Posted on 03/10/2004 4:43:33 AM PST by 1rudeboy
President George W. Bush hit back at Democratic critics of his administration's job-creation efforts on Tuesday, branding them as "economic isolationists" who would raise new trade barriers and damage the US economy.
The comments came as part of what appeared to be a co-ordinated administration effort to respond to growing political pressures over the slow pace of US job growth, which has helped push Mr Bush's likely Democratic opponent, John Kerry, ahead of the president in several recent polls.
In a speech in Virginia, Mr Bush said: "There are economic isolationists in our country who believe we should separate ourselves from the rest of the world by raising up barriers and closing off markets. They're wrong. If we are to continue growing this economy and creating new jobs, America must remain confident and strong about our ability to trade in the world."
Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, similarly warned Congress on Tuesday that "given the fact we're now in a stage of an economic recovery, the absolutely worst thing we could do would be to turn to economic isolationism".
Mr Zoellick told the Senate finance committee that increasing US exports to countries such as China and India, encouraging foreign investment in the US, and helping workers adjust to the loss of some jobs abroad were better responses than "bureaucratic interventions that will increase prices to our people".
Mr Bush's comments came less than a week after the Senate passed legislation aimed at preventing US government contracts from being carried out by workers in developing countries.
The administration has been uncertain over how to respond to the continued slow pace of job creation. Mr Bush has sought to distance himself from recent remarks by a senior economic adviser, Gregory Mankiw, that outsourcing of jobs is just a part of trade and therefore good for the US economy. But the administration now appears set to mount a more robust defence of companies that move US jobs abroad.
"US companies with foreign affiliates now account for about 58 per cent of our exports," said Mr Zoellick. "So the companies that do business overseas are also exporting overseas."
"I think the challenge is: How do you help people in a way that doesn't hurt or kill other jobs?" he said, pointing out that the US currently runs a $60bn annual trade surplus in the service sector, which has seen a growing number of jobs moved to lower-wage countries.
My hands up! My hands up! I got the answer: A free market means companies can sell where they choose.
Let's keep it that way. I would just love those mean old South African's to dump their excess gold on me at $1.25 per ounce. Nasty old Arabs want to undercut our American oilmen and sell us a million barrels of oil at $4.35 ea.? Bring 'em on!
Your loss, my friend.
My son just graduated from Penn State, and immediately scored a job making 60k, plus nearly 10k in education and bonus incentive benefits, with an S&P 500 pharmacutical company.
My daughter is in college taking nursing courses, and already has job offers of nearly $25/hour.
The company I work for in the media is constantly hiring new people.
If you and yours want to withdraw from society, so be it. All the more for people who still have some incentive to go out and make a good living.
In my opinion, there is nothing to be gained by the unemployed or underemployed by lamenting that some company in some other state sent some jobs overseas. If individuals would concentrate on their own situation, rather than striking some leftist solidarity pose, they'd see a lot more success.
Yes, check for your self. The bush-bashers are wrong and they've been wrong for years. The economy is booming, and all strata of society are better off.
Your point?
And he's stupid too if that's his position. Corporate tax over 30% = Evil oppressive government destroying postive environment for corporations to operate in.
Offshoring = effective means of combatting the above. Hopefully all corporations will threaten to leave. Maybe then the government will lower the corporate tax. The USA should be a tax haven for corporations- not a place to flee from.
Demonstration of falsity, with support, commencing in three.....two.....one......
Self employed baby! Woohoo! My job belongs to me. And uh, I've already outsourced it to another country and am benefitting quite well from it ;-)
You don't have a right to a job. You want guarantees in life? Maybe a different planet, I don't know. It doesn't exist here. Look at the state Europe is in. Is that what you want? Is that what all you protectionists want? Double digit unemployment in Germany. Why? Because the people there wanted the government to guarantee job and income security. That's exactly why. That's what people on this thread want- a European solution.
Hey, you'll get what you ask for maybe, but I'm sure you won't like it once you've got it.
Well, if you're a retiree with a Hummer parked behind the doublewide, I guess your statement, as an expression of where your interest lies, makes sense.
Otherwise, if they did that, they'd destroy the U.S. oil industry (what's left of it), idling equipment and men and causing organizations to be rolled up and settled. All that gear would go to the weedpatch, and all that experienced talent would be selling tires or teaching community-college courses in geology. You want that?
You know, you can devolve an economy back to zero activity, without working too hard at it. Remember LBJ's one-liner about carpenters, barns, and jackasses?
I think you're missing the point. If I knew what the next new thing was, I'd be inventing it or investing in it. Right now, someone else is (darn it). But one thing is certain: if we decide to tread water and keep all the jobs we currently do, then some other country will develop the next new thing.
I'm almost certain I know the answer to what you are asking. Not to your question exactly, but to what is likely to have motivated it's asking.
Any economy has up and downs. In US History we typically call them "boom and bust" cycles. However, and interestingly, that term has fallen out of current vogue. But go back to say, 1950, 1940, 1930, etc, etc. and every man on the street would understand it and expect it as a natural state of affairs.
There are times when most people in an area have excesses to spend, and they do, and times when an area is, well, illiquid. Hard times. Can hardly afford cheap goods.
Ideally we learn and grow from experiencing both kinds of times, while -- of course -- being desirous of minimizing the hard times.
You may recollect the William Jennings Byrant "No Cross of Gold" motto. He was a demogogue, a man who wrecked much long term havoc on our nation, yet his call then had some honorable basis -- he called for the Federal Government to enable more liquidity in one of those hard times, by allowing a silver standard as well as a gold one.
If he wasn't throwing his own honor into the fires of demogogery and self-aggrandizment and power he might have produced a finer body of work without the havoc he left to us long term.
His greed for such demogogue's power made him more wrong than he was right. Still ...
Liquidity is needed in such times.
But we are super-liquid now. We have papered over every corner of the known universe with fiat dollars.
Where will that new liquidity come from?
* * * * *
The boom-bust cycle is ancient. Ancient. Many thousands of years. The problems we are experiencing are NOT "new under the sun". Human nature has it's constancies. Very constant.
How have super boom-bust cycles been solved in the past -- that is, reliquified after a period of super-liquidity?
Always by re-money-tization of a sort. That is by coining a new standard currency.
That's NO light thing, to replace in whole the money system. For people hold all sorts of debt and contract valued in the old currency. When it happens it is radical. War, National breakdown Calamity, insurrection.
I've only found one suggestion of a alternative that may work, but really needs some serious adaptation of which I have not imagined, and which in all integrity needs to be codified in the Constitution, but certainly would need some trials before doing so. (Almost as if I'm proposing a possible Constitutional Admenment for two hundred years from now.)
That is the concept of the Jubilee Year, and perhaps the Sabbatical years as well.
In any case what the Biblical Jubilee makes regular, happens anyway but instead in havoc and chaos and calamity, when the time of a super-bust cycle comes on.
That actually causes a net gain in jobs (not a reduction of good ones), if you understand hospitals. For years nurses have been expected to perform all sorts of menial tasks, which wastes their education and training. Hospitals are working to utilize nurses efficiently, and part of that is hiring a lower echelon of workers. Health care employment is rocking, and will continue to do so for at least the next 10 years.
You don't have to answer a personal question, but here goes: Just how old are you? Are you as young and foolish as you sound?
"My job belongs to me", eh? Wait'll you get sick. Real sick. Sick as in, can't work, can't hardly get up. When your wife.......oh, wait, you sound like you don't have time for foolishness like that, either.
Okay, well, we'll just roll the coroner's wagon when the neighbors begin to complain about the flies. That'll be your "safety net".
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