Re: Winter Olympics: Europe is much better than the US!



Jack Hollis wrote:
On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:31:44 -0700, MH <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


The US only believes in the free market when it suits their needs.
Agriculture is still heavily subsidised, as are many other industries.
And the US continually disobeys international trade panel decision as in the current softwood lumber dispute with canada (US imposed illegal countevailing tarifs). So the "free market" is largely a fiction, as most of the developing countries have tried to point out at various trade summits.

Furthermore, many of the successful ecomonies in the world got where they are now by practising blatant protectionism (the US included) , so there is a great deal of hypocrisy involved in condemning protectionism in other countries.

Finally , if the US believes in free tradeand the free market, why is that within NAFTA and the Canada-US free trade agreement there are no provisions for free movement of labour across borders , which is a given
in the EU right now ?



I can't argue that the US is perfect in terms of dedication to the
free market.

"Perfect" would be pretty ugly actually. There is a reason all economies in the western world are mixed economies. You can argue about the mix and about how much government involvement there should be, but I don't think anyone rational would want things dictated entirely by the market.


Nevertheless, compared to most other countries, the US
has a lot less protectionist activity and a smaller public sector.
And there's no doubt that the US is the most successful economy in the
world.

I'd say there is doubt. It really depends what you want to measure. There is more to life than GDP/capita. The gap between rich and poor is widening all the time in the US (and alas also in Canada and the UK), and I would say, based on my personal bias, that an economy based on that much inequality is not successful. If you look at a number of other indices (other than GDP) the US is not doing so well. Canada has been doing better in terms of growth (once again, Not automatically a good thing - Economists' obsession with growth is what is driving the planet to ruin), debt reduction and trade than the US is recent years, for example. Plus there are things like literacy, child poverty,
standard of living etc.




Free trade does not necessarialy involve free immigration. The EU is
attempting to form a United States of Europe (they didn't want to call
it that) and free movement of workers is one of the goals. I'm not
sure that either Canada or the US would want to do that.

I don't know that we would either, but why insist on free movement of goods and capital, but not people ?

I assume
that right now, there are more Canadians that would want to come to
the US because unemployment is higher in Canada right now,

I don't think that is necesarily true. Certainly people with high qualifications are often in interested in moving to the states for higher wages, but they aren't having a huge amount of trouble getting green cards anyway. I don't think the unemployed in Canada (numbers are actually pretty low by Canadian standards these days) would be all that interested in going to the US to hold down minimum wage type jobs, given that the social safety net here is so much better.

but in
times when the reverse were true Canada would be swamped with
Americans seeking work.

I'd be more worried about all the people who would like to escape the Bush regime. Apparently the number of Americans seeking info on immigration to Canada went through the roof after the last US election.

.

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