[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.

[muir_redwoods]

"If cars can no longer be competitively produced here, then we have better find something that can be produced here;..."

And only an unfettered marketplace will deliver demand to direct the creation of that industry and those jobs.