An index of American decline

World Net Daily ^ | Feb. 23, 2004 | Patrick Buchanan

[ETERNAL WARMING]

An index of American decline

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 23, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Sen. John Edwards did not win Wisconsin, but he closed a huge gap with John Kerry with astonishing speed in the final week.

The issue propelling Edwards was jobs, the lost jobs under George Bush, and Edwards' attribution of blame for the losses on NAFTA and the trade deals for which John Kerry voted in Congress.

Edwards has plugged into an issue that could cost Bush his presidency. Indeed, Kerry's sudden conversion into fiery critic of trade deals for which he himself voted suggests that he senses not only his vulnerability on Super Tuesday, but his opportunity in the fall.

For a precise measure of what this issue is about, one can do no better than to consult Charles McMillion of MGB Services here. Each February, McMillion methodically pulls together from the Bureau of Labor Statistics his grim annual index of the decline and fall of the greatest industrial republic the world had ever seen.

Since Bush's inauguration, 2.8 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have simply vanished. By industry, the job losses are heaviest in computers, where 28 percent of all the manufacturing jobs that existed when Bush took office are gone, semiconductors where we have lost 37 percent, and communications equipment, where jobs losses have reached 39 percent in just three years.

One in three textile and apparel jobs has disappeared, and the losses continue to run at the rate of 100,000 jobs a year. This helps to explain Edwards' rout of Kerry in South Carolina.

With the markets soaring, the Bush recovery is being called a jobless recovery. Not so. We are creating millions of jobs overseas – even as we are destroying manufacturing jobs at a rate of 77,000 per month in the United States.

Consider. Last year, we bought $958 billion worth of foreign manufactures and our trade deficit in manufactures alone was over $400 billion, more than $1 billion a day. Millions of foreign workers now labor in plants that manufacture for America, doing jobs that used to be done by American workers.

Not so long ago, Detroit was the auto capital of the world and the United States was the first nation in the production of televisions.

Now we don't make televisions any more. And our trade deficits in cars, trucks, televisions, video cassette recorders, automatic data-processing equipment and office machines added up last year to $218 billion. We retain a trade surplus in airplanes and airplane parts, but, because of the competition from Airbus, that is shrinking.

After airplanes, our No. 1 export in terms of a trade surplus is ... soybeans. Corn is next, followed by wheat, animal feeds, cotton, meat, metal ore, scrap, gold, hides and skins, pulp and waste paper, cigarettes, mineral fuels, rice, printed materials, coal, tobacco, crude fertilizer and glass. Airplanes aside, the United States has the export profile of an agricultural colony.

Our largest trade deficit with any country is with China. It has rocketed from $22 billion in Clinton's first year to $124 billion last year. "The World's Most Unequal Trade Relationship" is how McMillion describes it.

What were our best-selling items to China, where we ran a $2.8 billion surplus? Oil seeds and soybeans. What was China's biggest selling items to us? Computers and electrical machinery and equipment, where Beijing ran surpluses at our expense of $50 billion.

There are bright spots, however, in the bleak jobs picture painted by McMillion. State and local governments added 600,000 workers in three years. Some 21.5 million of us now work for state, local and federal governments – one in six Americans, 7 million more workers than we have employed in all of manufacturing.

Perhaps this is what the Weekly Standard is bragging about when it celebrates Bush's "Big Government Conservatism."

To read these numbers is to understand the breach that has opened up in a conservative movement last united when Ronald Reagan went home to California.

To neoconservatives of the Wall Street Journal school, these trade numbers are yardsticks of their success at creating a Global Economy and measures of their triumph in championing NAFTA, the WTO and MFN for Beijing. To the Old Right, however, manufacturing was a critical component of American power, indispensable to our sovereignty and independence, and the access road for working Americans into the middle class.

Seeing the devastation of NAFTA and its progeny, sensing rising opportunity in the industrial Midwest, Democrats are jumping ship on free trade. Bush, if he does not temper his enthusiasm for these one-sided trade deals, may just go down with it. If he does, one prays he will at least ensure the neoconservatives have first been locked securely in the cargo hold.

