Just watch this, and in the event that the video doesn't work, just click here.
ABC news has abandoned journalistic neutrality and is trying to stir consumers up with a call for mercantilism. They are telling Americans that evil China is stealing jobs and the patriotic solution is simple and easy. If you know anything about international trade and protectionism, you will see these claims are a xenophobic swill of myths and ignorance.
Apparently, ABC was beating this drum last year, and I'm not the only one who had this reaction. Forbes contributor Dan Ikenson wrote "ABC is selling dangerous, nationalistic propaganda."
If you've read this blog for more than a month, you should recoil from lines like:
So after nearly a year of crisscrossing the country as part of our Made in America journey, we remembered what economists across the board told us at the very start: If every American spent $64 on something made in America, we could create 200,000 jobs right now.
In the four and a half minute video, these activists in journalists clothing referenced unnamed economists several times. They did not show an interview with a single economist or name one. Where do these numbers come from?
After sitting through a barrage of these awful clips, some of which include flag waving and rallies organized by ABC, I finally saw a vague attribution to Moody's Analytics that spending 18 cents a day would create 200,000 jobs. However, I have been unable to find the original source, even on Moody's website.
Since economists across the board reject this protectionist nonsense, I find it hard to believe. ABC has cherry-picked a minor report and used it to overturn economic science, and now they won't even cite the source and dishonestly present it as a scientific consensus. Shame on ABC for committing journalistic negligence and telling these nationalistic lies.
Gotta love how people can cite economists without throwing down specifics. Ah stats from the ether, and people will just assume ABC has connections with swell economists. Economists so smart they don't go by a name.
ReplyDeleteI like it when they profile American companies surviving in a competitive workplace like Stossel did, but not you should buy this just because it is made here. This unscientific certainty is so annoying.
ReplyDeleteI think ABC is still owned by the Mickey Mouse-Industrial complex. It's just crappy journalism, even crappier advocacy journalism, right up there with Fox's "war on Xmas".
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I do not watch much tv or news from any of the sources. I take them all with a grain of salt as they all have agenda's it appears to me.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, it seems to me that if an American company can make a product as cheap or close to as cheap than China, Americans SHOULD purchase from American companies.
As it is pretty clear, American's are quite short-sighted. Most are only concerned with their what have you done for me know, I'll toss you away just like I do my cheap HP deskjet printer mentality, rather than look at the big picture. While, the Forbes article had some good points, saying you HAVE to go back to when women can't get a job on network news, doesn't mean you have to be so shallow to believe you can't make a good product in your own country.
The other side of the coin is that if you want a cheap product, which American's do, then you are forced to suffer with less pay, which has happened as well. You also have to be ready with high inflation as well, which we are now seeing. Whether the official govt. inflation stat says or not. Things are NOT cheaper unless you mean the price of most houses in America.