>> A trade deficit is like buying stuff with a credit card
> Yeah—that’s exactly why it’s bad! That’s why very smart and responsible countries like Japan and Germany seek to maintain trade surpluses.
Yeah, at the end of that section:
> Does using your credit card to buy a washing machine from Target mean that Target has ripped you off? No. Does it make you poorer when you use your credit card to buy a washing machine from Target? Nope. You now have less money, but you have more stuff. In just the same way, a trade deficit means that the U.S. has less money and more stuff. It does not mean America is poorer, or that it has been ripped off by foreigners.
People in the US seem to want to save less but have more stuff. Other countries have different priorities.
Neither having more stuff, nor having more money, is "better" in an 'objective' sense, but relative to what you want out of life. If the Japanese and/or Germans are happy saving, then good for them; if Americans are happy spending, then good for them too.
And a reminder: the main point of money is not to have money but to use it to live life. Certainly you should have an emergency fund and save for retirement, but having a large number in some account is not useful. Money was invented to make the exchange of goods and services easier, so spending money is the point of money.
You don't celebrate having a movie or concert ticket for the sake of having the ticket, but for the sake of being able to go to the show. The moneys are the tickets to be able to see the show of life.
> Neither having more stuff, nor having more money, is "better" in an 'objective' sense, but relative to what you want out of life. If the Japanese and/or Germans are happy saving, then good for them; if Americans are happy spending, then good for them too.
Except our monetary and industrial policy incentivizes or disincentivizes those choices. Japan and Germany engineer those producing versus consuming choices deliberately. And Americans wanted to change that so they voted for the guy promising tariffs.
Free trade isn’t “smaller government,” because in practice this has meant maintaining a worldwide military empire to maintain the USD as the reserve currency.
Regardless, tariffs and protectionism was a founding pillar of the Republican Party. The party existed for 130 years before the libertarian phase of the 1980s.
> Yeah—that’s exactly why it’s bad! That’s why very smart and responsible countries like Japan and Germany seek to maintain trade surpluses.
Yeah, at the end of that section:
> Does using your credit card to buy a washing machine from Target mean that Target has ripped you off? No. Does it make you poorer when you use your credit card to buy a washing machine from Target? Nope. You now have less money, but you have more stuff. In just the same way, a trade deficit means that the U.S. has less money and more stuff. It does not mean America is poorer, or that it has been ripped off by foreigners.
People in the US seem to want to save less but have more stuff. Other countries have different priorities.
Neither having more stuff, nor having more money, is "better" in an 'objective' sense, but relative to what you want out of life. If the Japanese and/or Germans are happy saving, then good for them; if Americans are happy spending, then good for them too.
And a reminder: the main point of money is not to have money but to use it to live life. Certainly you should have an emergency fund and save for retirement, but having a large number in some account is not useful. Money was invented to make the exchange of goods and services easier, so spending money is the point of money.
You don't celebrate having a movie or concert ticket for the sake of having the ticket, but for the sake of being able to go to the show. The moneys are the tickets to be able to see the show of life.