Elizabeth Warren proves to be just another special interest hack - comes out against free trade agreement

[TacticalLoco]

So Elizabeth Warren is special interest hack and that special interest group is american people?

So Elizabeth Warren is special interest hack and that special interest group is american people?

Nope, try again, think harder.

And don't forget to sprinkle the magic faery dust of the free market around while you do.

(It warms my heart to see an actual liberal casting fear into the conservative blood suckers and their minions.)

 

[Axulus]

(It warms my heart to see an actual liberal casting fear into the conservative blood suckers and their minions.)

A good reason why you far leftists will never have the political power you desire. You blame the rich for brain washing the masses with their slick advertising to make them "vote against their own interests". The politicians and the elections just HAVE to be bought and the masses just too dumb to know better. You can't understand why the voters don't go for the people you support en masse. Yet it's the toxic economic ideas that infect the left in religious like fashion that turns the mainstream away. Until you realize that, you'll just have to keep using your scapegoat of the "blood suckers" as the voters continue to turn away from them time after time after time, it must be the blood suckers that are at fault because your economic ideas are sacred and infallible and perfect.

 

[lpetrich]

I tend to think free trade can only work among similar economies.

That's the most sensible thing that anyone has said in this thread so far. Free trade is relatively successful among similar economies, but it causes disruptions and worse among dissimilar ones.

These so-called free trade agreements are nothing more than investor rights agreements.

You've obviously never worked at a company that was subject to new foreign competition.

So you'd welcome competition from Chinese prison camps? Complete with being absolutely overjoyed with your superiors reducing your wages to poverty levels, to the point where you'd have to live like a bum on what you earn.

It's interesting how many economically misinformed people exist on the left.

I will concede that the Left is not very good at presenting itself as geniuses on economics. It's better at stating goals than means, it often seems.

But there are more things in Heaven and Earth than Randroid business-leader worship, which is what all the rhetoric about "the market" boils down to in practice.

Only a subset of Americans are workers. Everyone is a consumer. Therefore, a policy that benefits consumers benefits a much larger segment of society.

Axulus, I thought that you and your fellow right-wingers were opposed to income without work. Now you are saying that workers ought to support non-workers and get essentially nothing in return but gulag-level subsistence.

Furthermore, where do consumers get their money from? Axulus, you and your friends seem like you think that consumers don't earn even a penny of their money and instead go out each day and pick money from money trees in their yards. Yes, money trees.

 

[untermensche]

These so-called free trade agreements are nothing more than investor rights agreements.

And they do benefit the most wealthy. The owning class. The people that own a lot. More than the average person could comprehend.

And hurt just about everyone else.

These agreements are merely the objectification of unmitigated greed and callousness.

To praise them, especially without even reading them, is an obscenity.

You've obviously never worked at a company that was subject to new foreign competition.

You obviously never purchase items either, otherwise you'd realize the price declines and quality improvements in industries that are subject to new foreign competition. In your world, in the 70's, you'd love to just have the option to purchase a shitty, gas guzzling, polluting and relatively unsafe Ford, GM or Chrysler vehicle.

In case after case as price declines so does quality of goods.

In terms of cars, the price has increased as quality increased. And many safety standards and fuel economy standards had to be forced upon the auto manufacturers.

If the auto makers had THEIR way we would still be driving the gas guzzlers of the 70's.

 

[ksen]

That's the most sensible thing that anyone has said in this thread so far. Free trade is relatively successful among similar economies, but it causes disruptions and worse among dissimilar ones.

These so-called free trade agreements are nothing more than investor rights agreements.

You've obviously never worked at a company that was subject to new foreign competition.

So you'd welcome competition from Chinese prison camps? Complete with being absolutely overjoyed with your superiors reducing your wages to poverty levels, to the point where you'd have to live like a bum on what you earn.

It's interesting how many economically misinformed people exist on the left.

I will concede that the Left is not very good at presenting itself as geniuses on economics. It's better at stating goals than means, it often seems.

