Musicmystery
Posts: 30259
Joined: 3/14/2005 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri quote:
ORIGINAL: DomKen quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri quote:
ORIGINAL: DomKen quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri quote:
ORIGINAL: Musicmystery International shipping would be greatly reduced, much more expensive, you'd pay more for nearly everything, and the economy would be slower, with fewer jobs. Why? The US Navy makes this possible. Would there truly be a slower economy with fewer jobs, though? Why would there be? With an increased cost of international shipping, wouldn't manufacturing jobs come back (or not have left in the first place)? Wouldn't that mean more people working for more money here? I agree with your initial premise that international shipping would be more expensive. I'm not sure your analysis of what that would mean, in the long run, is so accurate. If your initial premise (regarding international shipping costs) is correct, is that truly a bad thing? Our own economy was built on exporting our industrial goods. Also without American intervention Japan would not have been defeated, and possibly Italy and Germany. We would not be able to sell our goods to most of the world. That's if we hadn't ever gone all imperial. The question most are addressing considers a future President making a future decision to pull the military back home and stop being World Cop. It's not that simple. Consider for instance our present dependence on foreign oil. Yeah, it really is that simple, Ken. It's not an overnight thing, but increase domestic drilling (will take 10 years before we see an increase in production for those new wells, right?), build the Keystone XL, and maybe increase imports from Mexico. In 0 years, how dependent will we still be on "non-North American" oil? I'm sure we probably won't be able to get everything from NA, but the more we do, the better, no? You would also pay more for it. Drilling further and further out in the ocean, for example, raises costs considerably, and the reason we don't more is that, at the current price of oil, it's not worth it economically. If oil doubled in price, as some analysts say it needs to, we'd be moving forward. So we could achieve independence--if you're ready to pay double at the pump, for heating, etc. And for increased food prices and good overall, as transportation prices climb, and the subsequent drain on the economy as consumption drops. The one benefit would be, analysts say, that American are just not going to get behind fuel economy in a major way unless gas is very expensive. We are a very short-sighted people. Independence *sounds* good, but it's very costly. On a micro level, there's a reason I don't produce everything I need myself. I like the self-sufficiency, but I have far greater wealth and leisure by specializing in areas I can sell effectively and buying what others produce more efficiently.
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