Oh please. Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate in 1993. NAFTA didn't even have to come up for a vote if the Democrats didn't want it to.
Posted on 04/09/2004 12:22:04 PM PDT by Havoc
What nonsense. Reagan presided over an economy that was recovering very nicely from stagflation. Inflation was gone, oil prices were low, the stock market was booming, and millions of jobs had been created in 1983. Utterly unlike now. The Democrats of 1984 always expected to lose, so I don't know where this "surprise" nonsense of yours is coming from. Reagan was always comfortably ahead in the polls with approval ratings off the charts, running comfortably on peace and prosperity.
Oh please. Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate in 1993. NAFTA didn't even have to come up for a vote if the Democrats didn't want it to.
It's a matter of public record. What's the matter, that not in your talking points?
Stability is an illusion. You can be the best telephone switchboard operator in the world at the largest, most stable company on the planet, and still be out of a job tomorrow when a new computer replaces you. Ditto for being a great Java programmer and getting replaced by a new HTML design package, or a newspaper corner salesman getting replaced by a new vending machine.
To get real stability, you need Soviet levels of control on an economy. Yes, Russians didn't get fired back in the USSR...of course, they're still earning only about $30 a month today, too...and making fewer things than Taiwan (which has a tenth of Russia's population) or South Korea.
Cubans and apparently North Koreans have "stability" too...but a lot of good that does them.
Even Europe's level of "stability" is being blamed for their own inefficient workforce and 10+% unemployment rates in France and Germany.
And for examples of "stability" close to home, consider how inefficient most government bureaucrats are...all of whom work for agencies that wouldn't know "re-engineering" or downsizing if it walked in the front door with a big neon sign on its head.
He correctly realized that raw capitalism of your variety is destructive and indeed self destructive because it triggers the "populism" response of ordinary people protecting themselves, their families, their communities, and their country.
But don't be surprised. Most of what passes for so called "conservatives" who want to ban offshore outsourcing are simply Marxist platitudes rehashed with modern buzzwords.
In your eagerness to expend the lives of others to your ideological vision of a pure free trade world you talk like a Communist. True conservatives recognize that there is a higher value that pure greed. They have no wish to be "citizens of the world". They understand that in a world that conserves, the free market serves humans, not the other way around. True conservatives recognize the sacred worth of human beings and do not treat them with your Stalinist level of ruthlessness. That is why the Christian Coalition did not support NAFTA and religious conservatives are by and large strongly anti-oursourcing. Read Phyllis Schalfly among others.
Capitalism, however, will sort out offshore outsourcing if the government stays out of it.
Grownups do not take it for granted that stories always have happy endings. What if "sorting out offshore outsourcing" means the total technological transfer of American technology to China ? You may be willing to abdicate control of our geopolitical destiny to line your pocket. I am not.
No, farm and home foreclosures in 1935 were vastly higher than farm and home foreclosures in 2003.
Even if you limit the debate to bankruptcies alone, there were 82,000 business bankruptcies in 1987 versus only 36,000 in 2003.
Frankly, what these stats should tell you is that personal bankruptices are being abused to dodge debt more today than back in the past when such tactics were more used to protect assets from legitimate hardships.
Indeed, the NAFTA vote is a matter of public record, easily looked up. Again, weren't you briefed in proper MNC shill fashion ? This is the second time you have been ignorantly wrong on the subject, the first when you said it was not voted on in the House. Do better.
The vote totals speak for themselves. In neither house did the majority of Democrats support NAFTA.
"He correctly realized that raw capitalism of your variety is destructive and indeed self destructive because it triggers the "populism" response of ordinary people protecting themselves, their families, their communities, and their country."
Thanks for trying to promote stealth communism today, but no, Marx didn't even get that angle correct.
Yes, capitalism is destructive of the old order, but it is a *creative* destruction. Buggy whip makers see their jobs get destroyed by capitalism instead of "protected" by the nanny state, but the new automobile manufacturing jobs soon outnumber the old buggy whip jobs by orders of magnitude, and pay more to boot.
Protecting jobs from their capitalistic destruction will only rob your children of the better paying jobs that *always* replace whatever was destroyed.
The alternative, however, is to stagnate your economy. Improvements that make old jobs obsolete have to be banned by law, much as India did back in the 1920's when they banned automated textile machines to "save" the hand-sewing jobs that they had. That cost India half a century of prosperity in exchange for 50+ years of finger-numbing poverty.
And while an uneducated India of 1920 *could* fall for such Marxist, protectionist nonsense, the India of today is less likely to be so conned (though they do have some serious protectionist measures still in place)...and most certainly the U.S. of today isn't going to fall for such tired old theories. Just look at the public backlash against Bush's steel tariffs last year and the year before and multiply that by 150 times more...if you dare enact trade barriers that increase prices at Wal-Mart or raise phone or software costs by 60% or more.
Nonsense. The vote totals were mere window dressing. The Democrats controlled *both* the House and Senate as well as the Presidency in 1993. NAFTA wouldn't have even come up for a vote if the Democratic Party hadn't desired it to pass.
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