Middle Class Job Losses Batter Economy

Associated Press | January 2 2006 | Associated Press and Vicki Smith

[muir_redwoods]

Your response, among its many flaws, posits a possibility of a static system. That is an impossibility and the world changes daily. It was once common for 90% or more of our population to live on food they themselves had grown. To suggest, in the 18th century, that one day less than 2% of the population would be farmers would have suggested mass starvation to a person of that day. Few of us farm today and fewer still, starve. The world has changed and the world will continue to change and an inability to adjust and adapt to that change is not a virtue.

What you call Randian is rationalism and realism. No legislation can long protect an unrealistic wage for an anacronistic job in a marketplace that has choices. That is a fact. Any plan that ignores that fact is a wish, not a plan.

[muir_redwoods]

Since all you seem to do in forming a response is leap to a reductio ad absurdam, it is pointless to discuss this further with you. If you grow up, write back.

[Clintonfatigued]

The eschelons of corporate America are so short-sighted and focused only on their own bonuses, they're ignoring the effect they're having on their own country. They're greedy traitors.

[ex-snook]

American corporations are not as successful as they used to be. They have cut quality enough. What's a corporation to do? They have to reduce costs. Shortly corporations will have to offload their health and pension costs to the government. Hell maybe GM and follow the debt practices of the federal government, create bonds and sell them to China.

[nopardons]

Unless you lived in the old USSR, or some other place with the same rules, no worker has EVER been guaranteed a job. No person, not even slaves, was ever guaranteed a job for life in this country.

Until recent history ( and I do mean rather recent history !), those who worked in some form of manufacturing, were laid off at the will of the owner. Get mangled in a machine? TOUGH LUCK...you were fired and no, you didn't get any severance pay nor medical benefits. Go out on strike? You would get shot/fired on and absolutely have no job to go back to! New immigrant waves? Hold on to you hat, whoa Nellie...you were OUT ON YOUR EAR, because the new immigrants would work for less! Outsourcing? That isn't "new" either!

And owning your own home, was, until very recently, something only that most could only dream of.

[ARCADIA]

No legislation can long protect an unrealistic wage for an anacronistic job in a marketplace that has choices.

True, but we are not talking about protecting a job, but an entire industrial base. If cars can no longer be competitively produced here, then we have better find something that can be produced here; something, that would be grand enough to employ the displaced workforce, and valuable enough to exchange for cars and other goods. This is what innovation and competitive positioning use to be about; we may not be able to compete with the least cost provider, but we should certainly be able to create and distinguish a premium first world product from 3rd world junk.

[nopardons]

Ever read about the "ROBBER BARONS" ?

Making money isn't "traitorous", unless, like the Clinton bought pardonee Mark Rich, you are a crook and a for REAL traitor.

You really need to stop misusing the word "traitor"; it doesn't help your argument at all.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Thirty years ago, Dan Fairbanks looked at the jobs he could get with his college degree and what he could make working the line at General Motors Corp., and decided the GM job looked better."

We all have to live with the consequences of our individual bad choices. He decided to let GM control his future, instead of controlling his future himself by going to school.

Now that it's time to pay the piper, he wants to blame everything on the fact that things change.

No one to blame but himself.

[Edit35]

Business breaks the law so we pass new laws and stricter enforcement to balance the lack of business ethics and business whines about being treated unfairly just because they have no ethics. Boohoo. Cry me a river and make me care. Sounds as bad as liberals.

No, my friend. YOU sound like the liberal.

The keystone of America is freedom, and that includes the freedom to move your business anywhere around the world one would choose.

Only a liberal would DEMAND that you locate a business to a place of the liberal's choosing, even if that means subjecting oneself to things one chooses NOT to be subjected.

Likewise, you have the freedom NOT to buy the product in question. But stop implying some nefarious motive to someone who is simply exercising their God-given right to free choice.

[Paul Ross]

Assault and battery and theft are illegal.

