Monday, 17 May 2010

Why do Ron Paul supporters believe that.....

Why do Ron Paul supporters believe that he is against job-outsourcing and globalisation? Ron Paul will happily export your jobs....and capital: here he is speaking against the bailout of GM --
Had it been allowed to fail naturally, the profitable pieces of GM would have been bought up and put to good use by now. The laid off employees would likely have found new jobs and all that capital would be in private hands, reinvested in companies that produce products demanded by consumers. Instead, we are all poorer now.
SOURCE
Hmmm. "All that capital would be in private hands". How reassuring? And notice it would all be wisely "invested in companies that produce products demanded by consumers." Ah......how cute. But who employs these prosperous and demanding consumers? Not GM. And if GM were liquidated and cast to the wind, would the capital necessarily be re-invested in N America? No. The private, deregulated, unshackled capital would supposedly seek out the most profitable avenue caring not at all for "America" or for the effects of the liquidation of an almost an entire industrial sector.

And yet Ron Paul attracts the support of Nationalists! They seem to imagine Ron Paul is against job-exporting and globalisation. Paul also attracts 911 conspiracist and patriot types who tend to view neo-liberalism and globalisation as inherently "evil". This despite Ron Paul being Misean neo-liberal, and presumably completely "globalist" in so far as in principle he'd surely like a world free of any controls or restrictions on capital - eg zero tax worldwide, zero environmental regulation worldwide, worldwide competition. Ron Paul is fully signed-up to this sort of 'globalism' and NewWorldOrder.

Economic nationalists seem confused by Paul's apparent nationalism/patriotism. It befuddles them. In reality of course Ron Paul's extreme economic libertarianism is directly antagonistic and anti-thetical to the economic nationalism which so many of supporters actually hold dear. Ron Paul would demand that GM (and all the banks) should have been simply allowed to go to the wall, and sold off to bidders. Cherry-picked and liquidated. Apparently this would have made everyone better off.

Previously Ron Paul has said that Americans are overpaid. Paul mocked the wages of Michigan auto-workers, suggesting he'd like some of it. This is all obviously implicit in his position - if international capital can get the job done cheaper/more profitably in China, then it should. Moreover, any organised attempts at mitigating the sometimes devastating social impacts of such economic libertarianism must be forbidden.....they spoil the purity of the model, and somehow prevent it delivering its oft promised bounty of golden eggs.

I suppose one can't blame Ron Paul's nationalist supporters for falling for his patriotism as he does seem very careful not to make explicit these implications of his economic and social views. Ron Paul avoids making explicit the antagonism between his economic libertarianism and the nationalism of his supporters. But why would he?

ETA: here's Ron:
Bailing out banks, continuing failed Fed policies and strapping the taxpayer with toxic debt will worsen the pain, and punish the innocent.
SOURCE
Of course, if the banks failed, and you lost your money, or they foreclosed, or shut your credit off, the innocent wouldn't have been punished at all, right?

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