But there are more things in Heaven and Earth than Randroid business-leader worship, which is what all the rhetoric about "the market" boils down to in practice.

Only a subset of Americans are workers. Everyone is a consumer. Therefore, a policy that benefits consumers benefits a much larger segment of society.

Axulus, I thought that you and your fellow right-wingers were opposed to income without work. Now you are saying that workers ought to support non-workers and get essentially nothing in return but gulag-level subsistence.

Furthermore, where do consumers get their money from? Axulus, you and your friends seem like you think that consumers don't earn even a penny of their money and instead go out each day and pick money from money trees in their yards. Yes, money trees.

Why they get their spending money from their quarterly bond interest payments and stock dividends.

 

[ksen]

You've obviously never worked at a company that was subject to new foreign competition.

You obviously never purchase items either, otherwise you'd realize the price declines and quality improvements in industries that are subject to new foreign competition. In your world, in the 70's, you'd love to just have the option to purchase a shitty, gas guzzling, polluting and relatively unsafe Ford, GM or Chrysler vehicle.

In case after case as price declines so does quality of goods.

In terms of cars, the price has increased as quality increased. And many safety standards and fuel economy standards had to be forced upon the auto manufacturers.

If the auto makers had THEIR way we would still be driving the gas guzzlers of the 70's.

I don't know about you but when I want to buy something of the highest quality I run down to Dollar General.

 

[Playball40]

Why do I keep hearing Ross Perot in my head?

 

[Nice Squirrel]

(It warms my heart to see an actual liberal casting fear into the conservative blood suckers and their minions.)

A good reason why you far leftists will never have the political power you desire. You blame the rich for brain washing the masses with their slick advertising to make them "vote against their own interests". The politicians and the elections just HAVE to be bought and the masses just too dumb to know better.

I do believe you are starting to understand politics. Take a look at Kansas for instance.

Yet it's the toxic economic ideas that infect the left in religious like fashion that turns the mainstream away.

What toxic ideas are you speaking of?

 

[ksen]

(It warms my heart to see an actual liberal casting fear into the conservative blood suckers and their minions.)

A good reason why you far leftists will never have the political power you desire. You blame the rich for brain washing the masses with their slick advertising to make them "vote against their own interests". The politicians and the elections just HAVE to be bought and the masses just too dumb to know better. You can't understand why the voters don't go for the people you support en masse. Yet it's the toxic economic ideas that infect the left in religious like fashion that turns the mainstream away. Until you realize that, you'll just have to keep using your scapegoat of the "blood suckers" as the voters continue to turn away from them time after time after time, it must be the blood suckers that are at fault because your economic ideas are sacred and infallible and perfect.

You mean the "toxic economic ideas" that has lead to the economy usually performing better under Democratic administrations?

Yeah, those suck.

 

[SimpleDon]

One thing that's not clear to me, what's to stop a country from refusing to or hindering or undermining the judgement of an ISDS? The theoretical loss of sovereignty is obvious, but what enforcement mechanism does it have?

A global fast food company sues the city of Seattle over its minimum wage, and wins an ISDS judgement. The city of Seattle says we ain't changing no law and we ain't paying, have a nice day. The people of Seattle organize a boycott, and the global FFC now can't staff it's locations or move any product. Now what? The city govt arrested and martial law declared? By whom? The state? The Feds? The Super Corporate Police?

My parents had a retirement home on Lake Superior, and my father was interested in Great Lakes issues. One book I read described, among other things, a Canadian businessman who tried to fill a ship with lake water, sail to SE Asia, and sell it. He filled out all of the necessary paperwork, everything legit. When the govt woke up to what he was doing, they moved to stop him. Subsequently, when the GL states and Canada were developing the GL Compact, a consultant was hired to advise how to prevent that from reoccurring. His answer was that they couldn't prevent it, and so should focus on developing their terms of sale. This is at least ten years ago. My point is that this view of markets running the globe has apparently been in the works for some time now. But we never hear about it.

