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From: keller@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: (implies? 'Republican 'free-market) - (nf)
Message-ID: <6355@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Mar-84 22:43:40 EST
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Posted: Fri Mar 23 22:43:40 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Mar-84 12:42:06 EST
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#N:uicsl:16300057:000:1968
uicsl!keller    Mar 23 22:12:00 1984

By way of introduction...
In the latest National Review is an article by William R. Hawkins on
"Neomercantilism: Is There a Case for Tariffs?" After this article are
replies by John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman. I got this wonderful
quote from the Galbraith response.

	"Professor Hawkins accuses the Reagan Administration of
	stepping back from this interventionist tradition, and
	here I am forced to say that he is a trifle unfair. Anyone
	contemplating the textile quotas, the restraints on steel
	and automobile imports, the unprecedented subsidy to American
	farmers, the partial IMF bailout of the banks, and the other
	bank-rescue operations will not be so persuaded. It has
	long been the rhetorical genius of American Republicans that
	they talk eloquently, even righteously, and with infinite
	tedium about the free market without feeling it necessary
	to accept its necessarily painful aspects in practice."

Well, I'll judge the pain when I experience the system, but this is a
point that the Libertarians use to much advantage; the Republicans are
not active creators of a free market.

Of course I loved Milton's response in which he claims that an increasing
trade deficit does not cause a loss of jobs, and that the cheap labor of
the third world nations will not cause domestic high unemployment due to
global labor competition. He gives a description of the mess that protective
tariffs and other industrial policy measures have made of the steel industry.
Steel has been sheltered from competition since the 1950's and the result
has not only been a lack of motivation to modernize and artificially high
prices, but an unjustified high wage for steel workers. The steel workers
ratio of average hourly earnings relative to the average hourly earnings
for all U.S. manufacturing was 1.57 in 1980. Talk about government for the
rich! And we can thank both parties for that I'm sure.

-Shaun

p.s. What's a Gary-Jesse ticket?  Hart and Soul.