoted me here:
“Yeah, the poultry (processing) industry would lobby against it, no doubt. They like the cheap labor and they like gov subsidies for giving jobs to savages. That’s true.”
You said:
“All the more reason we should be happy to see them go.”
My response:
No, I would be sad to see them go. It’s the immigrants I want to see go. I want to keep the industry. I accept that, unless there is some breakthrough in technology to make the plants run more efficiently, then if all the immigrants were to go tomorrow, then a fraction of the plants would close and the cost of chicken would go up a small amount in the grocery store. I would not be glad the plants closed, but I would accept that as a small price to pay for getting rid of immigrants.
You said:
“I’m sure your brother would recognize my portrait of the poultry processing industry. The presence of Haitians at this plant is predicted by my theory of how they draw immigrants and refugees like a magnet.”
Yes, they attract immigrants, just like having a nice home, nice cars, nice things in your home attracts thieves. Do you get rid of your possessions or do you get rid of the thieves? The point is that *any* low skill job is going to attract undesirable immigrants. I promise they are not going to the processing plants because they have a fetish for chicken.
You said:
“If your brother is like anyone else I know, he probably wishes there were more and better employment opportunities in his area that don’t attract immigrants.”
Having a processing plant in a town does not keep other industries out, except tourism maybe. Having a processing plant in our locale gives us other things, like a new Pizza Hut, and several other restaurants that we probably would not have without a poultry growing/processing industry.
I honestly don’t have a clue how much my brother makes. He started at entry level in a textile mill (making yarn) in the 70’s and somewhere along the way started maintaining their machines, which I’m sure earns more money and requires a few more brain cells than what most of the garden variety negroes did. He moved from there to another textile plant (making cloth) when the first one closed down to go overseas. At the new plant he started out as a mechanic because of his previous experience. When that plant closed down to go overseas, he went to a poultry processing plant, starting as a mechanic. I doubt this job will go overseas because of the expense in transporting live animals as opposed to cloth or yarn. Also it would be expensive to import the fresh meat back into the country like we do with textiles, though I think we do export frozen chicken to Russia. I doubt there are many immigrants that do the job he does just because he’s moved up the ladder a bit, but he still has to work around them. He says that when the Haitians came in they had to move the bathroom sinks to out into the open so that everyone can see whether you wash your hands or not, since they started having more salmonella trouble.
It’s not the industry that’s the problem, it’s the immigrants. Without the immigration, these low end jobs would be good jobs for dropouts, potheads, or whoever wanted them. It could even be done by prison labor for even cheaper than the immigrants are doing it. Some people will say they wouldn’t want prisoners working in the food supply, but I doubt it would be any worse than we have now. I think the meat gets dipped in Clorox water, or maybe irradiated before it goes out the door.
Jeff,
I’ve never had a problem with burglary.
As for chicken processing plants, I have never seen one that wasn’t a magnet for illegal aliens and refugees, which didn’t pay low-wages in low-income areas, which didn’t have negative spillover effects for the community (courts, environment, schools, healthcare, etc.), and which didn’t overwhelmingly pocket whatever wealth it created in the hands of its owners and investors.
I feel the same way about chicken plants that I do about the ubiquitous title pawn stores, payday lending stores, and dollar stores that surround them. It’s a strong indicator of a low-income, low-wage economy which make a few people are rich while leaving most people mired in Third World level poverty.
If you believe that chicken plants, low-wages, and the free-market are a path to prosperity and economic development, all I can say is good luck with that. Everything I have seen from them in the Alabama Black Belt has left me convinced that if we want to improve the lot of the bulk of our population by creating middle class jobs we should look elsewhere.
Even if every single refugee and illegal alien were deported, it wouldn’t change the nature of the industry. The presence of so many immigrants reflects the low-wages, terrible working conditions, and pliable workforce the industry relies on. It is an effect, not a cause, so we would be left with the same problem regardless of what happens to immigrants. Fundamentally, it is an extractive industry that leaves most people in poverty.
Union Springs, AL has several Mexican restaurants, a McDonald’s, and a Subway. It is also relatively poorer than over 90 percent of other cities in the United States. I’m forming a mental picture here of a chicken processing plant that generates nothing but low-wage jobs, a few rich people who work for the plant, a handful of low-wage service jobs at restaurants like Pizza Hut, and highly likely, a public school system overrun by the children of immigrants.
Ah, it sounds like he is already familiar with the magic of free-trade and the race to the bottom nature of the free-market economy. I had a guy call me two days ago and tell him how his father was fired at a textile plant in Geneva, AL which was closed down and shipped to Guatemala. A great move for investors and consumers!
Such is the greatness of the low-wage, low-tax, free-market, free-trade economy. People like your brother move from one such extractive industry to another as they close up shop, fire their workers, and move overseas to take advantage of even cheaper labor.
It sounds to me like the economy of Honduras where average per capita income has barely budged in 50 years. I can imagine that lots of White people in your area are either trapped or sinking into poverty or move from one low-wage industry to another. I would bet money that CE0 pay has gone in the opposite direction.
This has less to do with your brother and HBD than the glorious triumph of free-trade which assuredly took those textile jobs to some place like Haiti and the free-market which insourced all those Haitian and Hispanic immigrants to your community to compete with local workers.
Hunter,
“As for chicken processing plants, I have never seen one that wasn’t a magnet for illegal aliens and refugees, which didn’t pay low-wages in low-income areas, which didn’t have negative spillover effects for the community (courts, environment, schools, healthcare, etc.),”
I thought this was settled. Anything nice that we have as a new nation is going to attract immigrants. It doesn’t matter if it’s processing plant jobs, or whatever. If we have good paying, low skill jobs, then that is going to attract immigrants. The key is to simply not let them in. Just like the gold at Fort Knox would have all been taken away by now had it not been guarded. By your logic the answer would be to get rid of all that evil gold because it attracts thieves.
“and which didn’t overwhelmingly pocket whatever wealth it created in the hands of its owners and investors.”
Hunter, how is it that the investors take all the money away, yet each person that works at the plant gets a paycheck. Please explain why so many people are willing to work year in and year out for zero pay.
“I feel the same way about chicken plants that I do about the ubiquitous title pawn stores, payday lending stores, and dollar stores that surround them. It’s a strong indicator of a low-income, low-wage economy which make a few people are rich while leaving most people mired in Third World level poverty.”
Yes, title pawns and payday lenders are indicators of poverty. But they are only there because there is a critical mass of people willing to use them. These businesses would have a hard time surviving in an Amish community. I do agree that predatory lending is a wealth extractor, but I doubt trying to regulate them out will help that much. Getting rid of the blacks/Hispanics in the area would probably reduce the density of these businesses. These businesses are fundamentally different from processing plants, but yes, you see them both in poor areas. Nobody is going to build a processing plant in Greenwich CT or Beverly Hills. THey are going to build processing plants where the land and labor are cheap and the poultry farms are closeby.
“If you believe that chicken plants, low-wages, and the free-market, are a path to prosperity and toeconomic development, all I can say is good luck with that. Everything I have seen from them in Alabama has left me convinced that if we want to improve the lot of the bulk of our population we should look elsewhere.”
We need to keep the free-trade, but improve our human capital.
–First get rid of the blacks and browns, either deportation or bribed sterilizations.
–Second, encourage eugenic fertility among whites (maybe combine w step 1)
–Encourage highly selective immigration of high IQ whites, probably screening for other factors also. Try not to let in too many low IQ whites.
Again, saying that if we stopped and reversed immigration, processing plants would still attract a lot of low IQ/high crime whites to an area is only a “not in my back yard” argument, not a “not in my country” argument. The fact is not every white person is intelligent enough to do skilled labor, or has a long term enough time horizon to pursue an education, or is going to stay off drugs long enough to keep any job for very long. Most of our best and brightest are not going to work in processing plants (a few will, but not many). That’s ok. We’ll have other industries for them to work in.
Also, one solution is to put prisoners to work in processing plants. That would keep the production domestic, and make chicken cheaper at the same time. It wouldn’t hurt the communities too much either bc the prisoners would be locked away rather than roaming the streets.
This begs the obvious question: why hasn’t the poultry processing industry already left for Mexico?
The answer is that within the American South there are huge pockets of poverty – the Ozarks, Appalachia, Mississippi Delta, the Alabama Black Belt and Hill Country, the South Carolina Low Country – where average per capita income is on par with Mexico. There is no reason why illegal aliens and refugees cannot be employed here for the same low-wages, but without the transportation costs.
Deporting their pliable workforce would raise labor costs and change the cost-benefit equation. It might be cheaper to employ Mexicans in Mexico rather than Alabama and just ship the product here.
Just as I thought, it is the shipping costs that keeps poultry processing in the Deep South. You’re probably right that it a lot more expensive to ship overseas than textiles.
These places are poor because of the nature of their economies – typically the sort of low-wage extractive industries encouraged by their elites – while other places are wealthier mainly because of a different mix of industries and government policies.
Hunter,
“These places are poor because of the nature of their economies – typically the sort of low-wage extractive industries encouraged by their elites – while other places are wealthier mainly because of a different mix of industries and government policies.”
I still think you need to take some serious time to rethink how it works. If it helps, you might use a bunch of pennies open on a table to help envision it.
I’ll try to put an example here:
Ok, chickens, coal, oil, whatever products all sell for money, so I can use dollar bills for my model in place of the actual commodity in question.
Suppose you are a ceo that specializes in dollar bill mining. You spend most of your time in your main office in London, UK. You become aware of a rural, poor region in Appalachia that happens to be very rich in dollar bill deposits that nobody is taking advantage of. The locals may not even be aware that they are sitting on top of trillions of dollar bills!
You do financial calculations out the wazoo and you determine that these dollars are cost effective to extract and ship to New York, where they can be exchanged for British Pounds. You begin work on the shipping contractors and the excavating machinery that will need to be brought in for a manufacturing plant in Canada, but as soon as the treehuggers find out about your plan they begin lobbying against it. They claim it will pollute the water, the air, kill birds, fish and the trees will never grow back. You spend millions fighting back against them and finally the EPA gives you the go ahead to mine. The greenies are chained up in protest around the prospective mine site that you bought mineral rights for, but they eventually get tired and go home and you start mining.
