Gresham's Law: Trump's Tariffs are a Saltwater Policy

"In economics, Gresham's law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good". For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will gradually disappear from circulation." [per Google search]

The most common example is when politicians resort to running the money presses to stimulate economic activity. The resulting inflation cheapens the printed money in buying the worktime of others in their goods and services. When inflation increases people turn to gold as a safe, stable haven of worktime. (If any turning is to be done, they should turn-out the habitual politicians.)

A common, repeated theme of Timism is that people allow themselves to waste time by being distracted by funny numbers on funny paper. In history, the bad money from printing presses drives gold out of circulation. This is Gresham's Law in its economic form. Its larger existential importance can be seen in the following sequence of equivalence.

1. "bad money drives out good".
2. Cheap Currency drives out Expensive money
3. Easily manufactured money drives hard-to-mine gold
4. Cheap current labor drives out high-wage labor
5. Cheap Time drives out expensive time

Thus, a timistic analysis of Gresham's Law shows that in the larger world of business decisions, manufacturing goes to the cheapest labor market. This is evident in the US textile industries going

1. from New England
2. to the U.S. South
3. to Japan
4. to China,
5. to India and Vietnam.

The globalization of Gresham's Law is a pernicious metastasis of workers' time in both the currency colonizers and colonized. The former are living beyond  their means and the latter are living below their means. The former gets cheap imports. The latter are encouraged to produce and export goods and services to the Monetary Colonializer. The latter do not produce everyday needed products that would lower the domestic cost-of-living.

Globalization has generated a massive plantation system with the middlemen of commerce being the new plantation masters. Monetary colonialism could be called monetary slavery. Too many people slave away for just enough money to get by.

Geting rich is not the problem. A person who invents a time-saving solution and takes half of the savings in cash, that is true capitalistic profit-sharing. People who get rich by stealing from many using computers or privileges are immoral. A sign of an immoral privilege: "And, it's legal."

Gloabalization and monetary colonialism are descendants of mercantilism. Globalization is a ticking economic, social and political timebomb. Unfortunately for life on earth, the habitual politicians, tenured economists, media moguls and business leaders are myopic in their visions for the future. They see not beyond their re-election, emeriti, fame and stock options.

Since these gate-keepers don't see the coming train wreck, they are not planning a soft-landing. Only better democracy organizing people on a global scale to prioritize and implement home-rule solutions can save life on Planet Earth. Gandhi saw this solution when he wanted the British out of India so India could be for India. Unfortunately, Mahama's successors replaced the Raj with the oligarchy of home-grown greed.

International trade based on a nation's lifehours and profit-sharing would stop this existential ticking timebomb ... which Trump has lit. Trump's tariffs are a tax on the lower-class and the muddled-class ... everywhere. They are Saltwater Solutions obscuring the fetid morbidity of the American muddle-class.

(For this thinker, the reduction of Gresham's Law to the value of time is another instance of Timism: The Morality of More Time. Governments should have policies that improve the quality of life as symbolized in a new grassroots currency: the lifehour. Governments are the hired time managers of people's lives.)

Another Timism currency analysis plays a role in the migration of manufacturing, that is, a nation's lifehour. Its value is based on the number of workhours to purchase one's daily needs. This real timely cost-of-living transcends political and economic boundaries. It trancends the centuries of human history.

The Lifehour of a nation shows how it will compete on the world market. A nation's lifehour is the average hours needed for daily necessities divided into the 24 hours of a day.

The U.S. can borrow all the money in the world to build new manufacturing plants. However, if US workers won't accept the lower global lifehour wage then no better mouse traps will be built. Farmers hire illegal immigrants because American workers won't work in the fields.

Too often, 're-election addiction habitual politicians pass new muddle-class welfare. One hears the following, to wit, "I made $35 an hour on my last job. I am not going back to work until I am hired at $35 an hour. Till then, I will keep collecting unemployment and foodstamps."

The following is a true story. In the early 2000s, an unemployed truck driver responded to ad to clean up over-grown weeds on my property. I offered $15/hour with a promise of 16 hours of work. The man said he would not work for less than the $30/hour he earned on his last job. The solution to less idled minds is replacing the communistic nature of unemployment--From each according to ability to each according to need--with computerized individual unemployment saving accounts. When the individual drains his unemployment savings, Mother Nature says he can either work for pennies or starve.