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Trade creates Wealth [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-22
Trade Creates Wealth
Trade creates wealth. Profiting from trade is the only reason societies engage in it. When I was a kid, if I had two Sandy Koufax baseball cards, I could trade one for a Micky Mantle. My position improved as I now had two Hall of Famers in my collection. The other persons situation improved as they now had perhaps the greatest pitcher in baseball history for their use.
In the industrial world, trade works the same way. Our number one export is technology. Other countries may have oil, but they can’t get it out of the ground without our technology. That’s how trade works.
In the days before world trade was commonplace, coal miners were dependent on Coal Barons. Loggers were dependent on landowners. The term company store was understood by previous generations, but not by this one. It’s a term they need to learn.
The company store worked this way: The company hired you, then charged you for the supplies you needed to do your job. The cost of a pickaxe would be subtracted from the coal a laborer produced. Hopefully, one gets the idea how the company store worked.
I grew up in the Anthracite region of America. No mother wanted their children to work in the mines, to see their children carry their oxygen tanks to their early graves as they had done watching their father’s die young from Black Lung.
They worked in garment factories to insure their children did not become unskilled laborers. They wanted their children to be able to seek opportunity. And trade expanded opportunity.
Trade requires transportation so more truck drivers were hired, more roads were built, and mechanics were needed to repair these trucks, and the heavy equipment used to build roads. Restaurants were built to feed these workers, and farmers now had larger markets for their beef, their eggs, their milk etc. More trade creates more demand for product and the economy grows.
Impugning trade will create the opposite of wealth. Why would anyone engage in seeking to create unfavorable conditions for prosperity? Who benefits from this?
The answer is the equivalent of the modern-day Coal Barons and Landowners. Who are these folks? If you look at the record of how certain companies treat employees, you see their names are Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Unions built the middle class. Successful unions created safer working conditions so mine cave ins reduced. Unions insured a living wage and provided health care for union members. Unions made life better for all working Americans.
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos of Amazon have opposed unions. The working environment at Tesla and Amazon have received negative reviews. Yet Donald Trump is doing everything he can to appease these modern day Coal Barons. After all, Musk did donate $300 Million to Trump’s campaign. Bezos gave $1 Million to Trump’s inauguration fund.
The question now is: Who is in charge of the Company Store, and why are so many Americans willing to go back and reduce their standard of living for Trump?
Call your Congressman and Senators now: Tell them to perform their legislative duties. Let them know “We the People” want trade wars to end.
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