Now the local people there are largely poor and uneducated, so they jump at the low paying mining and truck loading jobs. It’s way more money than their parents made. Some of the local women work as secretaries and cleaning ladies at the local office. Of course these jobs don’t pay that much but they pay better than trying to grow everything in your backyard, or wandering in the woods looking for squirrels, nuts and berried to eat.
Now the mining has been going on for a few years, and some of the dollars go to the local miners and truckloaders, some of them had to go to the lawyers to fight the greenies (good thing you won, or you would have lost a lot in litigation without getting to make it back), and some of these dollars go to NYC where the exchangers get a small fee. They are then loaded on barges so the people in the barge business get a cut too. You’re business is successful. You make hundreds of millions of dollars for your company, the barge operators made some dollars (GBP), the lawyers got more dollars than they should thanks to the greenies, the exchangers, truckers, truckloaders, miners, secretaries and cleaning ladies all got some dollars.
Now not everybody got the same amount of dollars. Out of one billion dollars extracted from the ground, over half of them went out of state or even out of country. The exchangers and lawyers wore suits all day and got paid a lot of dollars while the miners did hard work and got dirty and only got enough dollars to buy groceries, buy a new sport pickup on credit, gas for the pickup, new tires for the pickup, pay car insurance, pay rent (can’t afford a mortgage because of the pickup), buy the kids power ranger toys for Christmas, help pay for the trip to the city and hotel bills when Grandma had surgery, buy cigarettes and beer. That’s all he can afford cause he doesn’t get paid that much.
Now after 20 years the people in the small Appalachian town are still poor and the CEO in London, the lawyers, and the exchangers are rich. The mining operation is about to close because Democrats have declared “War on Dollars.”
Was the dollar bill mining in the town good for the people there, or would they have been better off roaming the woods looking for squirrels and chipmunks to eat? After all, most of the dollars flowed out of the town once they came out from down in the geologic formation they had been trapped in. Clearly the big investor sucked the town dry.
Jeff,
Why would I have to do that?
I’ve lived in such an area for over thirty years. It is one of the poorest parts of the country and will stay that way indefinitely thanks to the free-market and these extractive industries. Those industries will make a very small number of people rich, create a handful of low-wage jobs, and attract immigrants. At the end of the day, the region will remain an underdeveloped, low-income area and the demographics will worsen mainly because lack of opportunity will cause young Whites abandon their hometowns.
I’ve seen virtually everyone I know leave my hometown to pursue careers in large metro areas that generate jobs. The demographics are changing because Whites are fleeing the area faster than blacks who are packing their bags and moving away too. Who is satisfied with this state of affairs? No one but a small minority of aging landowners who live off their inherited assets and put their children in private schools. Increasingly, their families end up selling out too and moving away to places like Florida.
Hunter,
For one thing, I think you are focusing on the community level while I am talking about the national level after we are independent. Believe me, I hate white displacement by browns too. It’s a major problem in my area and would remain so even if the processing plant closed tomorrow. They are going to stay until we run them out, and they are going to keep coming until we stop them. It makes my blood boil to dwell on how bad the problem is, but I have made the conscious decision to use my forebrain and channel the frustration in a positive direction. That’s why I’m willing to argue with you so long about this topic.
“I’ve lived in such an area for over thirty years. It is one of the poorest parts of the country and will stay that way indefinitely thanks to the free-market and these extractive industries. Those industries will make a very small number of people rich, create a handful of low-wage jobs, and attract immigrants. At the end of the day, the region will remain an underdeveloped, low-income area and the demographics will worsen mainly because lack of opportunity will cause young Whites abandon their hometowns.”
You have to understand that these industries are not inherently damaging. It’s the immigration that’s damaging. The two can be separated, just like they used to be before we had so many immigrants.
You still talk about “extractive industries.” Please google the term. Extractive industries are generally mining or some other industry that takes raw materials from nature.
You seem to think that processing plants should be called extractive industries because they are taking profits away, oftentimes to some investor in NYC or out of the country. The point that I am making is that the profits are being shared, not “all taken away” as you seem to believe. Some of the profits go to the workers at every level of the hierarchy, from those who cut pieces of chicken, to the mechanics, to the supervisors, to the plant managers. You seem to be in completer denial about that. At the end of the day the processing plant infuses wealth into the area. Whether third worlders come to get a piece of it is another story and should be handled separately.
“I’ve seen virtually everyone I know leave my hometown to pursue careers in large metro areas that generate jobs.”
Does a processing plant stop other jobs from coming into the area? Why should the plant stop any other industry from moving in? You seem to have an irrational angst toward agriculture, forestry, etc, and some romantic attraction to cars manufacturing. You seem also to think that processing plants repel car companies somehow.
“The demographics are changing because Whites are fleeing the area faster than blacks who are packing their bags and moving away too.”
People moving to cities to get “city jobs” is nothing new. It has happened around the world. As agriculture gets more sophisticated, the fewer people are needed to farm. Many of these people move to cities. This sort of reminds me of one of my old college profs who pointed out that so many students say they are going back to their hometowns after graduation, but then when he asked what they were studying for, it was some career that didn’t exist in their hometowns.
“Who is satisfied with this state of affairs? No one but a small minority of landowners who live off their assets and put their children in private schools.”
Thanks to these “extractive industries” you talk about, a lot more people can afford private schools. My nephew went to public school, but I’m sure my brother could have sent him to private if they really wanted to.
I think my argument stands:
In an independent South, we should run the immigrants out and accept that some, but not all, of the processing plants would close and that the price of chicken would increase marginally, rather than close down all the plants in hopes that some immigrants will go home.
Jeff,
Same here.
Fundamentally, I don’t want to extend on a national scale the low-wage, low-income, low-tax, low-investment, free-market, free-trade model which has made my home in the Alabama Black Belt one of the poorest places in the United States. I don’t look at some of the poorest countries in the world like Honduras or Bangladesh and think to myself that’s the type of economy we should have here for most of our people can live in poverty.
I got involved in this because I resented the illegal aliens that the two local poultry processing plants were attracting like a magnet to my area. It was changing the racial and cultural demographics here. Yet I now realize that isn’t the primary problem here. After all, while the the Hispanic population has grown tremendously, it is still relatively small. These chicken processing plants don’t need tens of thousands of workers at two small plants so there is a hard limit to the damage they can do.
No, the real problem is that because there is so much poverty and so little opportunity under this type of economy which creates so few middle class jobs that the easiest way to raise one’s economic prospects for young families is to move away. Because the Whites are moving out faster than blacks, it is tipping the racial balance even though blacks are also moving out too.
Most people would disagree.
The proof is that they vote with their feet and abandon the area to move to large metro areas that have a more diverse economy and greater job opportunities. If you polled the people who live here, they would overwhelmingly say the economy is terrible.
That’s not the definition I am using.
Development economists contrast “extractive” industries with “inclusive” industries. I linked to such a paper in an earlier comment. Basically, an “extractive” industry like poultry processing creates great wealth for a tiny minority while creating extremely low-paying jobs that hold down economic development.
I didn’t say they were all taken away. I’m just saying that such industries are poor motors of economic development. That’s why you find those industries in places like Honduras or the Alabama Black Belt where those who live there migrate out.
Again, it is up to Southerners to decide if they want a Honduran-style economy that allows a handful of people to live in a nice house while the vast majority of people want to leave.
That’s the crux of the issue.
As I have said, these extractive industries create great wealth for a tiny minority while leaving the bulk of the population in poverty or with low-wage jobs that produces the low-income area. Some of these industries like poultry processing are magnets for immigrants. In most cases though, they just create few jobs period. They do, however, produce an economic elite – like the one we have here in the Black Belt – that monopolizes state and local offices and which maintain policies which suit their own interest.
Hunter,
“Fundamentally, I don’t want to extend on a national scale the low-wage, low-income, low-tax, low-investment, free-market, free-trade model which has made my home in the Alabama Black Belt one of the poorest places in the United States.”
Hunter, you are the first person I’m aware of who thinks that steady paid employment makes people poorer.
I am not that familiar with foreign policies, but when I was talking about Honduras, I was comparing the “banana republic” region of the country to the “no banana” region. You argued that the banana business was “extractive” and made Honduras poor. Honduras was already poor. The difference is that the region of the country with the banana industry is waaaay better off than the no banana region. It is a good example to prove that the “banana republic” model was better than nothing. The banana industry has not kept out the sewing industry either, which has also come into the area. Just because it’s not London, Frankfurt, or Tokyo does not mean that the banana business held them back. To the contrary the banana business moved them forward, and most probably to the limitations of their abilities along with sewing plants. I do not expect too many breakthroughs in Chemistry, Physics, Biotech, or engineering to develop down there due to the fact that there aren’t enough white people to make those breakthroughs happen. The average Honduran is capable of agricultural labor and running sewing machines, with a few of them who do better, but as a nation, they are limited by their brainpower. In the US, they generally gravitate to low paying jobs like farm labor or processing plants.
“I don’t look at some of the poorest countries in the world like Honduras or Bangladesh and think to myself that’s the type of economy we should have here for most of our people can live in poverty.”
We don’t have to model ourselves after those economies. What I am saying is that those places are not poor because agriculture and sewing made them poor. They are richer than they would be if they did not have those industries. If many whites become chemists, Drs, engineers, etc, then that is great, but unless you want to support the lower end of the IQ curve by just writing them checks, aka welfare, then you need to give them something they can do for a living, like cutting up chickens or running sewing machines.
Jeff,
There is steady paid employment in Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, Bangladesh, etc. Even the poorest places on earth like Congo and Haiti have some industries and some low-paying jobs. Relatively speaking though, other countries and regions are far more wealthy and successful and we should examine their development, namely countries like Japan and South Korea which have escaped poverty.
Who wants their country to look like Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, where average per capita income has barely changed in 50 years? All in favor raise your hands.