The judgements from ISDS case are monetary, not punitive. The law wouldn't be changed, the offended party would be paid a monetary award paid by the tax payers to compensate for damages. It is turning the relationship between the government and the commercial entities a little more on its ear. Government in the past as a neutral set the ground rules for businesses to compete with in and enforced those rules to assure some degree of fairness and to introduce factors that the commercial transaction wouldn't otherwise take into account, what economists call externalities, worker safety, not polluting, etc. It is now moving further toward the government being responsible for reducing the risk of business and guaranteeing profits. If the government and the people want a clean environment they should pay businesses directly to provide it, for example. Business shouldn't have to pay to now have to clean up their processes because they didn't have to in the past when they went into business. In other words by squatter's rights they have the right to pollute and by taking that right away the government should liable because they changed the rules.

 

[SimpleDon]

Since Axulus is no longer replying his own thread, its pretty much to be assumed we have effectively convinced him of his utter and complete ignorance in this matter. But just too bad we can not convince our bought and paid for congressmen.

I think that this was suppose to be a self-evident out rage thread. That it wasn't evident to all I suspect was a disappointment.

 

[Horatio Parker]

One thing that's not clear to me, what's to stop a country from refusing to or hindering or undermining the judgement of an ISDS? The theoretical loss of sovereignty is obvious, but what enforcement mechanism does it have?

A global fast food company sues the city of Seattle over its minimum wage, and wins an ISDS judgement. The city of Seattle says we ain't changing no law and we ain't paying, have a nice day. The people of Seattle organize a boycott, and the global FFC now can't staff it's locations or move any product. Now what? The city govt arrested and martial law declared? By whom? The state? The Feds? The Super Corporate Police?

My parents had a retirement home on Lake Superior, and my father was interested in Great Lakes issues. One book I read described, among other things, a Canadian businessman who tried to fill a ship with lake water, sail to SE Asia, and sell it. He filled out all of the necessary paperwork, everything legit. When the govt woke up to what he was doing, they moved to stop him. Subsequently, when the GL states and Canada were developing the GL Compact, a consultant was hired to advise how to prevent that from reoccurring. His answer was that they couldn't prevent it, and so should focus on developing their terms of sale. This is at least ten years ago. My point is that this view of markets running the globe has apparently been in the works for some time now. But we never hear about it.

The judgements from ISDS case are monetary, not punitive. The law wouldn't be changed, the offended party would be paid a monetary award paid by the tax payers to compensate for damages. It is turning the relationship between the government and the commercial entities a little more on its ear. Government in the past as a neutral set the ground rules for businesses to compete with in and enforced those rules to assure some degree of fairness and to introduce factors that the commercial transaction wouldn't otherwise take into account, what economists call externalities, worker safety, not polluting, etc. It is now moving further toward the government being responsible for reducing the risk of business and guaranteeing profits. If the government and the people want a clean environment they should pay businesses directly to provide it, for example. Business shouldn't have to pay to now have to clean up their processes because they didn't have to in the past when they went into business. In other words by squatter's rights they have the right to pollute and by taking that right away the government should liable because they changed the rules.

So, in my example, the Feds would pay for Seattle's transgressions.

 

[SimpleDon]

The PRC had very high tariffs on any imported products that competed with their domestic ones, when I was familiar with their trade policies, ending about ten years ago. In addition they manipulated their currency to lessen its value against the dollar to make US imports more expensive, which would have lessened recently with the general appreciation of the dollar.

I don't think the tariffs are as high now as they were but we still are likely to get requests to bring <x> with us when we go because it's cheaper here. (This is quite apart from the requests for American versions of <x> in preference to the local stuff.)

We would bring large groups of Chinese customers and consultants over to the US for progress meetings for the plants that we built in China. They would all return to China with massive amounts of purchases that they made here. A surprisingly large portion of which was originally made in China. The goods were high quality trade goods that were not widely available in China even though they were made there.

