Friedman is one of the architects of the disastrous neo-liberal economics that emerged in the mid 80's that has exasperated wealth disparity since. The economy needs guard rails else people get unnecessarily or excessively exploited; the environment gets polluted, wealth gets syphoned out of the middle and lower classes etc.
What's interesting is that there are a lot of policies he was in favor of that probably would've been popular with the left. He was in favor of carbon taxation to stop companies from polluting. He pushed for a negative income tax to help the poor. NIT is basically a form of universal basic income. He believed in giving everyone a catastrophic health insurance plan to help against major medical costs a la Singapore's universal healthcare system. The right just tends to ignore these guard rail policy suggestions and just push his ideas for lower taxation, lower regulations, and less government.
Friedman does not consider in this video the national security concern of the US being unable to produce steel. If we outsourced all of our steel to china, and a war broke out, which imperiled the shipping relationship between china and the US, the US would be unable to make steel for a few months. A disaster.
With respect to batteries, raw materials and battery tech, the present moment is almost exactly described by that first paragraph.
Friedman also fails to consider the value of having the money directly in the USA vs "being sent to japan". An american worker who gets paid by american consumers will turn around and spend their american dollars in american restaurants, groceries, car dealerships, barbershops, houses, and so on. When a japanese employee gets paid by american consumers, the money goes to the same facilities in JAPAN, not the USA. The japanese probably spend a portion of the money on american services; but it will be less than if the money were kept in the USA.
Now, the Japanese are simply going to be so much more efficient at making some things, like rice cookers, and there is no point in america trying to outcompete the world on all production. We just can't. But there are a lot of things we ought to keep in-house. Be it for national security concerns. Be it for general raw materials like copper we can mine perfectly well in the states, with better safety and environmental regulations than places like Africa. And just because Americans should have some things that it makes exceedingly well for which we obtain a reputation. There was once a time when construction and power tools were predominantly made in the USA. We used to make things in this country for the country's consumers and life was better for it.
Blanket tariffs bad. Targeted tariffs for national security, are a tool that ought to be wielded to protect certain industries from being shipped overseas.
yeah, this. It'd be one thing if we said "Canada. Love you bro. Hey, I know we import lumber from you but we currently have a distressed domestic lumber industry and some of our people in the industry are hurting a bit, so we need to be a bit more competitive at home with a tariff to incentivize domestic purchasing on lumber. Times change, strategies change but know that we are firm friends and allies. Not trying to fuck with you"
Instead, Trump went "fuck you canada, and your drugs and illegals! You're not even a country, you're a vassal state you'd be nothing with out us. We are going to make you our 51st state, it will happen and your Prime Minister is just a governor. Eat a dick, take our tariffs and if you retaliate, we'll tariff you harder, and if you try and form alliances with other countries, we will tariff you even harder than that"
Exactly I'm Canadian and if you guys just negotiated a deal that would be fine. In fact we did negotiate a deal with your President but he just flip-flopped and says it's bad now. I find it interesting that he is wanting us to bend but isn't willing to give us anything, merely the stick. Next step will be us throwing export fees on things and massively fining the Mag 7.
Yeah people don’t understand it’s a closed system excess dollars have to go somewhere either buying American products or investing in US dollar stocks and bonds
Question what do the Japanese do with the extra US dollars ? No one will accept them in Japan they have no use. So the only thing they can do is 1 buy American products or 2 invest in American denominated stocks or bonds.
If Japan declared war, they wouldn't be able to use the green paper we gave them anymore. Also what will the Japanese do with the dollars they don't spend on American goods and services?
You guys seem to think that banks dont exist. The banks need to hold JPY and USD, they are neutral. When a US bank sets up in Japan, it has to obtain a pile of JPY. when they transfer a bunch of JPY to someone for USD, they have to replenish their JPY stores.
The point of my previous post is that purchasing power is transferred from american workers to japanese workers when you transfer say, shoe companies, to japan from the USA. That's just a fact. I agree with Friedman, that the visible vs invisible workers issue is a problem.
And I will add one more problem. the spigot of money is flowing out of the US economy somewhat, and the owners of the company are lapping at the spigot taking as much as they can drink in. For a company like apple, thats a gross margin of 50%, and a profit margin of 25%. The money shifts from getting paid to workers to getting paid to owners, aka, the top 10% of the country. The workers get fucked and the owners make bank. Thus contributing to our income inequality ever more. So it has been since the 1980s.
If there were only one country in the world that produced steel, the concern about sourcing steel in the event that one producer turns hostile would be more legitimate. But that's not the world we live in. Many countries produce steel (including the US, so I'm not sure why we're talking about steel specifically, but anyway). Most of those countries are not hostile to the US.
Friedman economics is the enshittification of capitalism. Capitalism before Friedman was viable, after Friedman it has removed all the humanity from the market. The market exists to serve humans.
Yep. He didn't know at the time was that money would end up being held by billionaires and used to purchase assets like houses and stocks instead of goods and services being produced. His shareholder theory has become the dominant ethics of business. Friedman expected the government to put in rules to keep competition high but instead we got competitors merging together and regulatory capture so corporations could squeeze the people further.
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u/pomod 2d ago
Friedman is one of the architects of the disastrous neo-liberal economics that emerged in the mid 80's that has exasperated wealth disparity since. The economy needs guard rails else people get unnecessarily or excessively exploited; the environment gets polluted, wealth gets syphoned out of the middle and lower classes etc.