American Consequences - July 2017

I don’t usually like to talk about politics or even think about politics. It’s usually a waste of time. But there are times when you can’t ignore them... when you might not be interested in politics... as Stokely Carmichael put it... but politics gets interested in you. And then, if you ignore politics, you could be ignoring a serious threat to your wealth or your family. ‘Fair Trade’ Is Not ‘Free Trade’ But let’s begin by exploring another idea – “fair trade.” It sounds harmless. Even attractive. Who’s against fairness? Again, for the iPhone Age, it may be just the thing perfectly adapted to short attention spans. But wait. Who’s to say what’s fair? The whole world is full of buyers and sellers. They are all searching for the best deal. Isn’t the only possible “fair” deal the one that buyers and sellers willingly come to on their own? So how’s that different from “free trade”? Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, we ran a business that was chiefly on paper. So we found that we could often get the best prices for printing in Quebec. They’ve got a lot of wood pulp up there, I guess. So we negotiated with the printers and came to a deal. It was a free-trade deal. It was the best we could do. Now, the feds came in... and they said no... if you’re going to buy from a foreign supplier, you will have to pay a tax. That will make it “fair.”

From our perspective, we didn’t care where the printing was done. If it was done in New York or in Canada made no difference. From a fairness standpoint, there was no difference. From the point of the state of Maryland, anything done out of the state was foreign. “Fair trade” only makes sense to the group imposing it on others. And since it is imposed by the government, it only really makes sense for the people who control the government. We call the group that controls the U.S. government the “Deep State.”

There is no such thing as fair trade between individuals and companies. There is only free trade "

They are people in Congress, in the bureaucracy... even in international organizations such as the IMF... on Wall Street... and in major crony industries... They are the people who actually run things... year in and year out... working with or against the people who have been elected to serve in the White House of Congress... as they find necessary and convenient... In other words, there is no such thing as fair trade between individuals and companies. There is only free trade. Fair trade is a tool for the Deep State to use to bring more power and money to itself. I remember a strange scene in Argentina... An old tractor drove up, pulling a wagon. It had a tire bolted together with cables. The

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