In working for a German company in the US I got to participate in a micro version of the international trade in consumer goods. We had shipments of parts going both ways nearly on a weekly basis. American parts and subassemblies going to Germany to be incorporated into the German equipment and German parts coming over to go into the US equipment. Ours was a turntable business, we were building equipment largely sold in third countries. As a result we didn't have to pay duties on the shipments.

Most of this was containerized shipments and the containers were never full so naturally we would buy consumer goods for each other. We shipped the Germans tennis rackets, snow skis, blue jeans, personal computers, motorcycles, vintage cars, etc. The oddest thing that we shipped to Germany was large cans of Crisco. They used it in the employees' dining room.

The Germans shipped us bread, wine, cheese, soccer kit, metric tools, and even automobiles, we had a trading partnership with Audi.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

(It warms my heart to see an actual liberal casting fear into the conservative blood suckers and their minions.)

A good reason why you far leftists will never have the political power you desire. You blame the rich for brain washing the masses with their slick advertising to make them "vote against their own interests". The politicians and the elections just HAVE to be bought and the masses just too dumb to know better. You can't understand why the voters don't go for the people you support en masse. Yet it's the toxic economic ideas that infect the left in religious like fashion that turns the mainstream away. Until you realize that, you'll just have to keep using your scapegoat of the "blood suckers" as the voters continue to turn away from them time after time after time, it must be the blood suckers that are at fault because your economic ideas are sacred and infallible and perfect.

You have a point, but so do they. Yes, some on the left fail to see why their policies won't be popular and blindly over-attribute it to people "voting against their own interests" due to sly crafty politicians on the right. But there also do exist sly and crafty politicians on the right that do get people to vote against their interests. What really works for the right is their alliance between the economic and social aspects. Some people are quite happy to destroy their own economic prospects if it means they hold up to their social and religious ideals. people on the right are also more prone to authoritarianism and groupishness, so that also plays a role.

 

[SimpleDon]

I tend to think free trade can only work among similar economies.

Greg Mankiw in the article that I referenced said that Adam Smith advocated "free" trade. This is not true. Quoting James Galbreath from his book The Predator State,

Yet Smith himself was conscious of the risks of foreign trade. His immortal phrase the ‘invisible hand’ is usually cited nowadays in support of an unfettered market, but in fact Smith coined it as part of an argument against gratuitous foreign trade. He wrote that it is a preference for one’s own security that leads one to purchase the products of one’s own country–and so, “as if led by an invisible hand,” to promote the interests of the community of which one forms a part. Something similar could be said for a ‘Buy America’ campaign. Smith was wary, in other words, of too much reliance on communities whose interests might not accord with one’s own, and essentially because distant foreigners could not necessarily be relied on to execute a fair contract. His anxieties have many counterparts in the modern.

Greg Mankiw has always been very interesting to me. He is beyond brilliant, truly one of the best economics minds out there. He has an amazing gift of being able to explain complex subjects and to make them seem simpler. Reading one of his books is like attending a graduate seminar, he answers your questions about a point at almost the instant that the question occurs to you. But he is also a political hack. He tries to sniff out the Republican most likely to win the nomination for president and to say and do anything to engrain himself with them to secure a position in any Republican administration. That includes doing things like this article pandering to the lowest common denominator of movement conservatism. In short, he is the Lawrence Summers of the right.

 

[SimpleDon]

These so-called free trade agreements are nothing more than investor rights agreements.

And they do benefit the most wealthy. The owning class. The people that own a lot. More than the average person could comprehend.

And hurt just about everyone else.

These agreements are merely the objectification of unmitigated greed and callousness.

To praise them, especially without even reading them, is an obscenity.

You've obviously never worked at a company that was subject to new foreign competition.

You obviously never purchase items either, otherwise you'd realize the price declines and quality improvements in industries that are subject to new foreign competition. In your world, in the 70's, you'd love to just have the option to purchase a shitty, gas guzzling, polluting and relatively unsafe Ford, GM or Chrysler vehicle.

