In >,
Bobo Bonobo(R) wrote:
>On Dec 14, 11:07 pm, sf wrote:
>> "The current account trade deficit: In the last 25 years America has
>> gone from the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest
>> debtor nation." http://www.alternet.org/story/28646/
I remember the newspaper articles talking about the trade deficit when
it blew up big along with the budget deficit skyrocketing into the
$200B+/year range. Some mentioned the USA going from greatest creditor
nation to greatest debtor nation in a 4 year stretch, entirely during the
Reagan administration.
There was implication that if we did not need foreign investors and
governments to buy our Treasury bonds, then we would not have to buy as
much of their goods.
Nowadays, the USA is at a competitive disadvantage due to complex
environmental regulations (and to a lesser extent workplace safety
regulations) and a bunch of generally USA-specific costs:
* Employer-funded health insurance
* USA's higher healthcare costs
* USA's higher insurance and liability costs
* USA's higher cost of poverty remediation programs
* USA's cost of "War on Drugs"
* USA's generally higher executive and upper layer pay
American workers have to pay taxes, car insurance, healthcare costs one
way or another, and high costs of services provided by American companies,
and high costs of the few made-in-USA products that Americans still buy.
(This is mostly items with protectionism such as prescription drugs and
sugar, and items where ratio of price to weight or volume are low enough
for shipping costs to impair overseas competition. Those are mainly heavy
appliances, building materials, many paper products, many foods, 4-foot
fluorescent lamps, garden and potting soils, etc.)
So American workers have to be paid more than foreign workers for the
same standard of living!
USA has a couple other USA-specific factors favoring cash outflow from
the nation:
* Less fuel-efficient cars, more commuting by car and longer commutes -
USA imports a lot of oil for that reason.
USA "motor gasoline" consumption over the first 9 months of 2005 was 9.1
million barrels/day.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Usa/Oil.html
At $85 per barrel and 30.4 days per month, assuming consumption rate
same now as then, this is a rate of $23.5 billion/month contribution to
the trade deficit. October's trade deficit was $58 billion.
* Worst-in-the-world middle-of-the-road drug laws!
If we had drug laws like those that my highschool German teacher said
Germany has (or had then), we would not be doing much importing of illegal
drugs. There would be little use of illegal drugs if one gets 2 years in
the joint for getting caught with half a joint!
If we had drug laws like those of 1900, then marijuana, opiates and
cocaine would be legal and we could make our own.
- Don Klipstein )