I’m not buying into the notion that Honduran mestizos are more genetically inferior than all the other mestizos in Latin America where average per capita income is much higher.
Hunter,
You quoted me:
“I am not that familiar with foreign policies, but when I was talking about Honduras, I was comparing the “banana republic” region of the country to the “no banana” region. You argued that the banana business was “extractive” and made Honduras poor. Honduras was already poor. The difference is that the region of the country with the banana industry is waaaay better off than the no banana region. It is a good example to prove that the “banana republic” model was better than nothing. The banana industry has not kept out the sewing industry either, which has also come into the area.”
You said:
“Who wants their country to look like Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, where average per capita income has barely changed in 50 years? All in favor raise your hands.”
I cannot make it any plainer to you and you keep dodging the point. I might as well be arguing about race with a committed race denier. I am not saying that we need to be more like Honduras. I am saying that the banana industry was a benefit to the people in the banana production region. You claim it was an “extractive” industry that made them poor. To the contrary, it has made them less poor. I can promise you that if you had to live the rest of your life in Honduras, you would want to live it in the “banana republic” side of the country and not in the “jungle tribes” region of the country where there was no evil Standard Fruit Company to “extract” all their wealth.
“Just because it’s not London, Frankfurt, or Tokyo does not mean that the banana business held them back. To the contrary the banana business moved them forward, and most probably to the limitations of their abilities along with sewing plants. I do not expect too many breakthroughs in Chemistry, Physics, Biotech, or engineering to develop down there due to the fact that there aren’t enough white people to make those breakthroughs happen. The average Honduran is capable of agricultural labor and running sewing machines, with a few of them who do better, but as a nation, they are limited by their brainpower. In the US, they generally gravitate to low paying jobs like farm labor or processing plants.”
I’m not buying into the notion that Honduran mestizos are more genetically inferior than all the other mestizos in Latin America where average per capita income is much higher.”
When I was in Honduras I was told that the majority of indigenous people would self identify as mestizo because it was socially expedient to do so. When I was travelling across the country, the further south and west I got the more indigenous the people started looking. On the north coast it was a mix of mestizos, Africans, and some indigenous that had moved down out of their jungle villages. Generally speaking the whiter you were the better off you were socially and economically, except I suppose the blacks in the North got a boost from living in the whitest areas. I just checked Wikipedia and they say it’s 90% mestizo and 6% Amerindian. No way in Hell that’s accurate. It’s a lot easier for me to believe the lady that told me the indios/indigenas (Amerindians) were self identifying as mestizos.
I suspect Mexico has a lot higher percentage of white genes and lower percentage of afro genes than Honduras does, but there’s no way I can know for sure given that census data is this inaccurate.
You also have to consider that a lot of Mexico’s money comes from sewing shops just across the border in places like Monterrey where we truck cloth from USA just across the border to be sewn into clothing for low wages, and then shipped back to US for sale. Some of this may be going on in Honduras too but I doubt it’s as much due to distance. I know they have sewing plants that make clothing to ship to USA but I don’t know if they spin the yarn and weave the cloth there or not.
Jeff,
Does it matter?
The whole country has an average per capita income of about $1,500. That’s up from about $1,000 after fifty years. Honduras has a stagnant economy built on extractive industries. It is one of the most desperately poor places in the Western hemisphere and has remained virtually unchanged for my entire lifetime. Who wants to be more like Honduras?
Again, who cares if one side is wealthier than the other? It doesn’t matter because economic development in the whole country has failed. Hondurans want to get out of the entire country, not just one side of it. Who can blame them? Staying there guarantees spending your whole life in poverty while escape to almost anywhere increases your standard of living.
Sorry, but I find some of these HBD theories extremely dubious.
Brazil, for example, has an average per capita income of $15,550. Yes, the country with the largest black population outside of Africa has an average per capita income 10 times greater than Honduras.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/brazil/gdp-per-capita-ppp
“The Gross Domestic Product per capita in Brazil was last recorded at 15412.29 US dollars in 2014, when adjusted by purchasing power parity (PPP). The GDP per Capita, in Brazil, when adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity is equivalent to 87 percent of the world’s average. GDP per capita PPP in Brazil averaged 12335.04 USD from 1990 until 2014, reaching an all time high of 15518.43 USD in 2013 and a record low of 10104.07 USD in 1992. GDP per capita PPP in Brazil is reported by the World Bank”
Hunter,
You quoted me:
“I cannot make it any plainer to you and you keep dodging the point. I might as well be arguing about race with a committed race denier. I am not saying that we need to be more like Honduras. I am saying that the banana industry was a benefit to the people in the banana production region. You claim it was an “extractive” industry that made them poor. To the contrary, it has made them less poor. I can promise you that if you had to live the rest of your life in Honduras, you would want to live it in the “banana republic” side of the country and not in the “jungle tribes” region of the country where there was no evil Standard Fruit Company to “extract” all their wealth.”
You replied:
“Does it matter?
The whole country has an average per capita income of about $1,500. That’s up from about $1,000 after fifty years. Honduras has a stagnant economy built on extractive industries. It is one of the most desperately poor places in the Western hemisphere and has remained virtually unchanged for my entire lifetime.
Again, who cares if one side is wealthier than the other? It doesn’t matter because economic development there has failed. Hondurans want to get out of the entire country, not just one side of it. Who can blame them? Staying there guarantees spending your whole life in poverty while escape to almost anywhere increase your standard of living.”
Yes it matters, it is the whole point! The “extractive” banana industry made them less poor. It is irrelevant that the country as a whole is poor. It matters that the banana industry increased the net wealth of the region that had it. It made them less poor than they were before. It did not suck wealth out of the area as you claim.
BTW, you never did explain how working at a processing plant is making my brother and his coworkers poorer when the company keeps writing them checks. Please explain why they keep working there when the company is “extracting” their wealth.
My brother has done just fine working for these “extractive” industries all his adult life. His wife has primarily been a housewife, but she has done some babysitting, housecleaning and substitute teaching over the years, but she never really had to, except to make some vacation money. They have a nice home (not a status symbol, but nice) on a nice big yard that is probably nearly paid for if not already. They’ve never been without at least one car each, and the cars have all been dependable. They’ve gone on lots of vacations over the years too. I’d say he’ll retire comfortably too. Please tell me how this is possible when the companies have been “extracting” his money all these years.
Jeff,
I’m really and truly not interested in arguing with you over whether average per capita income is $1,000 in one part of Honduras and maybe $1,500 in another part. The fact that anyone reading this debate will find significant is that the whole country has an average per capita income of $1,500. That’s all I need to know right there to make up my mind about Honduras.
I would love to talk to your brother about free-trade, the minimum wage, health insurance, worker safety standards, environmental standards, and so forth, as applied to his workplace.
Once again, I would like to hear what he says about applying your plan to Go Galt on his workplace. I’m talking about letting the true free-market in combination with free-trade set his wages. Getting the government entirely out of the way and the unfettered market a free hand … no more OSHA, minimum wage, Medicaid, Social Security, and so forth.
Hunter,
“I’m really and truly not interested in arguing with you over whether average per capita income is $1,000 in one part of Honduras and maybe $1,500 in another part. The fact that anyone reading this debate will find significant is that the whole country has an average per capita income of $1,500. That’s all I need to know right there to make up my mind about Honduras.”
You’re brushing aside a valid point rather than addressing it head on. I think that’s a problem on your part, but I can’t make you do it. But I can guarantee you that the disparity is a lot more than 1/3.
Your failure to address the disparity because the average for the whole country is low would be almost as bad as if I failed to look at North and South Koreas separately, since they are on the same peninsula. The point is that the banana industry obviously added wealth rather than “extracting” it as you say. You are changing the subject when you argue that the whole country averaged is poor.
“I would love to talk to your brother about free-trade, the minimum wage, health insurance, worker safety standards, environmental standards, and so forth, as applied to his workplace.”
He doesn’t really talk about gov and politics much, at least not in concepts like when it comes to things like pros/cons of free trade or what min wage does for the nation as a whole. I’m sure he makes more than min wage, because there’s no way they are going to pay the mechanics the same as the chicken cutters. He’s been working at either a textile or processing plant since I was a child and I’ve only heard 2 types of complaints:
1) He used to complain about getting called in for unscheduled shifts (because of noshows), but caller ID took care of that.
2) He has always complained about the characters he had to work with. Back in the old days it was about negroes, but now it’s about the immigrants and the occasional white dopehead. Nowadays he complains about Haitians the most. Again, he’s a mechanic so he doesn’t spend all day shoulder to shoulder with them, and I suspect most of the other mechanics are white, so he gets a little reprieve there.
He says the offal is sprayed on a hay field, so that’s all I know about environmental practices.
Regarding worker safety, he’s never had any injuries other than busted knuckles and minor cuts and scrapes. He does mention that some of the workers do manage to cut themselves despite having to wear protective gear. He seemed to think it was pretty amazing that anybody could actually cut himself while wearing the gear. I think it’s something like special glove and apron type garments with shields in them.
I also had two neighbors that worked at a pork processing plant back in the day. But that was before the invasion had gotten so bad. One was a part time farmer who quit to farm full time and the other I think retired before dying from age related conditions. The farmer said he once bagged anuses to go to Japan because a company there actually bought them. Couldn’t say what for.
“Once again, I would like to hear what he says about applying your plan to Go Galt on his workplace. I’m talking about letting the true free-market in combination with free-trade set his wages. Getting the government entirely out of the way … no more OSHA, minimum wage, Medicaid, Social Security, and so forth.”
You are accusing me of making all-or-none stance on gov programs and regulations. It’s perfectly reasonable for me to lean libertarian on certain issues without getting baptized Libertarian, Libertarian Ghost filled, and speaking in Libertarian tongues.
