White House sees no need to renegotiate CAFTA

To the free trader, job losses are irrelevant.

Correction, they're not irrelevant, just necessary. Through the 90's the U.S. 'lost' 27-36 million jobs a year. Capitalism is a profit and loss system, and the process is know as creative destruction. As new efficiencies are identified and utilized labor is freed up for new ventures. You seem to be in favor of a stagnate economy. Since manufacturing employment has shrunk worldwide as a portion of the labor force, how would you prevent this? At what point do you arrest progress?

Those would be jobs that employ non-college educated Americans, the low class scum for whom they have nothing but contempt.

Class warfare, how pathetic.

Creative destruction ? Tell me, what exactly is being created ? What is the growth industry that will absorb those displaced as their jobs are shipped south ? That's the point free traitors never seem to answer.

Class warfare, how pathetic.

The policies that you and your ilk advocate ARE class warfare. That is why support for free trade does not exist among non-college educated Americans because they know that it is about replacing them with cheap foreign labor.

Opposition to CAFTA comes, as usual, from blue collar Americans who know that this is about shipping their jobs overseas.

I think you misunderstand my position, and the reality of these misnamed (to fool You) freetrade agreements. I favor free trade, to use your example, do California, and Alabama have a free trade agreement? Then why do countrys need multithousand page agreements to trade freely with each other?
These free trade agreements are not about free trade, they are designed to put the U.S. at as big a disadvantage as possible. There were many unintended consequences to NAFTA that are not being reported. Many of the Manufacturing plants built in Mexico near the border are standing empty, they have been moved to the Orient, where the labor is cheaper, and the restrictions are less. Because of high yeilds in the U.S. farmers here can grow corn, wheat, etc. much cheaper than the farmers in Mexico, many Mexican farmers have put out of business by the grain imports since NAFTA.

If these were actually about free trade they wouldn't consist of thousands of pages of restrictions, requirements, and one sided penaltys. If you don't believe me, enter NAFTA, or North American Free Trade Agreement in a search engine, and go read it.

Creative destruction ? Tell me, what exactly is being created ?

Higher living standards. If a shirt becomes less expensive for hundreds of millions of Americans they have hundreds of millions of dollars left over to increase their living standard after buying the the less expensive shirt.

What is the growth industry that will absorb those displaced as their jobs are shipped south ? That's the point free traitors never seem to answer.

Traitor? Alright you name-calling imbecile, let me try to explain how economies grow and living standards rise. Try and follow along.

It is impossible to guess exactly what labor will come to the fore. It's the task of entrepenuers and investors to try and find out what people want other people to do. If you'd told my grandfather that his son and grandson wouldn't work the farm, that instead they'd manage LAN's and databases, he wouldn't know what you were talking about. However, if we'd never been freed from the task of farming for a living, our labor wouldn't be available for these tasks that didn't exist before.

"In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 switchboard operators. In the same year, Americans made 9.8 billion long distance calls. Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators. That's a tremendous 80 percent job loss.

What should Congress have done to save those jobs? Congress could have taken a page from India's history. In 1924, Mahatma Gandhi attacked machinery, saying it "helps a few to ride on the backs of millions" and warned, "The machine should not make atrophies the limbs of man." With that kind of support, Indian textile workers were able to politically block the introduction of labor-saving textile machines. As a result, in 1970 India's textile industry had the level of productivity of ours in the 1920s.

Michael Cox, chief economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and author Richard Alms tell the rest of the telecommunications story in their Nov. 17 New York Times article, "The Great Job Machine." Spectacular technological advances made it possible for the telecommunications industry to cut its manpower needs down to 78,000 to handle not the annual 9.8 billion long distance calls in 1970, but today's over 98 billion calls.

One forgotten beneficiary in today's job loss demagoguery is the consumer. Long distance calls are a tiny fraction of their cost in 1970. Just since 1984, long distance costs have fallen by 60 percent. Using 1970s technology, to make today's 98 billion calls would require 4.2 million operators. That's 3 percent of our labor force. Moreover, a long distance call would cost 40 times more than it does today.

Finding cheaper ways to produce goods and services frees up labor to produce other things. If productivity gains aren't made, where in the world would we find workers to produce all those goods that weren't even around in the 1970s?

It's my guess that the average anti-free-trade person wouldn't protest, much less argue that Congress should have done something about the job loss in the telecommunications industry. He'd reveal himself an idiot. But there's no significant economic difference between an industry using technology to reduce production costs and using cheaper labor to do the same. In either case, there's no question that the worker who finds himself out of a job because of the use of technology or cheaper labor might encounter hardships. The political difference is that it's easier to organize resentment against India and China than against technology." - Walter Williams

The policies that you and your ilk advocate ARE class warfare.

Why is it class warfare to tell you that you have no right to a monopoly in trade with me? Is it my fault if you can't or don't make something I want? Why do you get to put up barriers between me and others who are willing to trade the product of our labor with one another freely? Do you consider yourself my ward? I don't want the duty of supporting you. Support yourself, to the best of your ability. If you're afraid you have nothing more to offer than a poorly educated third world peasant, why do think you should be able to earn more at my expense?

That is why support for free trade does not exist among non-college educated Americans because they know that it is about replacing them with cheap foreign labor.

My brother didn't go to college. He started as a 'cheap laborer' when he was 18. Now he runs his own business. Maybe you lack his drive and acumen, in which case you can go to work for him - if you're willing to work. You'll be paid what you're worth, and what your labor is worth is determined by how much people are willing to pay for what you can do. It's sad that people can't graduate high school with the ability to understand that, but here you are.