Which are the rules of the road in U.S. trade, governed and enforced under U.S. law, and protected thereby.

But not so in international trade...

Regulating foreign commerce was supposed to be enforced by our Congress, as per the Constitution. Not abdicated to a World Court with personnel from all corners who want to get the USA...or worse still, enter sham treaties (but fail to gain the constitutionally required 2/3rds support in the Senate) that render the US production defenseless against unfairnesses blatantly manufactured by foreign governments willy-nilly ...and then just pretend those unfairnesses are okay. "It's free trade, after all..."

[hedgetrimmer]

Unfortunately for workers like Balls, the old rules Constitution no longer apply applies in the new global economy, says John Austin, a senior fellow with the Washington-based global socialist Brookings Institute.

[ARCADIA]

And owning your own home, was, until very recently, something only that most could only dream of.

Until the mid 19th century, the US was a wild and untaimed frontier backwaters. We have made progress since then, especially during the first half of the 20th century, and some of us believe those advancements worthy of protection.

[hedgetrimmer]

no one ever guaranteed you that the plan you made 30 years ago was good for all time.

And yet who could have imagined how the "free traders" would undermine the US Constitution so effectively? Now, people who support Constitutional tariffs and congressional authority over trade, are now derided as "protectionists". And the "free traders" who promote global rules and authority over the American people, undermining their right to self determination, and who promote a form of global socialism to "fight poverty" and the downward harmonization of American standards of living with the third world congratulate themselves shamelessly on their accomplishments. Go figure.

[Paul Ross]

Abigale Adams begged her husband, in letters, to try to get her pins ( for sewing ) from Europe. They weren't made in America... And America has been buying "cheap goods", which were NOT made in America, for many, many, MANY generations; this is nothing new.

Uh, just what makes you think those pins were cheap??! Do you have any idea about the cost of importing things in those days?

Seems to me your usage of the Abigail Adams example and attempt to "pin" your hopes on that...points up a number of the free traders mistakes: The view of any reaonable person would be that the example instead proves the need, not for for free trade, but for a robust indigenous U.S. (or should I say, Colonial) manufacturing base. One which the British attempted to prohibit, so that they could monopolize manufactures. And btw, there weren't any egregious U.S. unions for you to genuflect against, unless you count the FreeMasons. And most of the Founders were such...

[Edit35]

Care to explain why non-union made Toyotas cost more than Fords, or Chevy's???

Better quality, maybe? Care to explain why and how a Kia made in Korea for a couple thouand bucks costs you 16,000 after it makes the boat ride across the pond???

Maybe the ride across the pond costs $$, and maybe there is import fees.

Besides, people in South Korea do not make 25-cents a day like some imply. In fact, they are fairly modernized in their culture and pay scale.

[Paul Ross]

And the "free traders" who promote global rules and authority over the American people, undermining their right to self determination, and who promote a form of global socialism to "fight poverty" and the downward harmonization of American standards of living with the third world congratulate themselves shamelessly on their accomplishments.

Bump. Sigh. It is too true.

[hedgetrimmer]

You really need to stop misusing the word "traitor"; it doesn't help your argument at all.

"free traders" hate that word, yet it is the word that best describes the "free trader" when it comes to citizenship, sovereignty and constitutional government. So why shouldn't it be used?

[Edit35]

This is key to restoring American 'foundational' productive capacities that have been negligently lost...and have not been properly appreciated...and probably won't be until we are at war with the country that now has them.

Well blow me down with a feather.

Are you really contemplating going to war with a country because they have cheaper labor than us?

[Paul Ross]

The keystone of America is freedom, and that includes the freedom to move your business anywhere around the world one would choose.

No.

The keystone is liberty.

Liberty is not without the reciprocal obligations of DUTY.

Why do you think Theodore Roosevelt proudly declaimed: "Thank God I am not a free trader!" ?

[hedgetrimmer]

Are you really contemplating going to war with a country because they have cheaper labor than us?

China has been planning to go to war with US for quite some time.