[skip2myloo]

"The good news is the profits come back to the US, the bad news is that workers are not the prime beneficiaries."

That's not bad news. In a capitalistic, free enterprise system, like iron ore, workers are a raw commodity.

Workers are not supposed to be the direct beneficiaries - the investors and entrepreneurs are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries.

In a prosperous economy, the workers are beneficiaries, but they are secondary to the investors.

My daddy always told me, 'Boy, you'll never get rich working for a wage.'

And he's right. Americans who believe the government is responsible for providing jobs and that the primary purpose of a business is to benefit the workers has been listening to too much liberal class warfare propaganda.

[B4Ranch]

I've always be tempted to write this, but never here. If you don't like it, why not leave?

I would prefer that he stays and makes it better. At least he has his eyes open and can see the problems. He's willing to bring the problems out where we all can see them, instead of cowering like sheep. You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. -Max Beerbolm

[skip2myloo]

"My personal approach is to look at my neighbors and figure out what I can do to make them more productive. Sometimes that means I go out and buy them better tools in trade for their help."

My personal is to look at my neighbors and figure out what I can sell them.

I look abroad and I see markets, not burdens.

If we want to change the trade deficit to a surplus, that's how we have to think.

[Orbiting_Rosie's_Head]

Technology is responsible for the outsourcing/offshoring boom and nothing else

Cheap labor.

[Constantine XIII]

Ugh, I read the first few lines and thought "Hey, this sounds like Pat Buchanan. Am I quick, or what? :p

[skip2myloo]

Yes, its the same mentality that we want cheap gas, electricity and clean air, so don't build any new power plants or refineries.

We want limited government, except for draconian fiscal, monetary and isolationist trade policies, oversight of greedy corporations, and government guarantees for jobs, a high minimum wage and unlimited benefits, even for those flipping burgers in an entry level job.

[MissAmericanPie]

I suppose you pinged me for an opinion. I know, or am attempting to understand that the term "conservative" covers a broad spectrum of people with different definitions for the term. It's been hard for me to grasp because I thought the core meaning, the bases on which the word is founded, is the same for everyone, or it's no longer conservatism, but something else, watered down and weak.

In the old days, a couple of decades ago, most Conservatives identified conservatism as love of God, family, country, in that order. Now it's love of the bottom line and manna, every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost part.

For me, my country is just like another one of my children, I want her healthy, secure, with strong foundations under her which she can use as a spring board into the future. And I don't mind sacrificing to that end. I don't think she can remain healthy without the foundations of manufacturing and industry. I don't see anyway on earth that this can be the case.

I quit a job, good paying, secure, great retirement and benefit package, because I perceived it to be harmful to my country. I could be retiring very, very early if I had kept it. So, I would be telling my son or daughter that there is more to life than what's in their bank account.

Your scenario is rather a blind study, as India has everything to gain, and our nation has everything to lose. Given the odds of India wanting to start up auto building in the USofA.

So, as far as what makes a conservative to me, it's someone who loves God enough to have made it their personal business and eager, joyful, task, to know Him. His expectations, his instructions, his warnings and why, and what He expects from someone that loves Him.

A Conservative loves his family, present and future generations and does everything in his power to ensure their future and pass on the inheritance that he received from his forefathers, and that being wealth that is not measured in dollars.

A conservative loves his country, and his fellow countrymen as brothers and neighbors, and does his best not to foul up his place in that society, and never behaves in a me first, last, and always manner.

As far as God is concerned this globalism is a real destructive idea. He confused the languages at the Tower of Babel and began man on his evolving into different races for a reason. He did not want globalism, nor man under the heel of a one world dictator, or one legal authority, as is bound to happen when nations are dead as far as sovereignty and self determination is concerned. Better for the world and mankind that dictators are limited as was Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam, than the entire world come under the heel of one such dictator.

Also it was God's plan to reward those people and nations that love and honor him as an example to those nations and people that don't, as stark counterpoints to create jealousy and longing for the blessings of God in those that don't know Him. We are hated right now because of our blessings, Al Queda hates us because our God has blessed us more abundently than any nation ever conceived in the history of the world, while their god has them eating sand.

