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The idea of comparative advantage works when there is a complex local economy intact in the background of each trading partner’s specialized item of … - James Howard Kunstler
" "The idea of comparative advantage works when there is a complex local economy intact in the background of each trading partner’s specialized item of production, with a variety of social roles and occupational niches to support the long-term project of [the] community. But a locality geared to doing only one thing for export is… a slave system based on the extractive economics of mining. […] One group had all the cheap labor, and another group had all the capital, and for a while, one group made all the things that the other group “consumed.” Thus, comparative advantage became, for a time, a con game strictly for the benefit of large corporations, which ended up enjoying all the advantages while the localities sucked up the costs.
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About James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler (born October 19, 1948, New York City, New York) is an American author, social critic, public speaker, and blogger.
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It's hard to imagine a more purposeless activity than [an] American-style high school in our time. […] The public questions its basic premises or mode of operation any more than the public questions the economy of suburban sprawl. But [the] high school in our time amounts to little more than daycare for virtual adults in which some learning might incidentally take place, much of it of dubious value.
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Without the Gulf Stream, Britain, France, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia would have a climate like Labrador’s, colder by in annual mean. The Gulf Stream has been likened to an oceanic conveyor belt. The force of the warm water flowing north has been described as equal to the volume of seventy-five Amazon rivers.
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