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Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert
131–140 of 168 posts
Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
A similar, and perhaps more amusing, situation happened in Canada a few years ago. We have a 245.5% import tariff on cheese (why? Because dairy farmers are more important than poor people, apparently) but there was a much lower tax on "food preparations", including packaged pizza toppings. So companies would package up "pizza topping kits" in the USA, import them to Canada as "food preparations"... and then remove th…
I loathe farmer subsidies. I have no idea why our government gives farmers so much money and so many advantages - nobody in our society really benefits from those incredible spendings and it's a significant fraction of our state budget.
Farmers do! And farmers also vote. And that's the reason for why they are subsidised. Farmers have a special interest in receiving subsidies, and politicians gain far more by pandering to them than by saving a little bit of money for everyone else.
Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This is a totally valid point. For the downvoters: malchow's claim is that in the US, rich people are more likely to be businessmen or people who have otherwise worked for their wealth, rather than simply having been born to the right parents.
I agree with what you're saying, but at the same time it's a hell of a lot easier to end up a wealthy adult if you come from a wealthy family. "Small" loans from family etc.
Roughly 80% of American millionaires are the first generation of their families to be wealthy. Here's the surprising part - most of them get there by working hard and spending less money than they earn...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.ht...
Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert
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Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert
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Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't subsidize farming in rich countries, all your food will come from poor countries. Poor countries without standards for food safety, scruples about burning down rainforest for a few years of fertility, or worker rights or fair wages. You starve poor countries by selling off all of their food to rich countries and making what's left very expensive. What farming is left in rich countries can only possibly b…
This argument doesn't hold up. By that reasoning (safety, workers rights, environmental concerns) every industry is special and deserves subsidy. Can mine be better subsidised please?
Your industry doesn't starve the country to death if it gets outsourced and then blocked as a weapon of war.
Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I loathe farmer subsidies. I have no idea why our government gives farmers so much money and so many advantages - nobody in our society really benefits from those incredible spendings and it's a significant fraction of our state budget.
If you don't subsidize farming in rich countries, all your food will come from poor countries. Poor countries without standards for food safety, scruples about burning down rainforest for a few years of fertility, or worker rights or fair wages. You starve poor countries by selling off all of their food to rich countries and making what's left very expensive. What farming is left in rich countries can only possibly b…
I eat food from the poor country India (I live in India). Sure, food standards aren't as good, but I'm fine.
> Poor countries without standards for food safety, scruples about burning down rainforest for a few years of fertility, or worker rights or fair wages.
The wages are bad but if you don't buy from poor countries their wages will be even worse.
Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look, in war times, we can plant potatoes in all our gardens and take our spare meadows. We don't need these farmers in peace time; we really don't. They are leeches.
Some places can - if you have huge gardens and areas you're free to make use of. Many can't. Norwegian farming policy is focused on maintaining near-independence in the food supply because the British embargo during the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800's is still seared in the collective consciousness. E.g. every Norwegian primary school child will go through the very long, very tedious poem "Terje Vigen" about a ma…
Terje Vigen is a fascinating tale .. thanks for pointing it out. Does it end in a cliff hanger or does he exact revenge on his captor???
Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the whole point of free trade agreements to prevent those sorts of tariffs? Does NAFTA not cover cheese?
Yes, that is the point. No, NAFTA does not cover importing dairy products into Canada; similarly the USA kept tariffs on some dairy products as well as sugar and peanuts. Unfortunately pretty much all "free trade" deals turn out to be "free trade except for a small number of politically well-connected industries". :-(
Or (for example) "free trade, except that Canadian companies can no longer sell Canadian cheese to Canadians at parmesan-style to help the Italian cheese industry".
Re: Chinese Billionaire Linked to Giant Aluminum Stockpile in Mexican Desert
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
And why is that a problem, exactly? In the end aluminum is fungible for aluminum, and the US is getting aluminum from Mexico under NAFTA. Trying to enforce a tariff on element production from a subset of external countries seems sisyphean.
If China is greatly subsidizing the aluminum production then then how will US producers compete? It's in the US's interests that they don't allow another country to manipulate the market to destroy the US production capacity. Once that capacity is online the foreign country can then raise prices. It's not easy or cheap to bring production capacity online.
Worse still, China could actually start enforcing their restrictions on exporting raw aluminium and drive non-Chinese manufacturing industry out of business by cutting off their supply of feedstock, as they also tried to do with rare earth metals.