Remember the tape of Ben Laden and his head moulah discussing the victory of 9-11? Remember what the moulah was saying to Ben Laden? Let me quote him, "I was praying and asking allah why America has everything and we have nothing, when the great news of our victory came to me on the radio". This is an example of the dark jealousy of those far from God. When all people are mixed together as far as their standing with God it's confusion. How can a nation receive the rich abundance of God when it is a confused mixture of believers and unbelievers? Especially when the unbelievers begin to outnumber those that do? "There is a way that seems right to a man, whose end is destruction".

We have our foot taking the first steps on that road to destruction. The bible is very clear about what happens to the super wealthy that pushes man down that road for their gain, who have saved gold and silver for the end times. They end up in caves, throwing their gold and silver in the dust because they are worthless. They will beg the mountains to fall on them and hide them from the Lamb, they will try to destroy the new bodies they find themselves in and death will flee far from them.

This is what God has sworn that globalism will bring, the end of sovereign self determining nations, man under the rule of one tyrant, the rising of nations and peoples to throw him off, ending in nuclear destructon, enjoy your temporary gain, your kids won't have nearly as much fun.

[looscnnn]

"Airplanes aside, the United States has the export profile of an agricultural colony."

And yet those are the jobs that "Americans will not do".

[Orbiting_Rosie's_Head]

Do you stick to your principles and decry [in my opinion wrongly] that outsourcing is bad for the Indian country's economy and that s/he should not take the well paying job because it indirectly takes away a job from someone who lives in India?

Uhhh... Your analogy has a fatal flaw. In order for it to work, the Indian SUV manufactured in the US would have to be shipped back to India for sale to an Indian buyer who has a brother that used to work in a factory that manufactured the same SUV's, but now has no middle-class job, because that factory has been closed and the job has been shipped to the US, where families on the lowest rung of society live in makeshift cardboard shacks and cook with cow dung. Since that situation, like any valid reasoning for tariff-free trade with slavery nations, only exists in fantasy land, your entire argument evaporates into a tiny puff of smoke.

[Orbiting_Rosie's_Head]

Two kinds of people in the world, what can I do for me folks, and the what can I do for others today folks. Free trade, global economy, exporting capitalism is Good, Right, Loving, Unselfish, and something Jesus would want us to do and I believe He commands us to do. Get real you idiot isolationists - how selfish you are lamenting your or our losses while there is a world out there that can and should be reached - with money, health, education and you scream like little selfish punks, "mine mine, it's all mine, and I don't want to share it". We will answer to God - He gives us things to share with others - the good samaritan is not only suppose to share with those in our own country but everywhere!! I love talking to people in India from MSN etc, they are kind, polite, articulate, and very intelligent etc. I love America so much I want to share all we have with the rest of the world, all we have.

How right you are! How selfish of me! What in the heck was I thinking!? I think I'll move my pregnant wife into a tin shack with a dirt floor right away. I am soooooo guilty. Besides, Jesus wants 10 year old girls to make my trousers on 12-hour shifts. It's Good, Right, Loving, Unselfish......blah blah blah

[skip2myloo]

bin Laden and Mullah Omar are absolute idiots - their rhetoric is what feeds the Hate America crowd.

I don't think they believe it themselves, instead they criticize us to deflect the dissatisfaction of their own followers.

Instead of blaming western culture for their poverty and isolationism, they need to examine their own fundamental beliefs.

It is their own culture that oppresses them, nothing more.

The people are subjugated in every respect, in their schools, their religion, the food they eat - even the clothes on their backs must conform to a strict code. There is NO opportunity for free thought. Anyone who ventures criticism, like Salman Rusdie, ends up with a death sentence (fatwah).

It is always easier to blame someone else for your deficiencies than it is to bring about your own reformation based on critical self-analyses.

And these idiots have the audacity to blame the west and kill free people because they believe we oppress them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In 1841 Alexis d'Tocquville wrote in Democracy in America, basically that America is prosperous because Americans are good.