But foreign trade doesn't, as you have asserted, always resulted in lower prices and higher quality. Unfortunately for you and your argument supporting TTIP, the 1970's automobile trade that forced all of these marvels occurred twenty years before these so-called free trade agreements. In the days of I suppose, unfree trade.

What these agreements have created is captive trade. Where we don't have competition between foreign companies and domestic companies, we have domestic companies forcing domestic labor to compete against foreign labor. The point of which isn't to lower prices or to improve quality, we don't as you pointed out need these agreements to do that. The purpose of these agreements is to lower wages and to increase profits.

You need to think about the question that I asked before. What is wrong with this picture, capital investment is down but profits are up. How do you explain this with your understanding of economics? I will give you a hint, according to at least Mankiw's economics profits are the wages of investment. It is should therefore follow that if offshoring results in lower capital investment, which I think that we can agree that it does, then shouldn't it follow that profits should go down and not up as they have?

 

[SimpleDon]

The judgements from ISDS case are monetary, not punitive. The law wouldn't be changed, the offended party would be paid a monetary award paid by the tax payers to compensate for damages. It is turning the relationship between the government and the commercial entities a little more on its ear. Government in the past as a neutral set the ground rules for businesses to compete with in and enforced those rules to assure some degree of fairness and to introduce factors that the commercial transaction wouldn't otherwise take into account, what economists call externalities, worker safety, not polluting, etc. It is now moving further toward the government being responsible for reducing the risk of business and guaranteeing profits. If the government and the people want a clean environment they should pay businesses directly to provide it, for example. Business shouldn't have to pay to now have to clean up their processes because they didn't have to in the past when they went into business. In other words by squatter's rights they have the right to pollute and by taking that right away the government should liable because they changed the rules.

So, in my example, the Feds would pay for Seattle's transgressions.

I not sure but I think so. After all the treaty is between the US and the foreign governmeNT, not between Seattle and a foreign government.

 

[SimpleDon]

(It warms my heart to see an actual liberal casting fear into the conservative blood suckers and their minions.)

A good reason why you far leftists will never have the political power you desire. You blame the rich for brain washing the masses with their slick advertising to make them "vote against their own interests". The politicians and the elections just HAVE to be bought and the masses just too dumb to know better. You can't understand why the voters don't go for the people you support en masse. Yet it's the toxic economic ideas that infect the left in religious like fashion that turns the mainstream away. Until you realize that, you'll just have to keep using your scapegoat of the "blood suckers" as the voters continue to turn away from them time after time after time, it must be the blood suckers that are at fault because your economic ideas are sacred and infallible and perfect.

I'm not not a leftist, much less a far leftist, but can I answer please?

I have discovered what should have been obvious to me all along, almost no one is interested in economics, only in what it is conclusions are and what it means to them, if they think about it at all. Most of those who do think about it are only interested in supporting their political beliefs. Conservatives believe in the free market and free trade because in the US conservatives are anti-government, at least anti-central government anti-labor and pro-corporations. Liberals are pro-central government and pro-labor, anti-corporations. Neither have widespread support in economics. Like most things in this life economics supports the middle ground, a balance between the extremes.

I generally only argue against conservatives because movement conservatism and their brand of simplistic common sense economics has directed most of our economic policies for so long. The economic problems that we see now are on them, caused by their policies and their economics. It has to change. We can't stand more rounds of ever larger asset bubbles popping because we have too much financial capital floating around. It is dangerous to let the financial markets grow to dominate the real economy of making products for consumption and paying wages to most of the population instead of dividends to the few.

One of the main reasons that we are in this economic spiral of ever increasing instability is because the left has followed your advice and has adopted the economics of the right and of the wealthy instead of developing their own economic agenda to benefit the non-rich, the 99% of the population who is I assume the special interest group that you refer to in your OP.

So what is your point about the already rich and economics?

Do you believe that the rich are spreading their propaganda to get people to vote against the rich people's best interests? That sounds naive.

