First of all, your use of Hong Kong as a comparison is a terrible choice. 7 million people vs. 300 million. Japan is better population wise, but it helps reinforce my point that those who have the resources must produce agricultural products to take up the slack for those who are prohibited from doing so.
That's right, and our economic success is due to our freedom and the open market... Are we the best? Yes, but that isn't saying much because the rest of the world is pathetic and we could be much better. I didn't really mean the comment - it was an exaggeration. But that doesn't make it completely untrue. There is freedom to move between social classes as far as a person's capabilities allow them. The market should not reward the lack of capabilities, because the people with capabilities will have no incentive to use them. Prosperous due to freedoms Americans enjoy, the open market, and relatively low taxes (compared to the world, but they could & should be lower). Taking control of economic factors is not American, it's communist. We as a society can take control - no need for the gov't to do this for us. Individual capitalism has driven the entire world to be far more prosperous than ever thought possible. Government's thinking there was a limited amount of wealth that had to be fought over, and economic conditions controlled, made the world far more poor than necessary. Your personal prosperity would be increased, as would the entire world's as a whole by utilizing an open market.
Things are valuable because there is a limited supply of them, although this results in a lot of people being made poor.
like food, mercedeses (is that the plural?) have actual value. you can drive a mercedes. obviously there is a lot of fake conspicuous consumption value there too and that is part of the price. but if everyone owned a mercedes, then we would have to buy ferraris to show off. you treat the world as if we are cavemen or nuclear war survivors and only the most basic items have value. but that isnt the case, we are an advanved world economy, where there are lots and lots of items that have value. a country can produce pretty much whatever they want and as long as they have money, they are not gonna go hungry.
I see your point - these items are valuable in their own right because of the benefits they provide. However, if mercedes were sitting on the side of the road everywhere that you could take for free, would you pay for one? Truly, what gives value is a limited supply. Basically every item has a limited supply to some degree, and from that comes your definition of "value".
right, and we dont really have the resources! .we lack cheap labor and cannot easily compete. so lets leave the food production to whoever can compete fairly. we are only competing by bringing down our whole country will billions and billion of dollars in taxes.
depends on the way you define value. air has value to me, but i am not gonna pay for it. right, no point in getting into definitions.
also you are completely missing the point. you appear think some people are rich because other people are poor, that isnt the case. thats why i used the mercedes example. you dont need a mercedes, you could get by with a hyundai. and yet the guy making mercedeses is still rich. because he still is selling a scarce product to an economy where people are rich and are really way beyond giving a damn who has the food. they dont care who has the food, because no matter who it is, that person will want to sell their food becaues they can make profits and buy a lamborghini. if you would let the economy roll like it should, pretty soon "poor" people would be the ones who cant afford ferraris and have to settle for hondas. what we want is to increase the size of the pie. we want growth. there will always be relatively wealthy people and relatively poor people. but with free trade we will all have a far higher standard of living.
Man, you should have seen those folks in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Katrina on tv. It didn't take long for them to get back to their cave man roots. That was just a bunch of poor folks from the ninth ward though. It could never happen to us....we have educations.