Check it out: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/toc_indx.html

"So America must listen as well as lead. ...don't ever apologize for your values. Tell the world why you're proud of America. Tell them when the Star-Spangled Banner starts, Americans get to their feet, Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central Europeans, East Europeans, Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those who go back to the early settlers and those whose English is the same as some New York cab drivers I've dealt with, but whose sons and daughters could run for this Congress.

"Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and respectful. Not because some state official told them to, but because whatever race, color, class or creed they are, being American means being free. That's why they're proud." -- Tony Blair 7/17/03

[Iscool]

Pat Buchanan is nuts. He is just as extreme towards immigrants. I cringe when I hear him being called a conservative.

As with Christians, everyone is a conservative now days...If Buchanan is not a conservative, and you are, please define what a conservative is in your eyes...We who thought we were conservatives would like to know in case we need to change our title...

[Iscool]

If we want to keep jobs in America, the labor force has to be competitive - we've got to make it more attractive for businesses to operate in America and hire Americans than it is to go overseas.

You seem to intimate that business has every right to start up when, where and how they want to in the US but at the same time, Americans have no right to work for that business...Hogwash...

You talk about being competetive with business in China...Put it all on the labor side...Let American business set the example by paying it's plant and other managers the same wages they would earn in China...Then talk about labor...Oh, that's right...This is all about the wealthy people getting even wealthier by any means they can, even if they have to screw the out of work Americans in the process...

Fortunately for us, you are in the minority...This jobless recovery is a BIG, BIG issues to most Americans...

[Fee]

I am basicly saying the same thing. You stated the situation clearly that one can never make money working for someone else. So what is a good business or vocation for one to pursue in this global economy, other than being a CEO, key corporate lawyer, key corporate financial officer (jobs you have to pay a fortune to access like Harvard, Yale, country golfing club)???? Freepers like to know.

[oceanview]

you forgot our major export: US JOBS.

[Iscool]

Get real you idiot isolationists - how selfish you are lamenting your or our losses while there is a world out there that can and should be reached - with money, health, education and you scream like little selfish punks, "mine mine, it's all mine, and I don't want to share it". We will answer to God - He gives us things to share with others

What, you got stuck behind the door when they were passing out the brains??? The US is by far the country that gives the most charity in dollars, world wide...The US has and sends more Christian Missionaries thru-out the world than the rest of the world combined...YOU take away our jobs and we have nothing to give, let alone live on...

[oceanview]

that example is meaningless, since the cars being produced by the Indian company ARE BEING SOLD IN THE US MARKET!

This has nothing to do with what IBM is doing: transferring jobs and capital spending to India where they have no essentially no market, no profits, to serve the US market where they have both.

[MissAmericanPie]

I agree with you, but the truth is this moulah was speaking from his dark heart and asking the question, "Why does allah bless America and not us? Why are we left with nothing?"

His dark soul can never grasp the truth. I would say his soul is stuck in the Old Testaments wrath of God upon mankind, but muslims don't give that much respect or attention to the Old Testament. They mainly follow the writings of the man that wrote the Quran which is an abominiable twisting of scriptures that attempts to wrench the title of "God's chosen people", from the Jews, placing that title upon themselves.

The old battle between Isaac and Ishmael continues to this day in full combat and unabated. That America is built on Christian principles and fundementals of the sovereignty and importance of the individual is lost on them leaving them as bitter toward an America that believes and acts upon God's promise when he said to Israel, "I will bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you", as they are bitter towards the Jewish nation they hope to destroy.

They hold us as accomplises in denying them what they believe to be their rightful place, and their gods rightful place in the affairs of man because of our support of Israel and because of the temptation that freedom births in the hearts of their followers. That demonrats find so much in common with our enemies does more to define who and what they are than millions of words can ever hope to. The question is do we have the resolve to determine what to do about the enemy within the gate and without?

[LowCountryJoe]

...This is all about the wealthy people getting even wealthier by any means they can, even if they have to screw the out of work Americans in the process...

Shouldn't that be "Isnotcool". Class warfare from a FReeper!? Dude, it's very tellin' that you're so not gellin'!

[oceanview]

and government employment is going to continue to rise. In fact, more and more workers see government employment as the only "safe haven", something that pays a middle class wage and benefit, has retirement benefits, etc.