Originally posted by: HammerDaddy
Seriously though, that’s America for you. Chase the almighty dollar no matter the cost. It’s funny to see people up in arms about this but drug companies price gouging us or amazon not paying their fair share in taxes is just good honest capitalism. In fact, not bowing down to China in order to get their money would be anti capitalist. A communist really. Being anti China makes you a communist.
This is a rather over-reaching conclusion. Yes, a major tenant of "capitalism" is letting free markets do thier thing. However, capitalism (as part of conservative Americanism) neither exists as a sole ideology, nor is it
scrictly about letting markets be free to do whatever they want to do. There's philosophically more to it than that.
This is especially true in the context of fiat currency. Gone are the days of buying and selling in gold or bartering. Whether we like it or not, all soveriegn nations have their own fiat, and they also have their own taxation laws. As an ideal, yes, we wouldn't tax goods coming from the US, nor would China tax goods coming into their country. However, by systematically undervaluing their currency, companies across the globe can buy "cheap" Yuan, build cheap facilities and higher cheap workers. This has been a Chinese long-play and has allowed the Chinese government to slowly acquire most of the worlds manufacturing, making us nearly 100% reliant on them for all of our goods.
The major difference is that this is a power-play by a nation-state to manipulate global currency to their advantage, and it's working. Is this ethical or fair? Not at all, and the solution isn't necessarily to let free markets be free markets, without some other strategies coming into place. Those strategies involve the government to do what it was intended to do, which is protect the rights of it's citizens.
The founding intent of America was largely freedom for individuals where, together, we're making a better nation. Free-enterprise is a large part of that because the lower the barrier of entry to starting a business, the easier it is for the individual to become independent. Capitalism is a
means to allow individual freedom prosper. However, when foreign governments make strategic moves to manipulate supply chains, it makes sense for free, sovereign nations to respond.
And, regarding China, it's even worse for them. It's been a long time since I read up on the specific laws but part of the reason why we've seen a huge influx of "cheap China junk" in the past 10 years is because Chinese companies pair there dirt-cheap manufacturing with the fact that the get close to 100% free shipping, due to shipping negotiations and agreements that have been made, and China was considered a "third world nation" during those agreements. China gets ridiculously deep discounts, where we pay
extra because of their "third world" status. If their status were to change and it cost as much to ship to China as it does to the US, and if all tariffs were dropped, we'd see a significantly different playing field but that's simply not the world we live in.
China has robbed our manufacturing and now they are flooding many of our supply chains with junk. Something needs to be done (with cautious discretion, of course,) and unfortunately some of that should involve government involvement. This isn't anti-capitalism/pseudo-marxism. It's just realizing that Capitalism is one piece to a whole and needs to be prioritized accordingly when crafting international policies.
And don't get me started on pharmaceuiticals. I've worked in the medical industry for years, and I have friends who've had to work neck-deep in those details specifically in pharmaceuticals and working with the legal side of those things. Drug companies aren't "fleecing" the US. This isn't a conservative talking point but the straight-facts are that every single country with socialized medicine sets price control standards for every single drug, and the overwhelming number of those drugs are priced below the cost to research, develop and manufacture them. Pair that with current patent laws where a drug company only has 8 years (IIRC) before generics can enter into a market. That means they have 8 years to basically make their money back from the research and building of sophisticated manufacturing processes AND profit by sales almost-strictly amde in America, but benefited across the globe.
Big-Pharma isn't fleecing America--China, Canada and Europe are. I wish it weren't true but when you spend $1B to develop a drug and then every sale outside the US is at a loss, you have to make up that revenue somewhere? That's us here in the states. We are by far the wealthiest nation in the world. Every country and it's grandmother, somehow, has it's hand's in our pockets and it's not for our pleasure, that's for dang sure.