Posted on 02/23/2004 12:11:31 AM PST by 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.
I can't believe that I'm about to pull the John Kerry card. But as a supporter of free trade, the freedom to engage in it if so desired, a student of economics and politics, and as a United States Marine Corps veteran with 10 years active service, I, too, am glad that I was born in the U.S. where opportunity was laid upon my feet solely because of that birth right. That America is, was, and will continue to be the land of opportunity because we can and will compete in the global market...because democracy, capitalism, and freedom will eventually take root where it once was not. That anything that is forged with noble and good morals [but not necessarily absent of pain] that supports those causes to take their root is surely good for all of humanity. I'm proud to say that I think globally and beyond because of my faith.
No...What I buy into is anti-globalsim...The solution that will come is the one-world monetary system and the cashless society...We must all be on the same scale if globalism is to work...
The US is the best nation on earth...Which is the worst is hard to tell...Under globalism, we will all fit somewhere in the middle, I presume...Some people feel globalism in only a money issue...It's not at all...Like the people that belong to the Council on Foreign Relations state, "no country has a right to national sovereignty"...Globalsim is far larger than just money...And my solution??? America first, at all cost...
Eventually they do. But until then, they can cause great harm, and in the end the cost is higher than if we confront the issue at an early stage. I see no value in selling out the country to those who do not support our interests or have no good will for us. I see no value for our fellow citizens to suffer harm at the hands of those who wish us ill.
I will bold the relevant text in my original post.
BTW, the worst pair of shoes I owned were "Made in the USA," lasted three months (the sole came off the right shoe about halfway through a five-mile run), and cost about double what my made-in-China shoes I've worn the past 18 months did.
This may shock you -- but, I guarantee you, you can buy that same shirt, made in China or Taiwan, more cheaply in American than you can in England, Germany, Panama or Japan or Hong Kong.
In Northern Virginia, a thriving industry revolves around taking foreign visitors to Potomac Mills Shopping Mall (one of the largest in America) so they can shop the fantastic bargains here.
Then go to Dulles Airport and see what those international travelers are shipping back home.
What do you want business and government to do about American jobs ?? Hire people they don't need, pay more than they have to for the same labor elsewhere, restrict output, sell only in America, go broke ??
I don't understand what you view the solution to be ?? Where is Walter Williams when we need him ??
Please explain, in detail, how we would not be able to rebuild a manufacturing base in America if it became more profitable to do so.
Please explain--again, in detail--what this sentence is talking about.
The author did not prescribe a solution. I ahve a solution on my profile page. Now using tariffs to open up foreign markets to American products certainly does not violate the idea of Free Trade in any sense of the original proponents of the idea. (Adam Smith, riccardo et al.)
All this money we spend for exports comes back somehow, it has too, they don't just burn it when they get it.Much of it goes into financing our debts and buying our real estate. So it does lead to jobs just not the obvious kind. If we ever do default on our loans guess who gets the short end of the stick? The rest of the world!
The eventual devaluation of teh dollar is almost guaranteed if we as a nation can not back it up with goods and services. The problem is we are rapidly on the way to becoming an undeveloped nation with no effective industries other than agricultiural commodities.
Interesting is that Airbus a government suubsidized operation is cutting into our manufacturing export industry. Yet this goes smoothly through the WTO.
By the way I find it amazing how many so called conservatives rush to the defense orf teh WTO which was a Clintonista agreement that like all Clinton style agreements screwed the USA
I agree with your desire for peace, love and help thy brother in the world theme.
Now, give me some real, concrete examples of what you would do.
What do you want to do to keep blue collar jobs in America ??
Do you think its reasonable a UAW floor sweeper makes about $30/hour plus benefits - is that the way to keep jobs in America ??
Maybe we should nationalize American industry, and the government can pass out workfare jobs the same way they do now in the public sector. I'm not being glib, some have offered that alternative as a workable alternative.
Here in America, where the same forces are at work that cause globalism, I don't see all states nor all people fitting smack dab in the middle. I don't see everyone being on the same scale economically, socially, educationally, or spiritually. Why would you believe that our standard of living will take that serious of a hit? It hasn't yet. And even if it does, it will be over a significant time period and it will have required Americans to lose their competitive spirit and their freedoms. If we allow this to happen because we no longer want to compete, we will have deserved our lower standing in the pecking order. Just look at society in America today to see that you can definitely have all walks of life on a stage and that globally it's just a bigger scale.
I wish it were that simple, but its not.
Feel the love here. I can see the love of Jesus lives in your heart.
That's a sound bite, not a solution.
I agree with Joe in 141.
Nope, thats simply because Kerry is a Yankee, we don't vote for Yankees.
Where evangelical Christianity meets global international socialism.
And let's not forget about us selfish little punks, while we're at it.
John earns $X per hour doing a certain task and considers himself "underpaid," but it'll be a cold day in hell before he would even think of paying someone else $X per hour to do the same thing. Therefore, John pays Vijay $Y per hour (about 25% of $X) to do it in India, then b!tches and moans when his own job is sent overseas six months later.
Landscaping is a good example. Ask yourself how much you are willing to pay someone to mow your lawn, then ask yourself how much you would charge to do the same job. The difference between these two numbers (and it is a huge difference, if you are honest about it) is what I call a "credibility gap" on this issue. In the midst of all the complaints about "corporate greed" in this country, we seem to have overlooked the fact that "consumer greed" is the single biggest factor in driving these jobs overseas.
Why, from the 1970s until recently, were we enjoying fabulous growth and standard of living increases? Before you answer, remember many job were done away with during this time period, much from manufacturing. Could this all be cyclical boom and bust cycles.? How come? Maybe we need a long-term stagnation trend. The way I see it, some us Americans (including many that post here) could use some toughening up. Harder times may also inspire less government dependence, then again maybe just the opposite will be inspired. We'll probably find out just what we're made of though.
In fact, quite the contrary.
Acme Cog can sell widgets in Italy just fine without no stinkin government intervention.
That's what a real free market is all about.
Let's not let the liberals obfuscate the meaning of freedom once again.
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