Comment by spwa4
9 days ago
This is not how economists think. They see the US, go "Coal mining, check. Iron mining, check, so you can make steel inside US. More than enough people, check. Oil, check. As well as 1000 other things, and mostly, the checks are there", and conclude the US could produce cheap cars. So if it makes sense or it becomes urgent enough, it will happen. Nothing is really preventing the US from doing everything itself, and doing that will improve the balance of trade (while making Americans much poorer).
In other words, the problem of "The normal USA citizen can't afford a car anymore" can be understood in a different way. That can be fixed, by paying people less (yes, less, really, think about it)
The US can drop it's imports and do essentially everything itself.
Right now people can't afford a car because the US is so equal, meaning they can't compete with labor in India or ... But you could "fix" that, by creating more inequality in the US (do what we effectively do now, worldwide, but within the US. Forbid people immigrating from California to New York. Move all banks to New York, build factories in California. Pay people in California 20% what they make in New York for the same job), and production will move back to the US.
And if that offends you, please understand that's exactly what we're doing now. Just replace California and New York with India or China and New York with, well New York, or Washington, and that's exactly the system we have. That's the system the EU is trying to create in the EU.
Doesn't work that way for exports (EU, or China, or to a lesser extent, India). The EU is an export block that's rich getting out competed by export blocks that are poor ... Now THAT is a difficult problem to solve. Not that EU politicians are even trying.
The US is not doing better because US politicians are better than EU ones. They just have a much easier problem to solve. And, of course, both US and EU politicians are failing, but the consequences are much bigger in the EU.
For example, the EU is in fact making it harder to immigrate WITHIN the block, despite "free movement", and is creating massive differences in pay for the same work, which is apparently what socialism stands for:
Typical after-tax pay for supermarket cashier:
Netherlands: 2550 euro (after tax), for 36 hours of work ~ 15 euro/hour
Greece: 1050 euro (after tax), for 40 hours of work ~ 6 euro/hour
Oh and that's not where it ends. You get way more social protection and medical in the Netherlands ... for paying less in tax. The EU is purposefully creating inequality to solve the problem of rich Dutch people not getting richer fast enough. It's only within the same country that there is less inequality in the EU. And, of course, the EU has been making it worse, not better, for about 18 years now. They're not about to stop. The US hasn't even decently started doing this yet.
Didn't USA get rich by being the manufactoring powerhose in the 60/70s? That wasn't just because USA consumed everything by themselves.
I assume it was a mix of exports and a continuesly growing population keeping this system alive for a long time.
If you know reduce the avg salary down to 1/3, you will get cheaper cars (if you even still need people to make cars, relevant amount of people), but still no one can afford it.
You need to get down from the current price point of 50k down to what? 20k?
Car manufactorers will have to shrink down production, reduce laber numbers, reduce salaries and the avg us american will have to downsize its consumption by a lot.
The USAmericans are at least not taking social security and health care as a human right, after all they don't know it better mh?
No. The US got rich by becoming the manufacturing powerhouse after WW2, and lending enormous amounts to the world (even to the Soviets) so people could actually buy the goods.
The second part played an enormous role too.
But how exactly does the EU promote inequality and make it harder for citizens to migrate?
By creating extra demands you have to satisfy before you can work in a different country, while excluding EU member nationals from social benefits that might allow living without work. It's not allowed to, for example, hold a job in Spain and have your pay deposited in an account in the Netherlands. Or Ireland-France. And they cannot get refugee status visas (which is why non-EU migration is so common now). You'll also be paying double taxes in most cases. And opening a bank account is tied to having a work-visa. And only a Dutch citizen can live in the Netherlands while getting benefits.
So you have to be decently wealthy now to migrate legally in the EU, going up. Which of course achieves exactly what's "needed": poor Greeks/... cannot get away from low Greek wages by simply driving to the Netherlands. Doesn't work. Wage disparities and inequality can grow and grow and grow.
Not that this is going even remotely fast enough for the EU. There is talk now about a "2-speed" EU. Meaning people from the periphery would get less rights (especially when it comes to how much weight their votes carry, but also when it comes to moving)
Companies, by contrast, can easily move to find the cheaper labor. Because, of course they can.
And, because of course, people who "cheat" by not taking benefits or jobs, just making a bit on the side and living in caravans to avoid everything, big example being the Roma, are being hunted by the authorities in 50 different ways. Problem is that mostly they're not doing much of anything wrong, so methods like forcing them through stealing their kids are used (sorry, of course I mean "protecting the kids" through youth services, excuse me, I misspoke. Protecting kids. Not kidnapping kids to pressure the parents).
Oh and it is TOTALLY unreasonable that these people are teaching their kids to directly use violence against anyone come to "help" from the state. Totally, completely, 100% unreasonable. What are you going to do though? When youth services was allowed to use violence against the kids, they massively abused that. For money. For sex. Shooting (yes, really, with a gun) kids slowly leaving the premises. Leaving "troubled" kids in an isolation cell until they commit suicide. Not called that, of course. You'd be surprised how many euphemisms youth services have for both isolation cells for children and for suicides happening on (or immediately after) their watch. Things like this[1] for example have never been named isolation cells, which is what they are, but, loosely translated "time-out room", "separation from everything", "low stimulation room", "TAVA room", "separation from incitement room", "cool down room", "sensory-friendly room", "seclusion room", "safe space" (NEVER trust or go with anyone from youth services talking about safe spaces, unless you're at least 25, and even then) and I'm sure I haven't covered even half of them)
[1] https://www.hadektoys.com/nl/producten/tava