Chapter VII The Free Market

Wow. Okay, so this book has me saying that word quite a bit. Maybe, Ahh, or Voila, or some other contrivance used to denote amazing albeit scary perspective. The author's forensic analysis of "economist" David Ricardo's theories on Comparative Advantage is powerfully revealing. I have been studying economics since the late eighties. I had completely bought into the comparative advantage concept of specialization. Now, I have been convinced that it is based on entirely too many assumptions. And, I figured that NAFTA was definitely the right thing to do for all countries involved, you know, we got stick together with our North American brethren. Hmm, how much has it hurt Mexico to sell our expensive corn? All the country ridiculed Ross Perot to his obstinate opposition to NAFTA, and were all on the band wagon together as we derisively called him a lunatic. "You can't build a barn with one nail." What did that mean? You can't build an economic future with aerospace and military while you outsource everything else. I have had reservations about the effects of buying non-American for sometime, and now I am urgently concerned. I really like the quote from Abraham Lincoln, that shows his simple wisdom was clearly more simple and accurate then his contemporaries could have imagined.
"I don't know much about the tariff. But I do know that when I buy a coat from England, I have the coat and England has the money. But when I buy a coat in America, I have the coat and America has the money."

Finally, the example the author provides in Korea with respect to protectionist tariffs for developing industries drives a point home for me. Unfortunately, it drives the point home for me in a Hyundai Sonata.