#tom mullen

[thefreethoughtprojectcom]

Every week the war continues, Russia’s hand gets stronger, not weaker.

Read More: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/antiwar/there-will-be-no-peace-in-ukraine-until-washington-admits-to-itself-it-has-lost-the-war

#TheFreeThoughtProject

[sailor-aesthetics]

Wedding ♡ Makoto

Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.

[gettothedancing]

Even if China continues its high tariffs and other interventions, Americans would still be better off with zero tariffs and completely free trade regarding its imports.

All the arguments for why the US should eliminate its tariffs, even if the Chinese don’t, also apply to China. Whatever money China spends subsidizing its exporters is money that could have been used by a Chinese industry that doesn’t need to be subsidized. Every additional renminbi yuan Chinese consumers are paying for automobiles or other products upon which they place high tariffs is one they no longer have to spend on something else, making the Chinese poorer for all the same reasons US tariffs make Americans poorer.

Contrary to the flawed reasoning pervading most of the political spectrum, China’s economy is not growing faster than America’s because of its protectionism and other government interventions. It’s growing faster despite them.

China has a population north of 1.4 billion people. If the whole world were laissez-faire, China would have the largest economy in the world. It has been the relative freedom of the US economy compared to China’s that has made the US economy larger. It is only the persistence of relatively more state interventions, even in the post-communist era, that has kept China from becoming the largest economy already.

For labor-intensive manufacturing, China has a huge comparative advantage over the United States. Not only does it have a labor force whose standard of living was kept artificially low for decades under communism, but its sheer size also tends to drive labor costs lower due to simple supply and demand relationships. If China’s economy were somehow transformed instantly to laissez-faire tomorrow, even more manufacturing jobs would move there, not fewer.

If this seems foreboding, it’s not. Let’s not forget that US manufacturing output hasn’t dropped significantly as the jobs have left. Most US manufacturing jobs have been lost to automation, while manufacturing output has remained high. This makes perfect economic sense in a country that has a much smaller labor force than China’s—the labor-intensive manufacturing moves there, while the automated manufacturing develops here.

[gettothedancing]

As secession movements all over the world gain force, it's reasonable to assume those feelings will come to the US.

One thing is certain. The political currents in this union are gathering force and they are headed somewhere, just as they are all over the world. But while Catalonia, Scotland, Venice, and Tibet have no other choice but secession, the United States of America do. The Constitution as written already provides for local control over most political matters with a very limited central authority for defense and a few other functions. And while “get back to the Constitution” as a positive solution is at this point the subject of well-justified ridicule, it very well may be a realistic outcome of whatever conflagration lies ahead.