Or perhaps you believe that the rich are offering a completely neutral version of the one true economics and letting the people decide to keep pumping an ever increasing percentage of the nation's income to the rich?

I don't see any great understanding on the right of even the economics that you claim to believe in. Prove me wrong and answer my question about capital investment and profits. Then maybe we can start to discover if your brand of economics has any validity to the economy that we have today.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Here's what Obama sez:

“This is the notion that corporate America will be able to use this provision to eliminate our financial regulations and our food safety regulations and our consumer regulations. That’s just bunk. It’s not true.

“ISDS is a form of dispute resolution. It’s not new. There are over 3,000 different ISDS agreements among countries across the globe. And this neutral arbitration system has existed since the 1950s. The United States has investment agreements with 54 different countries over the last 30 years. Under these various ISDS provisions, the U.S. has been sued a total of 17 times. Thirteen of those cases have been decided so far. We’ve won them all. They have no ability to undo U.S. laws. They don’t have the ability to result in punitive damages.

“ISDS has come under some legitimate criticism, when they’re poorly written, because they’ve been used in particular by some tobacco countries in some countries to challenge anti-tobacco regulation. That’s why we have made sure that some of the legitimate criticisms around past ISDS provisions are tightened, are strengthened, so that there is no possibility of smaller countries or weaker countries getting clobbered by the legal departments of somebody like R.J. Reynolds so that they can’t pass anti-smoking regulations.

“That is a more legitimate concern for some of the other signatories to the deal, who would not be able to manage expensive litigation, than it is an argument that our laws would be challenged. One of the main reasons that ISDS is important is because, in a lot of these countries, U.S. companies are discriminated against, and going through their court system does not give them relief. Part of our goal here is to make sure that there is a neutral process that is legally recognized, so that if an arbitrary burden or tax or tariff is imposed on a U.S. company in these countries, that they have recourse to a fair, impartial venue to resolve it. Foreign countries already have that here in the U.S….

“The whole notion that somehow Dodd Frank is going to be challenged by corporations under this is just not true.”

To which Sen Sherrod Brown responds:

“Under ‘investor state’ provisions, a foreign company can mount trade challenges against laws and regulations. President Obama’s remarks would lead people to believe that American companies have no other recourse than ISDS when it comes to discrimination in a foreign market. However, there is country-to-country dispute settlement. That means American companies can ask our government – through the United States Trade Representative – to initiate a case with a foreign government if they feel they are being discriminated against. There is no need to extend this ability to corporations seeking to maximize profits by challenging government regulations they don’t like in an extrajudicial system with rulings that are divorced from precedent.

“State, local, and federal governments shouldn’t have to be looking over their shoulder every time they decide to pass a public health measure, or deny a permit for environmental reasons. The mere threat of costly litigation can impose a chilling effect on efforts – in the U.S. and among TPP countries – on passing laws or finalizing regulations that may be challenged under ISDS.

“If the argument for including investor-state in our trade agreements is to ensure that American investors have adequate protections, then why isn’t our goal to improve the legal systems in our trading partners so that they can develop their own property rights and strengthen their judicial institutions? We seek to improve institutions and raise standards in other areas, like labor standards, but in the legal system, we prefer to set up an alternative system of arbitration panels totally separate from the courts.”

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You've obviously never worked at a company that was subject to new foreign competition.

You obviously never purchase items either, otherwise you'd realize the price declines and quality improvements in industries that are subject to new foreign competition. In your world, in the 70's, you'd love to just have the option to purchase a shitty, gas guzzling, polluting and relatively unsafe Ford, GM or Chrysler vehicle.

Yeah. I'm in an industry that's been ravaged by competition. Do I care about the foreign competitors? No, other than as a short-term problem it's a non-issue. The quality of outsourced coding leaves a lot to be desired.

What really hurts is the H1-B workers. They're here, working under American managers and getting heavily subsidized by the advantages of living here and the shot at a green card. That's no longer honest competition.