Posted on 03/26/2016 10:32:14 AM PDT by snarkpup
Unfortunately, the USA also allows and enthusiastically encourages free trade in labor.
Since the Reagan Amnesty in 1986, the USA has LEGALLY imported more than 20 million mostly low skill, low education, immigrant workers.
Supply and demand - when the pool of labor is massively increased, wages go down.
Also, USA industrial management is continuously improved, and labor saving devices and decision software continue to proliferate, and the cost of those devices and software are steadily going down.
People forget that the USA has had the world’s most productive and most efficient industrial labor force for at least the last 100 years.
The dollar value of goods produced in the USA hit an all time record high in 2008, before the Great Recession.
Although our industrial labor force continues to shrink in size (around 16 million in 2015, I think), our productivity is still the envy of the entire world.
China has an industrial labor force of around 100 million.
The USA produces almost as much as China, but our workers are at least 5 times more productive!
As you point out in your essay, what are we going to do with all our surplus labor?
The only solution I see is to continue to improve our productivity, and then give more and more welfare to a continuously expanding group of people who do not have the skills, the aptitude, the focus, and the work ethic to compete - which, I agree, is a very bad solution.
Problem is, there is no way to legislate away or conceal the economic reality of the Bell Curve for human beings.
These are the people with whom we must negotiate and come to an understanding. There are more of them than there are of us. They are a huge market. They are principal military alliance. In their minds, asking them to negotiate with Trump is like asking them to negotiate with a cartoon character.
Trump is also despised by six or seven out of every ten Americans.
These are the people on whose behalf we must negotiate.
From the point of view of workers whose occupations have become obsolete and kids in the education system who are trying to pick a viable occupation, this is the most pressing question.
But it gets worse. If we (as a culture) decide to trade ownership of our land for imported appliances, this amounts to a seamless transition from one form of work to no work—but only until we run out of land.
You’re absolutely right about that.
National Review Writer: Working-Class Communities ‘Deserve To Die’
Well, that's pretty much true for America.
Europe will negotiate with whoever sits in the White House. Period. End of story.
And, caring even one whit about what Europe thinks about American politicians, candidates, People, is ludicrous.
Europe can keep wallowing in their Marxism and Socialism.
What they think about American politics couldn't be more irrelevant.
The non-stop Donald Trump character assassination continues.
The only ones who have tried to make Donald Trump into a cartoon character is the Establishment who so hysterically fears his ascent to the White House, and therefore finds it necessary to demonize him non-stop. I've never seen anything like it.
And it will backfire profoundly. The writing is already on the wall.
If Trump or Cruz doesn't win the GOP nomination, Hillary will win the White House.
The GOPe has already destroyed itself; it just doesn't realize it yet.
What remains to be seen is whether it has destroyed the party as well, along with its chances of winning the White House.
I've never seen the DC elite so hysterically in fear of losing their power. The status quo must be destroyed, and there's only one person willing to at least try.
All other options are "business as usual".
This election cycle transcends policy, ideology, and personality.
There's no doubt whatsoever that Donald Trump is the best option available this cycle.
However flawed he may be, he is by far the best choice.
So keep insulting him and dismissing him. See what it gets you. See what it gets the entire country.
Someone who is not here on the ground in America just completely misses what is happening here...
But the temptation to dismiss nearly 400,000,000 people who share our Western heritage, who are many of them first world, who are our principal allies, must be resisted. Consider the danger to Europe not just from Russia but from Islam. The great danger is not an invasion across borders by tanks but an infiltration by millions who resort to terrorism. The Europeans have been conditioned to find any whiff of racism repugnant and they have been further conditioned to find any use of force repugnant, especially if wielded by a nation. So they detest Israel and they condescend to America.
When the terrorism in Europe inevitably expands, the temptation to surrender to sharia will grow and might well succeed especially if weapons of mass destruction are loosed on one or two European cities. The Europeans are secularists and they have been conditioned to surrender, they might well simply cut a deal.
With Europe gone, with NATO gone, America will now stand alone and the very same mindset which now so predominantly afflicts Europe will rise in America. If you consider that the Democrat party and our academic establishment are really clones of European socialism, the stage is set for surrender.
Islam hopes to conquer us from within and it might well succeed, especially if we lose Europe because the Democrat party is Europe.
Donald Trump of all Americans is the most likely to lose us Europe.
“These are the people with whom we must negotiate”
The same people who have allowed radical Islam to invade their homeland.
The same people who have sold nuclear and missile technology radical regimes
I could go on ....
I can tell ya what I witnessed. Scuttled manufacturing facilities. Dozens upon dozens of manufacturing plants with knee high weeds growing in what was once employee parking lots.
Small town America dying or dead. Small communities with downtown districts abandoned/empty and deteriorating.
Free trade? Trade deficits, American middle class being crushed, stagnant/decreasing wages, close to a 100 million people out of the labor force.
Cheaper goods? How do we know? I do know this, Chinese, Mexican workers are worked long hours for very little pay, very few benefits. The biggest benefit Foxconn China provided were nets around the outside of the buildings to catch stressed out, distraught workers from jumping to their deaths.
Chinese air, land and water pollution is horrible. Environmental safeguards? Hardly. Worker safeguards? Hardly
Americans cannot compete without a level playing field. We cannot compete with near slave labor.
Americans were sold down the river.
“Americans were sold down the river”
Couldn’t agree more ...
The same people who have sold nuclear and missile technology radical regimes
Those objections could equally apply to half of America, the half that puts Democrats in office. Would you decline to do business with them just as you imply that you would decline to do business with Europeans?
It is fine to be self-righteous but it's bad business and worse foreign policy.
nathanbedford: No one seems to have a solution to this problem.
While the laws of economics, like the laws of physics, grind away, the political problem grows. At some point the losers will get fed up with the winners, and we'll have revolution, or the winners will get fed up with the losers, and we'll have world war.
I did not realize Europe was ours to lose!
Thank you for the clarification.
“Trump is also despised by six or seven out of every ten Americans.”
Cruz is despised by seven or eight out of every ten Americans.
Just make it a 35% tariff across the board for all imports including oil. Targeted and selective tariffs will lead to corrupt deals and horsetrading in Congress. So for now at least, make it a flat 35% and lets see what happens. One of the foremost anti-free traders, Ian Fletcher, says a flat across the board tariff is the way to go
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/why-a-flat-tariff-on-all_b_828692.html
I have been saying much the same thing for years.
We need political, religious and business leaders at all levels who are unafraid to tell America that we have been using up our seed corn for decades, and that it will take decades of what a great man called "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" to get back to our former greatness.
Instead we get the likes of Trump and Sanders, who tell their followers that the solutions are easy, quick and cheap, and that someone else (who is absolutely Not Them) will be forced to pay for it all.
I am reasonably confident that no one who tells Americans the truth that they need to hear will ever be elected.
Ian Fletcher wrote: “Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace it and Why”. Best thing out there on this farce we are experiencing. Professor Dwight D. Murphey is also worth a look. There are answers to this issue, and they are not impossible to implement.
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