"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"Adam Corolla" wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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Cool, that's pretty much in line with what I'm saying. Tax cuts result
in increased spending but the bulk of that spending is on foreign goods
and services, meaning that while tax cuts do stimulate the US economy,
they are an inefficient way to do so and result in significantly less
money being spent in the US economy than if that money were kept by and
spent buy the government. Therefore tax cuts would not result in
increased revenue. It just doesn't make sense if you think about it.

I am not going to get into this, if you're addressing it to me. g
Gross imports are only about 13% of our GDP

Actually it's just over 14% according to info from the CIA world
factbook, but I'm splitting hairs--your point is valid--that's a small
percentage of imports.

Ok, but the value of the USA's imports is 15% of the value of all imports
for every country on earth (and that's comparing 2004 world imports with
2006 US imports!):
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2087rank.html

However, your point is even better taken when you consider that our
exports value around 60% of our imports:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2078rank.html

However, I hope you can help me understand those numbers. They make no
sense to me. Go to your average department store and look around. How
much of what you can buy there is made in the US? The few items that
even claim to be made in the US are usually just put to final assembly
here from components made overseas. Same with cars. Even services such
as sales, support, IT and such are being outsourced. How is it that our
imports account for only 14% of our GDP? And what are we exporting
besides food and raw materials?

All good questions, for which I can't give you complete answers. The CIA
World Factbook is good for summaries, but the details lie within the
Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis spreadsheets, which can be a
little difficult to navigate. If you really get into it I'll try to help
you find what you're looking for, but I always dread a new project like
that because I have to re-learn it each time.

In broad terms, though, it's not too tough. You see a lot of imports in
the department stores because that's where the imports are concentrated:
in consumer goods. You see much less of it in industrial goods, and oil is
a big wild card that biases the statistics. Don't base your impression on
machine tools. They've *always* been a very small percentage of industrial
goods. Even back in the mid-'70s, the total volume of all US machine tool
builders, added together, would have placed them at number 274 on the
Fortune 500 list. I remember that number because the publishing company I
worked for, which was then only the 4th largest, was number 273.

As for cars, I don't know the percentage offhand but the domestic
production is much higher than you may think. All of the big Japanese
builders, Hyundai, and some of the European builders (including BMW and
M-B) have plants in the US, and the Japanese in particular tend to make
their high-volume cars here. That's counted as US production.

That's partly what I mean. If the drivetrain and chassis are made overseas,
shipped here, and welded together on robotic assembly lines, can they count
it as a US production?


My Ford, in contrast, was made in Mexico. d8-)

Concerning services, despite all of the hoopla only a very small
proportion of our services are outsourced. The ones that are, again, tend
to be consumer-related, so our experience with them gives us the false
impression that the volume is much higher than it is.

Let me know if you want to track down the details. If you want to do it on
your own, a good place to start is www.fedstats.gov. The government
statistics are complex, as I said, but the FedStats website tries to make
the navigation easier. It's partly successful.


Thanks much!! I will look into it and try to sort it out myself.