bunsen burner said:
Please answer these two questions:
1) Why are countries going to agree to free trade when it is at a disadvantage to them? (And please don't tell me it is an advantage to everyone because your year 11 economics text book said so.)
2) So Australia go free trade for the benefit of the world as a solution to achieve world peace (your words). We produce what we are good at and we do away with industries that we can import cheaper from other countries. How do we get 93% employment in a select few industries such as wheat, sheep, and tourism? Last time I checked we only had a certain amount of arable land of which nearly all is currently used.
Oh please let me 1st humbly apologise for not having been on the internet last night, and having been on the road all day for work. maybe I should have taken a sickie and stayed on all night just so I could answer your posts BB. This is in reference to your stupid post that accuses me of "Just look at ff right now. Wants to have internation free trade but will fail to answer my question where enough jobs will come from for Australians in a select few industries." So sorry you have no life and are on this thing all bloody night. No wonder you have no views you clearly do nothing but rant on BF.
1) I take it your question acknowledges that Free trade is the best scenario, but the problem is in getting there. I agree. Well I advocate Australia getting stuck in with the WTO, IMF, WB and all that jazz in a committed manner, given that they are the organisations that appear to be in control of the golbal free-trade mandate. This is however conditional to a complete overhaul of the WTO et al so that it actually becomes an organisation based on real free trade, not some mega-corporation focused free-trade.
The disadvantage is in the SHORT TERM, so the individual governments need to put in place transitional strategies to enable a shift in what that country focusses on. Just like the Labor Forest policy - only not put together in 20 minutes and released 1 week from an election so that no one gives it a chance and instead tells them to quite legitimately ******** off.
2) You can keep thinking that I said Free trade = world peace because I once suggested it was something the west could do that would make progress in terms of a peaceful and just planet. You are just going to have to face the facts that I am looking after the global population and you are looking after yourself. It is an ideological difference that is not going to be overcome in this post. The bottom line is that in all those other countries, wealth and industrialisation drives up wages and living conditions and narrows the gap in terms of ability to produce cheap goods. Look at the way that the Asian car market jumps from country to country every few years because another one becomes the cheaper place to produce. Yes they complain at the time, but when all the dust settles they realise they have moved on and actually there are new economies.
We have record employment (all the libs tell me so) and yet our manufacturing sector is at an all time low. Hang on that can;t be right, we have lost jobs to overseas and yet we have massive employment - something can't be right here.
Maybe we should ramp up import duties on clothes so that we can get the textile industry back so that all the people who now have better jobs can leave them and go and work in a sewing sweat shop for $5 an hour.
Just go back 50 years and see what everyone worked in then, compared to now, and have a look at all the industries that have changed?? It is astounding and yet we are booming not busting.
I don;t have all the answers, you will suggest I have none of them, but a long term strategy to free trade, over a period of time that allows us to adjust, is not ignorant, stupid or naive.