Say Anything Blog

When I read stuff like this I can’t help but shake my head at the amount of ignorance on display.

Nobody wants US flags to be made in Chinese sweatshops. Requiring US flags to be made in America not only promotes the US economy, but will ensure all flags are created by people who are protected by basic workplace safety precautions and minimum wage laws.

There are so many things wrong here, I don’t know where to begin.

First, who says that flags from China are made in a sweatshop?  For all we know the people making them could be getting perfectly acceptable wages.  What’s more, who defines what is and is not an acceptable wage?  Making $10/day in China might sound awful to us here in America, but that could be the highest wage in that worker’s village.  If you don’t put that wage in context, complaining about it is an exercise in stupidity.

Also, protectionism - or the refusal to trade with countries like China who can provide us with goods cheaper than we can make them - doesn’t promote the US economy.  Protectionism hurts our economy by forcing us to buy goods made in our country that we could be getting cheaper from other countries.

For instance, I buy my clothes at the local department store.  I don’t make them myself because by the time I taught myself how, bought the materials and spent the time making them I’d have invested way more time and money than I would have just going to the store and picking up what I need.  This same theory applies to international trade.  Why should I pay more for an American-made television when I could get a Chinese-made television for less and then spend the money I saved on something else?  Because that saved money also stimulated the economy.  A lot more than forcing people to buy American-made goods does.

Why should we buy American flags, or any product for that matter, from ourselves for more than what we could get it from another country?  It’d be…dumb.  Throwing our money away when we could be saving ourselves money to spend on other things.

Adam Smith had it right on this issue 200+ years ago:

It is maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy…What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry employed in a way in which we have some advantage.

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In summary: Anything that artificially inflates the price of goods and services is bad for our economy, be it the minimum wage or protectionist trade policies.