Now that my brother has most of his career behind him I doubt he want’s to give up social security after paying in all those years, but if he were starting over young again, I doubt he would want it. He’s been a disciplined worker, disciplined saver, frugal spender ever since I can remember. So I think he would have probably been better off without social security, but I probably couldn’t say that if he had not had those attributes. Honestly he would have probably done better without the programs you mentioned, but there’s no way I can know whether or not he would have had a significant injury if OSHA had not existed. Even then, you would have to weight the rate of injuries into the equation along with the costs of administrating OSHA and the costs of reduced efficiency in the workplace. I’m really not in the mood to go there right now.
I have a cousin that used to work for OSHA. I don’t know why, but she doesn’t anymore. I think OSHA is a pretty inefficient way of preventing injuries. I guess if they regulate building codes then that’s probably a good thing, but again, some of the rules gov depts. can come up with are just silly.
I think most of these programs you mention would be better left to the private sector though. If people want the insurance, then they can buy it. If they would rather save the money and accept the risk then they can do that option. Sounds ok to me, but I’m really not that interested in arguing those points right now.
Jeff,
I agree.
I do want to improve the life prospects of the White majority. Go tell them that the way to do that is through the type of economy we have in the Alabama Black Belt or the Ozarks or West Virginia except that we should get rid of all government regulation, taxes, worker safety laws, and the welfare state. That way our workforce will be more competitive with Honduras as our average per capita income drops from the level of Mexico to an even lower level.
Jeff,
That’s a vote of no confidence in the low-wage, low-income, low-tax economy. These people accurately conclude their economic prospects will be improved by moving out of Honduran-style economies. Of course the loss of human capital only adds to the economic distress by driving out the smartest, most talented people who rise through the public schools.
Even the private schools are terribly underfunded which is a symptom of a low-investment economy.
Feel free to make the case for an independent South based on Wal-Mart and the poultry processing industry. Those employers already pay so little in wages that the federal welfare state has to compensate. What do you propose to tell those people? That we should secede from the United States for they can’t even make minimum wage or have health insurance anymore?
Hunter,
“Feel free to make the case for an independent South based on Wal-Mart and the poultry processing industry.”
I am not arguing that we need to base our economy on poultry processing, or any other low skill job. I am arguing that we homegrow our basic necessities for national security reasons, and that we free trade for the rest to maximize prosperity, such that if free trade were to become disrupted, we could shift that to domestic production also.
If you think food production makes people and nations poor, then do you argue that we end world hunger by banning agriculture worldwide?
Jeff,
We’ve been going around in circles for days now. You’ve spent hours of my time responding to your defense of the wealth generating capacities of banana plantations in Honduras and the poultry processing industry in the South. Again, if you want to live in a low-income Third World economy, fine.
Free trade doesn’t maximize prosperity. We’ve spent days now discussing the poorest parts of the United States, one where I happen to live, and one of the poorest countries in Central America. In an independent South, we could have an agricultural sector, but also an advanced manufacturing economy. Somehow California manages to do both.
The Alabama Black Belt, the Mississippi Delta, and the Ozarks are all vastly poorer than other parts of the United States.
Hunter,
“We’ve been going around in circles for days now. You’ve spent hours of my time responding to your defense of the wealth generating capacities of banana plantations in Honduras and the poultry processing industry in the South. Again, if you want to live in a low-income Third World economy, fine.”
Having an agricultural and processing industries does not make a country third world. As far as I know Honduras doesn’t have a poultry/processing industry like we have in the South, but they do have a lot of diseased looking chickens running around the neighborhoods–I don’t count that as a poultry industry.
You keep insisting that nonsubsidized agricultural industries somehow suck the money out of a country. That is certifiably insane! The presence of food industries does not make us poor, it makes us less poor.
“In an independent South, we could have an agricultural sector, but also an advanced manufacturing economy.”
Yes, I want both! You seem to think we need to get rid of agriculture and processing though, like they are some kind of disease that is keeping us down.
I suspect you are going to fire back with a line about processing plants attracting immigrants, so I’ll go ahead and answer it here:
My plan:
Get rid of the immigrants, and accept that as a consequence that the going rate for low skill labor will increase, and chicken will become slightly more expensive, meaning we won’t eat as much chicken and some, but not all, our processing plants will close down.
Your plan:
Get rid of all the processing plants in hopes that some (but not all)of the immigrants will leave. As a consequence, we will have to import frozen chicken and it will be more expensive, and lots of low skill jobs will be lost, so we’ll see a lot more whites on welfare.
My plan gets rid of all the immigrants and only sacrifices a few jobs and a marginal increase in chicken prices while your plan gets rid of a lot more jobs, raises chicken prices even more, and only some of the immigrants leave.
Your argument:
Processing plants attract immigrants.
My argument:
Having a nice country attracts immigrants, therefore the best strategy is to kick them out and keep them out, not to try and close down processing plants.
I want to take immigration head on and keep all our industries, perhaps protecting a few of them with tariffs as a national security strategy. Agriculture and processing is one of those core industries, but we are competing fine in that sector without tariffs, so there is no need in that case. We will soon be doing the same with coal, oil, and gas– and could probably use nuclear energy to boot. With abundant natural gas, I hope to see us making lots of chemicals and pharma also, probably without need to tariff since we will have some of the cheapest gas in the world (If Texas, WV and Southern Ohio join with us).
Would I like to see Dixie made steel, cars, airplanes, textiles, electronics also? Why yes I would, and I don’t see why agriculture and processing would stop that from happening. You seem to think processing plants are keeping these other things out.
“The Alabama Black Belt, the Mississippi Delta, and the Ozarks are all vastly poorer than other parts of the United States.”
That does not mean agriculture and processing made them poor (except for drawing immigrants). It makes them less poor. The immigration problem should be tackled separately and thoroughly.
Jeff,
Honduras and Brazil are Third World countries. Their average per capita income ranges between $1,500 and $15,000. The bottom two tenths of counties in the United States, many of which are home to your beloved poultry processing industry in the South, have an average per capita income on par with Mexico and Brazil, although none are quite as poor as Honduras.
So I will just put the question to gallery: do we want an independent South to have a Third World economy and standard of living like Mexico? Do we want to become more like Honduras, or more like Japan and Germany which don’t specialize in exporting raw materials?
Once again, I’m not proposing to get rid of agriculture. California has the largest agricultural economy in the United States, but it also has Silicon Valley. There’s no reason why we can’t have both. It is just not at the top of my list because it employs – what – maybe 5 percent of the American population.
What exactly do you propose to do with agriculture in an independent South? According to you, the “government” is terrible and the free-market is superior to the state, but there are few sectors of our economy where government intervention is greater than in agriculture. Do you propose to apply laissez faire to Southern agriculture? Are you sticking with your plan that Southern agriculture should go Amish?
Your plan:
Deport immigrants. Keep the poultry processing industry. Abolish the minimum wage. Abolish environmental laws. Abolish worker safety laws. Engage in free-trade. Slash government programs.
Result: in one stroke, there would be a massive collapse in the average per capita income of White Southerners, who would turn against secession in huge numbers. Your plan would take people who are poor now and make them vastly poorer still.
I’ve never said anywhere that we should get rid of agriculture. That’s a straw man. The real argument, which you continue to dodge, is that a whopping 5 percent of the population works in agriculture. Thus, if we are to raise living standards, we should prioritize other sectors of our economy.
Hunter,
You wrote that my plan was:
“Deport immigrants. Keep the poultry processing industry. Abolish the minimum wage. Abolish environmental laws. Abolish worker safety laws. Engage in free-trade. Slash government programs.”
Deport immigrants:
Yes, I would deport immigrants that would not self deport. That part is true. Most would self deport if we did an everify system with a bigass fine for anybody who hired, sold a car to, rented an apartment to anyone who did not pass, maybe also have a 1-800 tipline so that people could give anonymous tips or even collect a reward (kinda hard to stay anonymous and get the reward too) for violators.
That should get rid of the majority. The rest will find their way out pretty fast if we point guns at them.
We could also put all discovered illegals doing prison labor (they broke the law didn’t they) which would actually generate a profit for the state. That should keep them from coming back too.
Keep the poultry processing industry:
I would keep whatever remained of it after deporting illegals, yes.
Abolish the minimum wage:
Yes, I would if I didn’t encounter too much opposition. Too many people actually believe that having or increasing a minimum wage will improve the conditions of the lower class. I suppose it’s possible it would have a positive effect for the first couple months, but in the long run it would not and would do more harm than good. I haven’t really thought about how prison labor would affect the minimum wage though. Perhaps it would mitigate the damage. Something to think about. Abolishing minimum wage wouldn’t be the highest priority on my list anyway.
Abolish environmental laws:
I would abolish or at least lighten up on some of them. For instance I would not have a war on coal. I would be so coal friendly they would name one of the reclaimed stripmines after me. You need some regulations, but I think the EPA and environmental lobby we know today is out of hand.
Abolish worker safety laws:
We don’t need to keep creating more of them like OSHA does, that’s for sure. I haven’t taken a great deal of time thinking on the matter, but I’m sure with a little investigation, we could slash some that were just plain ridiculous.
Engage in free-trade:
Mostly, yes. I’ve explained the limitations several times already. anybody that wants to see them can look at previous posts.
Slash government programs:
I’d sure take a look for some good programs to slash. I would resist slashing welfare altogether but I would probably award a fixed monthly sum and would not increase it every time the woman had another baby. If you live in Alabama, I’m sure you know how that works. I’d keep the amount low too, because it is supposed to help them feed themselves and their kids, not buy them everything the Drs’ kids get. They can eat beans and rice like I do, and shop at Goodwill like I do. The last time I went to Goodwill the racks were so packed with clothes that you couldn’t even look at them, so apparently the poverty problem isn’t so bad or the racks would be more bare.
I would definitely make it a requirement for anyone seeking welfare to either be sterilized or get a birth control implant or IUD. Male welfare seekers would of course be limited to vasectomies until somebody invents a bc implant for men. Contraceptive pills would not be an option for welfare seekers because so many of them are not responsible to take the pill on schedule.
You said:
“Result: in one stroke, there would be a massive collapse in the average per capita income of White Southerners, who would turn against secession in huge numbers. Your plan would take people who are poor now and make them vastly poorer still.”
