Chippy_boy
Well-Known Member
So what would you propose? If imported goods are better and/or cheaper, how would you propose to force people to buy the more expensive inferior goods? Would you impose import tariffs and thereby burden everyone with higher costs than they would otherwise have to pay, i.e. make everyone poorer? Or pump in government subsidy to make the domestic goods artificially cheaper? And if so, how would you fund that? By taking money off everyone and making everyone poorer.
Propping up uncompetitive industry does not work, never has worked, never will work. I give you British Leyland, Rolls-Royce (once nationalised), the entire UK coal industy, British Steel. I could go on and on. And by the way, have you ever worked with with these businesses? I have, extensively. They were all a complete joke.
A much better long term solution is to encourage high quality, high value-add activity where high wages can be justified and sustained and gradually transition away from low-cost, low-value add activites leaving the countries that want to do the "shit" jobs to have them. British Steel (later Corus) realised just this back in 1999. They saw that their USP was their expertise in how to make high quality steels for particular requirements, NOT the actual making of it. It was the IP that was valuable, and they saw that there was going to be no money to be made in doing the shitty work of actually making the stuff. Unfortunately they didn't have the bottle to actually do anything about it, having had this realisation, so they just sat and waited for the inevitable.