Ep. 40 Tucker Carlson Wants Affirmative Action for American Workers
Tucker Carlson gives unambiguous approval for Elizabeth Warren’s call for “economic nationalism,” saying her proposal sounds like “Trump at his best.” Carlson pillories American companies for outsourcing their operations to other countries, and blames Republican leadership for its dedication to doctrinaire libertarianism and Austrian economics. (Not a joke.) Bob disagrees with this take.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- Tucker Carlson’s segment on Elizabeth Warren’s economic nationalism/patriotism.
- One of Bob’s responses to Paul Craig Roberts on outsourcing and the classical case for free trade.
- Politico article explaining that Mitch McConnell not on board with Trump on pot legalization.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
The audio production for this episode was provided by Podsworth Media.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
[…] beat me to the punch on this one, but I make some points I haven’t heard […]
Great response. Tucker’s been pretty good lately (last two years) on the anti-war issues (questioning the chemical attacks in Syria and Russiagate, among other things) but this was dumb. Glad you addressed it. Also, good idea with splicing in Tucker’s actual audio — I think between you and Tom, you’re the only one to do that when addressing a video clip. Tom just quotes them. I think it’s easier to follow when you put the actual audio in. I know there’s probably some legal issues in some cases, but I think criticism is fair use.
Thanks. Great episode. (Almost as good as the Stephan Kinsella one!)
I like Tucker, because h’s been good on a lot of foreign policy stuff, and seems like a decent human being, but I couldn’t even bring myself to watch this monologue, and never would have heard him saying it if it had not been for this podcast.
It was the final portion of the episode that I really appreciated – affirmative action, etc., that I appreciated. Let me explain by telling my story.
When I first registered to vote, back in 1979, I was a registered Democrat. In the 1980s, I became completely disenchanted with the Democrats – basically because they believed in treating unborn children as non-people, who could be slaughtered en mass with impunity.
I’ve seen the same tendency at work in a lot of people, not just Democrats, over the years. Madeline Albright’s “We think 500,000 dead Iraqi children is worth it” basically implies “Iraqis are non-people.” And more recently, that has been the case of Yemenis killed by disease and hunger by the Saudis with US / UK help. And of course, the ultimate non-people, the Palestinians, who can be ethnically cleansed from their homes, and shot by snipers when peacefully protesting without a murmur from America’s political class.
And now Tucker Carlson goes on and on about American workers, and how important they are. Affirmative action for the some of the most privileged, wealthy, workers on earth? So what about workers in Mexico, China, Bangladesh? Non-people!
Just what I would expect from Elizabeth Warren, because it is entirely consistent with her support for abortion. But I expected better from Tucker.
I speak, by the way, as REAL conservative Bible thumper, who thinks that nationalism is basically tantamount to xenophobia, and is therefore a direct violation of the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself.
The chiropractor example reminded me of a somewhat unrelated incident a while back when Walmart wages were in the news. Peter Schiff decided to do some trolling. He went down to a local Walmart to see if he could get people walking out to commit to paying higher prices so that the workers could get a higher wage. It didn’t go well. Don’t know why I thought about that.
Aside from consumers saving money, being able to choose their first choice (an intangible gain), and using the extra money to further benefit themselves and other Americans there’s also a less obvious thing to consider on the issue of trade. It’s a point that is NEVER brought up. What does the foreign chiropractor or the foreign investors do with the dollar bills that flow into their accounts? If they live in a country that doesn’t use dollar bills then whatever they do with them, short of burning them, the dollars eventually have flow back into the United States and benefit some American somewhere. The timing and size of the benefit would be impossible to measure, but a benefit does exist.
And even if they don’t ever come back, you just traded a service for paper. This is akin to Tom’s example of the giant alien ladybugs making drivers obsolete. Good. Then they’re free to satisfy other needs.
Another point worth making is that, if blame is to be levied at anyone for causing companies to move to where labor inputs are cheaper, then it is the US consumer. Per Austrian economics, it is consumers’ willingness to pay a certain amount for goods that drives how much producers can bid for inputs. If US consumers were willing to pay more, then perhaps US producers could afford to pay more for labor, and keep their factories here.
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