Massive collapse in income for Southerners:
I suppose some of them would have a cut in wages, but it couldn’t be many because deporting the immigrants would drive wages up. Whites cutting up chickens in a processing plants would likely earn more money because the immigrants wouldn’t be there to drive the wage down. Immigrants drive lots of low skill wages down. Deporting them will make the wages go up, though some businesses (like some processing plants) would just close.
who would turn against secession in huge numbers:
Well we would have already seceded by the time these things got done.
Your plan would take people who are poor now and make them vastly poorer still:
Well the expelled immigrants would be poorer, yes. Whites would pay lower taxes and the majority of those earning the lowest wages would have reduced competition, so if they bargain they could probably get a raise, though I suppose maybe 1% would have lower wages. There would also be more jobs for them to choose from so they should be generally happier by getting jobs they like better.
Hunter,
“Honduras and Brazil are Third World countries. Their average per capita income ranges between $1,500 and $15,000. The bottom two tenths of counties in the United States, many of which are home to your beloved poultry processing industry in the South, have an average per capita income on path with Mexico and Brazil, although none are quite as poor as Honduras.”
Well, I wouldn’t call poultry processing plants “my beloved” but I am not going to let you get away with claiming that they are inherently evil, either because they attract immigrants (anything nice will attract them) or because they are “extractive” industries. An extractive industry is generally the same as mining, but also includes dredging, for whatever that’s worth.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=extractive+industry
You claim that certain industries are extracting wealth out of a region. That is insane, unless you are talking about payday loans, liquor stores, or things of that nature.
“So I will just put the question to gallery: do we want an independent South to have a Third World economy and standard of living like Mexico? Do we want to become more like Honduras, or more like Japan and Germany which don’t specialize in exporting raw materials?”
It’s a false premise. You are implying that if we keep strong agriculture and processing that it will make us like Honduras. That is a false premise and I’ve been proving it over and over.
Actually it includes two false premises. The second one is that raw materials industries is going to make us a poor country. If you don’t produce raw materials, you’re going to have to import them if you want a manufacturing sector. Don’t you think Korea would prefer to not have to import the raw materials for its steel industry?
“Once again, I’m not proposing to get rid of agriculture.”
Good. but it sure sounds like it based on your other comments.
“California has the largest agricultural economy in the United States, but it also has Silicon Valley. There’s no reason why we can’t have both. It is just not at the top of my list because it employs – what – maybe 5 percent of the American population.”
Agriculture, forestry, mining, energy and chemicals&pharma are all at the top of my list because free trade could always be disrupted, and these are the things a country needs for national security concern–it’s otherwise irrelevant, except that you have to compete, so you better do something you’re good at.
If we depended on trade for our food, lumber, minerals, energy, and chemicals, and some other country were to cut them off somehow as an embargo or act of war, then we would be in dire straights. OTOH, if we depend on trade for our shirts and pants, then obviously we could withstand a trade disruption because shirts and pants can last for years, and we can always set up our own sewing plants, using our agriculture (cotton) and energy stores (electricity and polyester) to make clothes. It doesn’t work the other way around unless you want to burn your clothes in a wood heater to heat your home.
“What exactly do you propose to do with agriculture in an independent South? According to you, the “government” is terrible and the free-market is superior, but there are few sectors of our economy where government intervention is greater than in agriculture.”
I do not believe governments are inherently terrible, but are terribly inefficient planners and sometimes betray their own people, like facilitating the invasion we see now. They are betraying us.
I think governments are necessary to some extent to ensure rights, and to provide law and order, and a common defense, including defense against contagious epidemics. I do think that our government has become overreaching, and has grown too big and too many bureaus and departments.
I do not believe we should subsidize crops, and I wouldn’t do it unless I felt like we would lose one of our “core homegrown” industries without it. Even then I would prefer a tariff on imports over a subsidy on the crop. The crop would have to be a basic necessity too. Caviar (we now grow caviar in NC) and wines (vineyards seem to be taking the place of tobacco here too) wouldn’t count. But with regard to the staples, like grains, poultry, swine, beef, dairy, and produce, I would make sure those industries stayed on our turf whether we exported or not. Honestly agriculture is doing so well in America that we could probably get by just leaving it alone, which would be my preferred method, but I’d keep an eye on it.
Free trade is generally great but we are fools if we willingly make ourselves dependent on other countries for our food, forestry products, minerals, energy, and chemicals/pharma. We have a natural endowment for all of these things, even chemicals & pharma, since they are usually made primarily from fossil fuels. Without these foundations, most other industries like textiles (polyester is also made from fossil fuels) and manufacturing (plastics are made from fossil fuels) could not survive an extended trade disruption like what happened to South Africa to end apartheid, where other countries conspired to drive SA broke with trade sanctions, causing the SA whites to surrender control due to economic pressure alone. I don’t want that to ever happen to us.
If you want to make cars, you are dependent upon a steel and energy supply, so the best thing is to have our own steel and energy homegrown, not because it guarantees a free trade advantage, but because it makes us more resilient to trade disruptions.
Based on our natural resources, we are indeed in a very good position to become a world superpower should we become independent, especially if we get the big energy and breadbasket states to join us. But human capital is part of the equation too.
“Do you propose to apply laissez faire to Southern agriculture?”
I would do whatever it took to keep our produce, grains, fish, poultry, pork, beef on our own turf and under our own control. This should be easy since we are doing so well in these things already. It might not take any intervention at all, but if it did require intervention, I’d use tariff before I used subsidy.
“Are you sticking with your plan that Southern agriculture should go Amish?”
I presume you mean the real Amish and not Jewish bankers and traders.
No, I’d like to see it bigger and better. People can have hobby farms if they want, but I’m talking about major industrial scale food production, including export, since we seem to have a free trade advantage in this department, possibly excepting the cost of labor in produce farming, since it mostly has to be picked by hand. We get some frozen produce from Mexico for this purpose already. We might be able to handle the labor cost by using prison labor. I think we’re fools if we don’t use prison labor as much as we reasonably can for whatever industry works best. Absolute fools not to.
Of course we will still import our exotics like coffee and bananas. Also, I suppose some countries may grow sugar cheaper than we can. I would be fine with applying a sin tax on sugar anyway, just like alcohol and tobacco.
So no, I do not want to go Amish. I want more GMO, more pesticide breakthroughs, more and better farm machinery and practices, just like I want better and cheaper and higher yielding fracking, more sharp chemists to find more efficient reactions to make the chemicals we want, more efficient ways to mine coal, safer and cheaper nuclear power, etc.
Jeff,
Google the phrase “extractive economic institutions.” It is not the same thing as mining. In fact, unionized mining produces lots of high-wage jobs in the United States and foreign countries.
I don’t think agriculture employs all that many people. Thus, it is not at the top of my list of industries. Did you know the majority of people who work in agriculture in North Carolina are Hispanic? I just learned that tonight, but I am not surprised.
That’s definitely true of the contemporary Mississippi Delta, Central Appalachia during the early twentieth century, or West Indian sugar plantations. They all suffered from absentee ownership. I’ve learned all this from mainstream historians.
I’m not referring to agriculture per se. Obviously, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska are nothing like Honduras. Good for them. Instead, I am referring to your laissez faire economic policies.
If we export raw materials alone (poultry, coal, bananas, timber, cotton, etc) and import high value manufactured goods, THEN we will be a poor country. That’s what the economy looks like in most poor countries. I say most because oil is the great exception.
Jeff,
From what I have read, 96 percent of textiles and apparel in the US are now imported from overseas. Would you say all those job losses which fell so heavily on the Carolinas and your brother’s own family is a great victory for free-trade?
If that is the case, then the reasonable thing to do would be to apply the magic of the free-market to agriculture and return to the status that prevailed before the New Deal.
Specifically, I would like to know more about how this insight would be applied to agriculture in an independent South.
The agricultural sector is 1.) protected from foreign competition by tariffs, 2.) subsidized directly by federal crop subsidies, 3.) subsidized by federal emergency aid and disaster relief, 4.) subsidized by agricultural research at state universities, 5.) subsidized by the welfare state spending in the annual Farm Bill, and 6.) subsidized by federal loans.
All right.
I’m not sure why advanced manufacturing isn’t on your list. It seems to me that aerospace is an obvious example of an industry that is now indispensable to national security.
Agreed.
We used to make 95 percent of everything we consumed here. 99 percent of the trade deficit which is impoverishing our country with crippling debt consists of things we used to manufacture here and could easily do so again today.
We already have the world’s fourth largest economy.
Tariffs would definitely do the trick. High tariffs might even be unnecessary, but that could change depending on eliminating all the current subsidies.
That’s basically what we have now. I would add though that Hispanics work in lots of industries like pork, poultry, citrus, winter vegetables. Ideally, we should mechanize their production and eliminate them altogether.
There’s no reason why those can’t continue to come in duty free. We don’t produce tropical crops.
What do you think of the recent triumph of the state in eradicating the boll weevil? That’s a great accomplishment, right? How about diseases like malaria which used to infest the South?
Hunter,
“I’m not sure why advanced manufacturing isn’t on your list. It seems to me that aerospace is an obvious example of an industry that is now indispensable to national security.”
I haven’t really though of that one, but honestly, I’d probably encourage the military to keep doing secret R&D, but that’s a military expense that would be financed by gov obviously, not private sector. It’s hard to imagine that a country would try to stifle us by cutting off our aircraft parts. I don’t know if our military planes are made from imported parts or not. If they are, then I might tariff to get them made at home. If we are really that dependent on other countries for new parts and they got cut off, we would have the ability to start making them at home if we have our metals and energy at home. Wouldn’t work so well the other way around though.
The cool thing about tariff compared to subsidy is that it is hard for a tariff to be a total fiasco like a subsidy can be. For instance, if you tariff something, but the tariff is low and doesn’t encourage domestic production, you are still collecting money on all those tariffs. If the tariff is high and everything goes domestic, then you might fail to collect revenue, but you get the industry to move onshore. Either way you win. You don’t get that with a subsidy, because it can fail bigger than heck.
