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发帖数: 38600 | 1 美国人的分析：
"Companies have been offshoring production, at the demand of shareholders,
because they regard labor as a cost to be endured, not as an investment to
be developed. Labor is most company's largest cost, and they have cut it 75
%-90% by shipping manufacturing overseas. That 35% tariff might be close,
but how are the terms going to be defined? If a company buys 8" squares of
terrycloth from Bangladesh and has "Made In USA" labels stitched on them by
slaves in American Samoa, that's been considered a 100% American product,
for decades. I sat in a hotel ballroom in Shanghai and heard Jennifer
Hillman (former International Trade Commission and WTO board member) explain
this in 2007.
The costs of Unemployment and Welfare are very small compared to the amounts
of money spent on banking bailouts, and the amount of money that can be
saved through labor arbitrage.
Obamacare is certainly a monstrosity, but it's one that has been coming on
since at least the Nixon Administration. There's been no serious attempt to
address cost in healthcare finance. When I was billed $2,500 to get a
sliver out from under my fingernail, but nearly $2,000 of that was simply
waived due to my insurance company's negotiation with the clinic (which they
owned), leaving my to pay $500 because I have a $10,000 deductible, what is
the true cost of the procedure? Obviously something less than $500. Yet
had I had no insurance, they'd have billed me $2,500, and sent collectors
after me on Day 15. And I've been billed anywhere between $.05 to $5.00 per
pill for generic Simvastatin. The actual cost of that particular drug is
about $.02 per pill. So it's OK for the medical/financial complex to
sometimes charge people $4.98 more than the cost, for a roughly 24,900%
markup?
The trouble is, none of this absurd stuff happened in a vacuum. Using debt
at interest as money and the whole basis of our economic/financial system,
business has to grow at at least the going rate of interest. That hasn't
been happening for a long time. So the only way business can survive is to
slash costs and extort customers. That further impoverishes customers,
because they're also workers.
Tariffs and protectionism are indeed the time-tested way to attack this
problem. The question is whether or not Congress will bite the hands that
give them the campaign contributions.
When our economy worked, Finance made up about 5% of economic activity.
Currently, it's about 50%. Finance costs are choking the life out of the
economy. And legalized bribery puts Finance in control of the Legislative
branch. To get anything done, President Trump will have to get the money
out of politics, and get Finance out of control of the Legislative.
That's a pretty tall order. I'm very, very hopeful, but not very optimistic
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