Re: "It's worse for the consumer, but it's better for the citizen."

When you say "citizen", perhaps you just chose the wrong word, or perhaps that word choice reflects your view in some way. I really don't know. But needless to say, consumers are citizens, too. In fact, many consumers are lower-income citizens whose standard of living would be lower if prices were higher due to protectionism, even if some jobs were protected and maybe -- maybe -- wages higher on average.

When ya' really boil it down, protectionism vs. free trade is largely a microcosm of the broader trade-off between capitalism and highly "managed" economies. The trade-offs are pretty much the same. My view: If you want a higher standard of living for most people? Then you go with a high degree of capitalism (free markets), although probably not pure laissez-faire capitalism. If you want to regulate or otherwise artificially raise wages, at least in the short run, and are willing to accept a lower standard of living for most people, you move in the direction of a more managed economy.

So recognize protectionism for what it is: a lower degree of capitalism, with similar trade-offs whether we are talking about trade within a country or across borders.

Protectionism, of course, adds another philisophical element: Leaving aside the economic impact on most Americans, or assuming it, arguendo, to be unchanged under either a free trade or a protectionist scenario, is it a bad thing for an American worker to lose his job to a non-American? For some people the answer is obviously yes. Not for me. If some dirt poor, hungry guy with a hungry family in some poor country gets a job at the expense of an American making, say, $40k a year, who also has access to unemployment benefits, income support if necessary, etc. -- in short, who will not face anything like the deprivation and suffering of the Third World guy if he DOESN'T get that job (or, frankly, even if he does), I'm generally inclined to think that that is a good thing, not a bad thing. I think there's room for reasonable disagreement on that question, but I don't have much respect for the extreme view that it is inherently better for the American to have the job, let alone that we should adopt policies that protect that job (and deny it to the Third World guy) at the expense of other Americans (mainly consumers).

By the way, should I consider the employment of my fellow New Yorkers vastly more important than employment of people in other states, and if so, if it were legal, should I prefer a policy of high tariffs for any goods produced in other states coming into New York? Hey, that would protect the jobs and wages of New Yorkers, right? Heck, why not do it at the level of Manhattan, to protect the jobs and wages of my fellow Manhattanites? Wait, I care about my neighbors most, so should I favor prohibitively high tariffs or outright bans on any goods not produced on my block? Maybe one building could be torn down to create a garden for veggies and to raise livestock, and another could be torn down for a factory to produce every single thing we need. Obviously costs would skyrocket, but everyone would have a job! Man, would we be livin' the high life!

when the winners are virtually everyone on multiple levels, worrying about the individual worker or "citizen" in the sense that we would advocate intervention to keep jobs here or make imports more expensive, I think we are missing the forest for the trees.

Helping a displaced worker who asks for help is one thing. But making a product from a foreign country more expensive via a tariff...be it an end product for a consumer or a capital good or piece of the final product for an end consumer OR using tax dollars to prop up jobs that do not have enough value to stay here OR making the operation of a business needlessly more expensive...ALL of these things hurt everyone....businesses and consumers alike....at the expense of a select few.

You're willing to pay more? I'm not. That's not fair to me and others to impose some value on us.

REAL higher wage jobs come from higher value work. It's not an artificially set number. Certain jobs do not pay more because "we say so", they pay more because they have a value or scarcity that deems them so.

If we arbritrarily start choosing menial jobs to prop up, we are causing small ripple effects in the economy that do not lead to good results for everyone.

Re: "We need not keep around the horse buggy whip makers past their time"

Why not? Don't you want to protect their jobs?

In fact, in addition to protectionism, why not ban the adoption of new information and manufacturing technology that displaces workers? Actually, why stop there? Why not destroy much of the technology we already have so we create MORE jobs? (Damn those job-stealing cotton gins!) I know the above sounds snarky, but my point is that we are talking about essentially the same trade-off with such technology as we are with protectionism (well, except that in the case of free trade one guy loses a job and a much poorer, more desperate guy usually gets that job, so there's even less of a justification for protectionism).

I am speaking to those that tout America's 'exceptionalism'. Those that beat their chest and say America is the Greatest, support the troops, while they cut health care for veterans.

In order to be exceptional you have to stand for something...... like human rights, basic decency and fairness in labor practices, whether here or in other countries.

I think it is ludicrous to keep touting that free trade as the answer to our economic problems, without some legal constraints to child labor, and slavish working hours, fair wages relative to the region and protection for the earth. Free trade without constraints, in my view, is just outsourcing for new 'slaves', while trying to avoid any kind of respect for the law.

I was not involved in any of those "Bush lied" arguments.  You must have me confused with Specter or somebody else-- I forget who all was involved in those battles, I read some of them, but I stayed out of it for the most part.  I have never heard Bush explicitly claim that Iraq attacked us on 9/11,  and I do not recall any posts by my blue-barred friends in those threads that proved that Bush lied that Iraq had attacked us on 9/11, though I agree that Bush has muddied the waters between Iraq and 9/11 when it has served his purposes.

Clinton's lies were about a personal affair-- hardly a matter of war and peace.  I care about lying, but I care much less about lies regarding personal matters with no connection to the affairs of government.

When Clinton lied about Monica, the lie was not material to the investigation. ie Saying that one lives on 123 Fake St when they actually live on 742 Evergreen Terrace and their address has nothing to do with the actual investigation makes the lie not material to the investigation and therefore not perjury.

And now "some people on the left" are "the left"? Thanks for clearing that up for me. So, the right likes to blow up Federal Buildings in Oklahoma.