“We already have the world’s fourth largest economy.”
Yeah, I like that. With good policy we could make it number one, easy, especially if some of the border states that aren’t as stereotypically Southern join us. We want WV to come our way even if it’s not historically part of the Confederacy. We also want to get southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, Kansas, and Oklahoma if they are willing. I know that’s pushing the limit, but that’s a lot of land, people and resources that we could use. Ethnically you start getting into a little higher concentration of German ancestry in those areas, but it’s not like they’re libtard Yanks.
“What do you think of the recent triumph of the state in eradicating the boll weevil? That’s a great accomplishment, right? How about diseases like malaria which used to infest the South?”
I had not heard about boll weevil eradication, but it sounds like a great accomplishment, and yes, I like not having malaria too.
Hunter,
“From what I have read, 96 percent of textiles and apparel in the US are now imported from overseas. Would you say all those job losses which fell so heavily on the Carolinas and your brother’s own family is a great victory for free-trade?”
For us it was a great victory for minimum wage and too many regulations.
The victory of free trade is that clothes are cheap. Free trade doesn’t favor one country over another any more than math favors one student over another. But some countries do it more efficiently, just like some students do math better. Again, we are fools not to use prison labor like China, S Korea, and Japan do. We don’t have to go gulag style on them, but we are throwing away a vast resource every day we don’t use them.
Hunter,
“We’ve been going around in circles for days now. You’ve spent hours of my time responding to your defense of the wealth generating capacities of banana plantations in Honduras and the poultry processing industry in the South. Again, if you want to live in a low-income Third World economy, fine.”
Having an agricultural and processing industries does not make a country third world. As far as I know Honduras doesn’t have a poultry/processing industry like we have in the South, but they do have a lot of diseased looking chickens running around the neighborhoods–I don’t count that as a poultry industry.
You keep insisting that nonsubsidized agricultural industries somehow suck the money out of a country. That is certifiably insane! The presence of food industries does not make us poor, it makes us less poor.
“In an independent South, we could have an agricultural sector, but also an advanced manufacturing economy.”
Yes, I want both! You seem to think we need to get rid of agriculture and processing though, like they are some kind of disease that is keeping us down.
I suspect you are going to fire back with a line about processing plants attracting immigrants, so I’ll go ahead and answer it here:
My plan:
Get rid of the immigrants, and accept that as a consequence that the going rate for low skill labor will increase, and chicken will become slightly more expensive, meaning we won’t eat as much chicken and some, but not all, our processing plants will close down.
Your plan:
Get rid of all the processing plants in hopes that some (but not all)of the immigrants will leave. As a consequence, we will have to import frozen chicken and it will be more expensive, and lots of low skill jobs will be lost, so we’ll see a lot more whites on welfare.
My plan gets rid of all the immigrants and only sacrifices a few jobs and a marginal increase in chicken prices while your plan gets rid of a lot more jobs, raises chicken prices even more, and only some of the immigrants leave.
Your argument:
Processing plants attract immigrants.
My argument:
Having a nice country attracts immigrants, therefore the best strategy is to kick them out and keep them out, not to try and close down processing plants.
I want to take immigration head on and keep all our industries, perhaps protecting a few of them with tariffs as a national security strategy. Agriculture and processing is one of those core industries, but we are competing fine in that sector without tariffs, so there is no need in that case. We will soon be doing the same with coal, oil, and gas– and could probably use nuclear energy to boot. With abundant natural gas, I hope to see us making lots of chemicals and pharma also, probably without need to tariff since we will have some of the cheapest gas in the world (If Texas, WV and Southern Ohio join with us).
Would I like to see Dixie made steel, cars, airplanes, textiles, electronics also? Why yes I would, and I don’t see why agriculture and processing would stop that from happening. You seem to think processing plants are keeping these other things out.
“The Alabama Black Belt, the Mississippi Delta, and the Ozarks are all vastly poorer than other parts of the United States.”
That does not mean agriculture and processing made them poor (except for drawing in poor immigrants). It makes them less poor. The immigration problem should be tackled separately and thoroughly.
Your plan:
Abolish the minimum wage, environmental laws, and worker safety standards at my brother’s chicken plant. Cut taxes and spend less on education for his children. It is a prescription for making a poor area full of marginal workers struggling to get by even poorer and vastly more dependent on their employers.
My plan:
The government should repeal our free-trade laws in order to foster manufacturing industries in the South. Instead of buying Chinese crap at Wal-Mart, as the free-traders advise, we will have an economy that creates jobs in our own country, which will go to our own citizens who pay taxes instead of foreigners. We won’t need the poultry processing industry anymore and hopefully it will be driven out of business and replaced by higher paying jobs.
What happens to the workers at your poultry processing plant when they are told that the free-market requires them to work for Honduran level wages and they no longer have health insurance?
If this were true, illegal aliens would be randomly distributed in our nice country, not concentrated in towns that have poultry processing plants in Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas.
Elaborate on your plan for agriculture. How does the government figure into your reformed agricultural sector? Do you intend to go the Amish route?
As we saw with cotton plantations in the Old South, extractive industries retard economic diversification. In Alabama, our extremely low property taxes – a gift to the forestry industry – guts our educational system. The low-taxes and low-investment economy produces low-wage workers in a low-income economy.
If we keep wages and taxes low and invest little in education and infrastructure to appease these interests, it sure does.
Hunter,
“Abolish the minimum wage, environmental laws, and worker safety standards at my brother’s chicken plant.”
I would selectively cut the ones that seemed to be doing the most damage for the least benefit, yes.
“Cut taxes and spend less on education for his children.”
Yes, I think he would be happy with that plan, especially if I got rid of the immigrants and many of the homegrown negroes at the school. It was over 70% black when I was there, but that was before the Hispanic deluge. How much money does it really take to give kids a basic education, c’mon.
“It is a prescription for making a poor area full of marginal workers struggling to get by even poorer and vastly more dependent on their employers.”
No, they would generally be less poor.
“The government should repeal our free-trade laws in order to foster manufacturing industries in the South. Instead of buying Chinese crap at Wal-Mart, as the free-traders advise,”
Why would you do that if these things are “extractive” industries, wouldn’t you want to keep sucking the money out of China?
“we will have an economy that creates jobs in our own country, which will go to our own citizens who pay taxes instead of foreigners.”
Great. I want that too, but I don’t have to have *everything* made over here. I wonder how you’re going to do that while we are paying people $15 an hour while the Chinese are using free prison labor.
“We won’t need the poultry processing industry anymore and hopefully it will be driven out of business and replaced by higher paying jobs.”
See, you just have some irrational hate for poultry processing. What does it hurt if it stays in business, as long as the immigrants are held off at the border? Why would you want us to have to import our chicken when we’re currently a chicken exporter?
“What happens to the workers at your poultry processing plant when they are told that the free-market requires them to work for Honduran level wages and they no longer have health insurance?”
The Hondurans are the ones driving the wages down now. If we got rid of them the wages would go up, but some fraction of the plants would close. The pay scale for the whites at those jobs would go up. If they are unwilling to work for what the processing plant offers, then they won’t and more plants will close. Wouldn’t that make you happy to close down the plants so they would have to find some other job?
How we manage health insurance is not something I think about much, except that I don’t want Obama’s team managing it.
“If this were true, illegal aliens would be randomly distributed in our nice country, not concentrated in towns that have poultry processing plants in Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas.”
No, it does not mean that they would be randomly distributed. They will go where their friends and cousins are and wherever they can get a job. Some of them will work as maids in places like Greenwich, CT, but they can’t all work there. Some of them will clean hotel rooms. Do you want to get rid of hotels too?
Hardly anyone works in agriculture anymore. Thank god for that. Even the most miserable service jobs around here and the welfare state are a much better deal than being an early 20th century Alabama sharecropper mired in debt peonage. That’s a life which absolutely no one would choose to go back to given other options.
All industries are not equal. Manufacturing is superior to agriculture in generating new technology, productivity growth, and innovation that leads to new industries and higher paying jobs. Agriculture is highly capital intensive and employs fewer people than ever before. The profits from agriculture also tend to accrue to a few rich landowners or investors.
There’s no reason why we have to choose between agriculture or manufacturing. At the same time, there is no reason to favor agriculture over manufacturing given how few people work or could possibly work in that sector of the economy or its prospects for dynamic growth.
Hunter,
“Hardly anyone works in agriculture anymore. Thank god for that. Even the most miserable service jobs around here and the welfare state are a much better deal than being an early 20th century Alabama sharecropper mired in debt peonage. That’s a life which absolutely no one would choose to go back to given other options.
All industries are not equal. Manufacturing is superior to agriculture in generating new technology, productivity growth, and innovation that leads to new industries and higher paying jobs. Agriculture is highly capital intensive and employs fewer people than ever before. The profits from agriculture also tend to accrue to a few rich landowners or investors.”
Apparently my suspicion was well founded, you do have angst toward agriculture and processing.
Let’s get this straight:
Nobody is advocating that we return to the mule and single row farming implements.
“Hardly anybody works in agriculture anymore.”
It doesn’t matter so much how many people work in agriculture, it matters how much wealth is generated, especially when that wealth is in the form of domestic food supply. It’s wonderful that agriculture has advanced so much that it only takes a small percentage of the population to produce so much food! that’s a great thing! Now we can put some of those people to work doing manufacturing! Agriculture is the most basic industry there is. Every other kind of industry builds out from Agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining (including energy mining). Pretty much everything else builds upon some combination of those core industries (or I suppose “sectors” would be more appropriate.)
“All industries are not equal. Manufacturing is superior to agriculture in generating new technology, productivity growth, and innovation that leads to new industries and higher paying jobs.”
You are dead wrong. New technology, productivity growth, and innovation generate more manufacturing (and every other sector), not the other way around.”
“There’s no reason why we have to choose between agriculture or manufacturing.”
I agree.
“At the same time, there is no reason to favor agriculture over manufacturing given how few people work or could possibly work in that sector of the economy or its prospects for dynamic growth.”
