Excerpts from Kerry's Speech, Part IV

This is part one in my commentary on things in John Kerry's speech that liberals are proud of, i.e. clips they have played on Air America.
Go to Part III

"What does it mean for our economy and our national security when we only have three percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for fifty-three percent of what we consume?"

For the record, I had thought the percentage of oil we purchased from foreign countries was higher: according to Kerry, we produce about 3% and use about 6% of the world's oil. Given that we produce a great deal of the world's products, those numbers don't sound bad at all to me.

But let's pay attention to what Kerry is trying to say. 53% of what we consume comes from other countries: primarily Venezuala and Canada. Neither of those countries has been particularly problematic to our national security.

And what is Kerry suggesting we do, anyway? Become an isolationist country?

We could do that. I mean, America is blessed with some of the richest farmland in the world. Every year we pay farmers not to grow and we still export a huge amount of agricultural products. Beyond agriculture, we have an embarressment of other natural resources. So, on a purely survival basis, we could become an isolationist ountry.

Of course, our standard of living would go way down. Why? Because we would miss out on Ricardo's law of comparative advantage, that is, we would miss out on the efficiencies that the economies of other countries have. But we could do it. Heck, we've done it before.

Not all countries could though. A fair number countries are completely dependent on international trade, including trade with the U.S. But, if we were willing to say 'to hell with the rest of the world', we could stop.

Doesn't much sound like the same guy who said that we shouldn't go into Iraq because we didn't have enough European allies though...


^{*So, wait, wait, wait...if we aren't using much Middle Eastern Oil, who is?
Europe.}