Yes there is a huge reason to favor agriculture over manufacturing (if we actually had to chose). Suppose, in time of war or sanctions, we were cut of from trading, like a city under siege, except we would be a country under siege, would you rather grow a lot of food and not be able to buy the latest year model car, or would you rather make new cars and not be able to trade for food? I think an illegal immigrant could answer that question.
I’m not opposed to agriculture. It is just that, objectively speaking, it employs few people, the profits accrue to a small elite, and it does not generate the same level of innovation, productivity growth, new technology, and new industries and jobs as manufacturing. For those reasons, agriculture should not be favored over the manufacturing sector.
I’m well aware of that. In those days, agriculture at least employed much of our population, but that is no longer the case.
I disagree.
From the standpoint of a national economic development strategy, it matters a great deal that less than 5 percent of the population works in agriculture, and of the small number of those who do the profits overwhelmingly accrue to an even tinier fraction of landowners or investors, many of whom are absentee owners.
This is not in dispute, but since so few people work in agriculture, we should be less concerned about that sector. It is not going to employ large numbers of people, create large numbers of high paying jobs, or lead to new industries and innovations at the same dynamic rate as manufacturing. We figured this out in 1865.
This isn’t true. The proof is the rate of innovation and patents in manufacturing regions as opposed to agricultural regions.
Agriculture isn’t necessarily food crops.
Southern cotton planters wanted free-trade because they wanted to export their crops abroad and purchase cheaper manufactured goods. During the War Between the States, all that cotton proved to be worthless when it could no longer be exported because the South lacked the capacity to defend itself.
There’s no reason why we couldn’t have 1.) grown all the food and produced all the livestock we needed in the South, 2.) built a thriving manufacturing sector, and 3.) a world class infrastructure to go along with it. The problem was that the “Invisible Hand” and the “law of comparative advantage” and the profit motive and especially the free-market had reduced the South to specialization in cotton monoculture and created an elite that resisted for those reasons building a more diversified economy an instead invested all of its wealth in slavery.
Hunter,
“I’m not opposed to agriculture. It is just that, objectively speaking, it employs few people, the profits accrue to a small elite, and it does not generate the same level of innovation, productivity growth, new technology, and new industries and jobs as manufacturing.”
Not true. Take the poultry business for instance. It employs growers, construction workers, truck drivers, feed mill workers, capture crews, veterinarians/pathologists, accountants, secretaries, nutritionists, and janitors–off the top of my head.
Of course the profits disproportionately accrue to a small elite, just like any other business. Those elites then spend that money on something eventually and at least some of that money is spent domestically. They might buy new cars, show horses, boats, mansions, braces for the kids, whatever. Those expenditures allow other people to earn money, even if they don’t work directly for the poultry company. And no, the elites don’t all live in NYC. Some of them may but very few. Most of the poultry companies around here were started by local people, but that was a long time ago and I suppose some have been sold since.
“This isn’t true. The proof is the rate of innovation and patents in manufacturing regions as opposed to agricultural regions.”
C’mon now, which do you think happened first, the innovation and patent or the mass production? Of course they are going to go together! But you have cause and effect switched! Which do you think happened first:
–Samuel Colt’s invention of the revolver,
or
–the mass production of revolvers?
Please don’t tell me they were mass produced before being invented.
“Agriculture isn’t necessarily food crops.”
Agree, but in my example I’m talking about food crops.
“Southern cotton planters wanted free-trade because they wanted to export their crops abroad and purchase cheaper manufactured goods. During the War Between the States, all that cotton proved to be worthless when it could no longer be exported because the South lacked the capacity to defend itself.
There’s no reason why we couldn’t have 1.) grown all the food and produced all the livestock we needed in the South, 2.) built a thriving manufacturing sector, and 3.) a world class infrastructure to go along with it. The problem was that the “Invisible Hand” and the “law of comparative advantage” and the profit motive and especially the free-market had reduced the South to specialization in cotton monoculture and created an elite that resisted for those reasons building a more diversified economy an instead invested all of its wealth in slavery.”
Agree, but this isn’t an argument against free trade being the most efficient wealth generator. It’s an argument that free trade is unreliable should trade get cut off during war or sanctions (like South Africa). I concede that point, but I do not concede that gov planned economies generate wealth as efficiently as free trade during peacetime. The only reason for gov planning economy is to make sure your most fundamentally important industries are homegrown as a national security strategy, not for general economic benefit. The limitations on free trade would be the price we pay for national security, just like the tax money going to the military is the price we pay for national security, not because having a strong military boosts the economy, except of course in military towns.
Perhaps I am just not seeing all the other dynamic industries and technologies – like those in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea – that are spinoffs of the poultry processing industry. All I see are chicken processing plants which take up residence in some of the poorest towns in Alabama, import a Third World labor force, and offload all the costs of illegal immigration on local taxpayers. My friends in Arkansas and Georgia assure me it is the same story there.
The Mississippi Delta is a great example of a heavily agricultural region where the profits of cotton flow outside the region to non-resident landowners. It also happens to be the poorest part of America with one of the highest unemployment rates. The same is true of the Alabama Black Belt with its timber plantations.
I doubt many of the owners live in NYC. It is more likely they live in the larger cities. I’m familiar with these industries. They bring great wealth only to their owners while holding back economic development for the vast majority of the population. We have the worst of both worlds in the Alabama Black Belt.
Hunter,
“Perhaps I am just not seeing all the other dynamic industries and technologies – like those in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea – that are spinoffs of the poultry processing industry. All I see are chicken processing plants which take up residence in some of the poorest towns in Alabama, import a Third World labor force, and offload all the costs of illegal immigration on local taxpayers. My friends in Arkansas and Georgia assure me it is the same story there.”
I’ve thought of a couple more spinoff industries from the poultry (and we can include swine also) industry:
–mechanics to work on all the trucks. There is a strong swine industry where I live and the companies have their own garages where they service their 18 wheelers. I suppose the poultry companies do the same, but I haven’t seen them.
–manufacturing:
http://choretimepoultry.com/
Of course the examples I’ve given are for the actual growing of birds and transport to the processing plant. Once you get to the processing plants there are more mechanic jobs, more accountant, construction, trucking jobs. My brother has worked as a mechanic in a processing plant for many years now. Prior to that he worked as a mechanic in textile mills, but they went out of the country. I suppose if live chickens and chicken carcasses could be transported as cheap as textiles, then those jobs would have gone out of country by now too.
“The Mississippi Delta is a great example of a heavily agricultural region where the profits of cotton flow outside the region to non-resident landowners.”
…a heavily agricultural region where **SOME OF** the profits of cotton flow outside …
If **ALL** the profits flowed outside the region, then the farmers wouldn’t have any incentive to keep farming would they?
“I doubt many of the owners live in NYC. It is more likely they live in the larger cities. I’m familiar with these industries.”
The founder of Carroll Foods (now part of Murphy Brown/Smithfield Foods) lived in his hometown with his family for the rest of his life.
The founder of Murphy Family Farms lived in his hometown either up until present or up until the time of his death:
http://video.unctv.org/video/2169504153/
The founder of Prestage farms still basses his business in the area where it started:
http://www.prestagefarms.com/company/history/
Goldsboro Milling Company has stayed in it’s hometown:
http://www.waynealliance.org/modules/companies/detail.php?i=19
“They bring great wealth only to their owners while holding back economic development for the vast majority of the population.”
So why do people work for them if they don’t get a share in the wealth?
The swine and poultry business in my region is almost certainly the root cause of:
–hundreds of office jobs, including accountants, secretaries, nutritionists, people to book trucking schedules, etc.
–a second grocery store in my hometown
–a modern, purpose built daycare
–lots of farmers getting to live in nice big brick houses, and drive nicer pickups than they did under sharecropping.
–lots of farm families that can afford to send their kids to private/church schools if they want.
In short, the swine and poultry industries around here have increased the white standard of living tremendously. The unwanted side effect is that immigrants flood in to get a piece of that prosperity.
***The problem is in failure to control border and deport, not in having nice industries.***
Innovation tends to happen in clusters around manufacturing centers and universities. Just look at the map of US patents in the late 19th century and you will find that agricultural regions were largely devoid of new patents.
In the case of peanuts or poultry then, we are producing far more than our own needs require. Most of it is exported and consumed by non-Southerners.
Because of protective tariffs, diversification, and investments in infrastructure, America’s wealth was shifting from the South to the North and had been doing so for thirty years before the war.
Why?
We already derive great economic benefits from the involvement of government in education, energy, infrastructure, and healthcare, as well as the private sector where technologies created by government funding or fostered by government policies created middle class jobs.
As I showed in my review of Alabama’s economy in the 20th century, the poorest parts of Alabama like the Hill Country are the parts with the least government presence where the entrepreneur should have flourished according to free-market economics.
Should free-trade be given credit for all the thousands upon thousands of jobs losses in the US over the past thirty years? Shouldn’t the American worker be doing great after being thrust into “competition” with Mexico, China, Guatemala, etc?
Who were these “sages?” Were they government officials and economics professors? These “sages” aren’t qualified to run a lemonade stand let alone a nation’s economy. Government officials aren’t actors in the “free market.” Consumers, investors, and workers are free market actors.
Where I come from we say “money talks and bullshit walks.” Ford put up money to manufacture automobiles in Japan. That’s serious talk. The “sages” bullshit walks. As determined by the market, Japan was well suited for automobile manufacturing. That alone negates any of your points about “laws of comparative advantage” and that Japan was best suited for the production seafood. The market said otherwise. What government central planners declared isn’t the dreaded free market said otherwise. Therefore your seafood argument doesn’t hold any water.
Ford was actually interested in insourcing (not just exporting) automobile production in Japan.
You are entitled to your opinion on whether it was wise for Japan to allow outside investors. But government prohibitions/restrictions on investment is not an attribute of the free market. This is anti free market. In a free market investors would be free to direct capital to where they judge it’s best allocated. Your narrative that the free market failed Japan and government intervention saved it is falling apart. There was no laissez faire/free market in Japan to begin with.
By the way, if you worked at one of many of the foreign owned manufacturing plants in the South, would you think it would be wise for the government to prohibit foreign investment?
America’s trade negotiators who were trying to sell the Japanese on the newly ascendant free-market, free-trade doctrine of the economists who inspired GATT. I laughed out loud when I came across that story. I will look for the excerpt.
Ford thought that Japan was well-suited as a market for its own exports and that the Japanese should assemble Ford autos like Southerners do today at Toyota plants. In hindsight, Ford, GM, and Chrysler didn’t take the Japanese threat seriously.
Japan and Toyota got where they are at today by defying the “free-market” and taking advantage of American “free-trade” to practice mercantilism.
Ford was interested in expanding its market share in Japan, but discounted the threat posed by Japanese automakers.
Perhaps the Japanese didn’t really believe in the free-market as a development strategy? They certainly believed in markets and trade, but not free-market and free-trade.
That’s not what I am saying at all.
I’m saying the Japanese believed in markets, trade, and private property, as all mercantilists do, but they don’t believe in free-markets, free-trade, laissez-faire. They certainly don’t put the consumer or the individual above their national interest. They don’t believe Japan is just a collection of rights-bearing individualists like Americans do either.
Why not corner the market?
Hunter,
“They don’t believe Japan is just a collection of rights-bearing individualists like Americans do either.”
I’d say this is the key difference that helps the Japanese outcompete us in cars. They probably didn’t have as many unions or worker safety laws, or as high a minimum wage, if there was a minimum wage at all.
The Japanese certainly seem to have new everything whether it is cars or consumer electronics. They don’t seem to have any interest in trading places with Arkansas. Who can blame them?
Hunter,
“The Japanese certainly seem to have new everything whether it is cars or consumer electronics. They don’t seem to have any interest in trading places with Arkansas. Who can blame them?”
I’m a pretty big believer in hbd, not just in raw IQ but also in the varying talents that are included under the IQ umbrella. We don’t have such advanced ways to measure, and there is the egalitarians nightmare of “g” which is “general intelligence.” Yeah, intelligence is usualy pretty general where people that are smart are just all around smart and not in some kind of zero sum balance where being good at math necessarily means being bad at language or creativity. They correlate, but not perfectly. There are subtle differences, such as Asians having much better math (engineering and physics) that whites even though they only have a small IQ advantage. Jews are naturally predisposed to banking, not because of some kind of global Jewish conspiracy, but because of genetics, I’d be willing to bet that their genetics even predispose them to liberalism, rather than it being a conspiracy to take down whites (though there could be a very small fraction that actually do want to take whites down).
If I just look at things from an HBD perspective, it is no wonder at all that Japanese do well in manufacturing, whether cars or electronics. They are a race that is endowed with better engineering skills (on average) than the rest of us. They also as a race probably don’t obsess over income inequality like liberal whites do. They don’t have many blacks to exacerbate the problem either. Therefore, I suspect that their factories just run smoother and more efficiently than ours do. I also suspect they make more use of prison labor than we do, if not in car factories, then probably in other capacities, like making bearings, or brake pads, or putting electronics together.
There is even plenty of HBD among us white races. There is a difference between Scottish and German peoples. Those Germans are good engineers too! They also made a lot of early discoveries in Chemistry. Fred Koch, founder of Koch Industries was a chemist, and with a name like Koch, I suspect he was German.
What does this mean for us Southerners?
Well, I suspect that we are by nature an agrarian people compared to most other whites, though the Midwesterners may be in the same boat. A very high percentage of our ancestors came here to farm; some well heeled English came to be Planters, and a lot of English and Scots came for cheap agricultural land to homestead. If they had been more attracted to clerical or manufacturing professions, they would have probably gone to NY, Boston, or some European city. We Southerners, (and probably Kiwis and Aussies also) are generally descended from farming peoples who came to the New World for cheap farmland while New Englanders are the descendants of the Puritans (which explains a lot of their liberalism today) and other clerical types. New England was more densely populated than the South, so naturally more stuff got invented there, even if you don’t account for HBD.
I am not arguing that we all need to go back to homesteading, but I am arguing, that it is to be expected that our agricultural industries would be stronger than our manufacturing or software. I don’t hold it as a problem at all, in fact I hold it as a good thing, since agriculture is one of the most important things that a country should have homegrown. Also, our energy, metals, and forestry should be homegrown, though to a certain extent, we have to take what nature gives us in that department. If we have these “foundational” sectors, we can withstand most any trade disruption that could happen to us. If we suddenly cannot trade with the outside world, we can start producing our own cars–if we have the steel and energy–but not the other way around. If we make cars, but have to import our food, steel, energy then we are in deep doodoo should there come a problem in being able to get them. This would be repeating the mistake made by the prewar South. They should have grown food and steel at home and let cotton be a less important industry. That way when trade got cut off, they would still have food and steel to carry them in wartime without having to trade.
I think we are already doing very well in agriculture, except that a lot of our grain that we feed our animals comes from the West/Midwest. It would really be advantageous to get them to secede with us.
Agriculture will also keep improving if we invest in biotech and mechanical and chemical engineering. The South today is simply cut out to be a food exporter, and if we can get West Virginia, Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma, Southern Ohio to secede with us, then man oh, man we could be rolling in cheap energy and energy exports.
Looking forward even further, we should have a eugenic society, attracting and admitting mostly high IQ folks, and discouraging our welfaritis whites from breeding. Policies encouraging our homegrown high quality whites to breed more would be good also. Getting rid of nonwhites should be one of the first things on the agenda.
I am not advocating for agriculture as my favorite pet industry, I am advocating for agriculture as one of our best bread and butter industries, for greatest prosperity and general happiness during peacetime, and as a fallback defense strategy should free trade become disrupted. I am not advocating that we go full bore on agriculture and forget mining, energy and forestry either. They need to be among our greatest strengths for the same reasons. Manufacturing will be great also, but during a crisis, you can’t eat new iphones. All these industries overlap and affect one another anyway, so encouraging any one is encouraging them all, though not necessarily equally. Agriculture, forestry, and mining breed manufacturing, and to a certain extent, manufacturing breeds agriculture, forestry, and mining.
‘We’ve been all over the South – Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee – protesting those chicken plants which are magnets for illegal immigration.’
A drop of goods news in a black sea, Sir – the chicken plant (Purdue) in Lewiston-Woodville northeastern North Carolina, is THE employer of the several hundred negroes who live there – and, for that matter, the very religious community has outstanding crime rates – better than most in our state!
Did you ever consider that American trade negotiators did not have Japan’s best interest at heart when they made their recommendation that Japan focus is resources on seafood industry? And what was America’s position over Japan at the time when the recommendation was made? If it was soon after the war, is it possible that American negotiators were seeking to use its position as conqueror to restrict Japan’s domestic manufacturing in order to make a market for American goods? At best, the recommendations by the trade negotiators should only be taken as disingenuous at best. In any case, their recommendations has absolutely nothing to do with the law of comparative advantages and the free market (contrary to your past statements).
Ford had plans to build a steel mill in Japan for the manufacturing of parts. Therefore, Ford’s plans for the Japanese market extended beyond vehicle assembly. Most auto manufacturers seek to have a local supply chain for auto parts.
Ford was barred from entering the Japanese market in any capacity after WWII. There was nothing that could be discounted in terms of their ability to enter the Japanese market.
There is always someone who comes out out ahead regardless of trade policy. For mercantile systems, the elites disproportionately benefit. And these elites care little about the nation than they do about their own well-being.
Jeff Davis,”…“The Alabama Black Belt, the Mississippi Delta, and the Ozarks are all vastly poorer than other parts of the United States.”
That does not mean agriculture and processing made them poor (except for drawing in poor immigrants). It makes them less poor. The immigration problem should be tackled separately and thoroughly…”
I agree with this. A chicken farm could be a high tech business with robots tending the chickens. Chickens could , and will whether you like it or not, be genetically engineered to be easier to raise. One example is chickens could be engineered to be more like herd animals similar to sheep. Then they wouldn’t peck each other to death. They could be trained to come at feed times like cows. There are automatic cow milking stations right now where cows line up to be milked themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/nyregion/with-farm-robotics-the-cows-decide-when-its-milking-time.html
Chickens could be engineered to have a growth phase then in a few weeks time switch to a fat phase to put on weight. The new dirt cheap genetic engineering tech of CRISPR will make genetic engineering extremely more prevalent.
http://gizmodo.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-crispr-the-new-tool-1702114381
What if instead of an annuals wheat grew on a tree? Wheat berries or wheat nuts. Low trees like orange trees with thin shells like a pecan to keep away pest. The possibilities are endless.
This robotization of labor and engineering of all plants will vastly increase the profitability of farming and manufacturing but if the country is filled with aliens we will never be able to get beyond Malthusian limits and the country will continue it’s downward slide.
Sam J,
Thanks for not having an irrational disdain for agriculture.
FYI,
Chickens have already been selectively bred to grow fast. It only takes 6 weeks to produce a broiler.
Genetic, chemical, and mechanical engineering will continue to make agriculture more efficient. It has come so far already. And for national security, it is hard to get more important than food.
Jeff Davis,”…It’s hard to imagine that a country would try to stifle us by cutting off our aircraft parts. I don’t know if our military planes are made from imported parts or not…”
Large amounts of the electronics used are not made here. It’s a huge national security issue. There’s been reams and reams of paper written about it and how bad the problem is but nothing ever happens because there’s no tariff support for electronics. Theoretically if we had a war we would run out of spare parts if the war lasted more than a shot time period. Even worse who knows what hidden code is embedded in the electronics.
Sam J.
“Large amounts of the electronics used are not made here. It’s a huge national security issue. There’s been reams and reams of paper written about it and how bad the problem is but nothing ever happens because there’s no tariff support for electronics. Theoretically if we had a war we would run out of spare parts if the war lasted more than a shot time period. Even worse who knows what hidden code is embedded in the electronics.”
If that’s the case then we need to add that to the list of “must onshore” industries that should be guarded by tariff.