[Mase]

Free-market benefits. Lagging behind is the euro area (1 percent) and the rest of western Europe (2 percent). Lesson: Sclerotic welfare states produce mass unemployment and stifle initiative and innovation. In contrast, the Chinese and Indian growth rates show how freeing up an economy produces rapid growth, and the continued contrast between the United States and Europe makes the same point. Free-market economic growth is enabling millions of people to rise out of poverty every year, even more than the experts expect. As the IMF writes, "The momentum and resilience of the global economy in 2005 continued to exceed expectations."

I've always like Barone. His good news is certain to drive the posts on this thread to single digits.

[1rudeboy]

All attention is directed toward the North American Union thread. Apparently someone discovered that the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have been cooperating, and that the C.F.R. is somehow involved.

[Albion Wilde]

good news is certain to drive the posts on this thread to single digits.

LOL! Too true!

[L98Fiero]

"His good news is certain to drive the posts on this thread to single digits."

Woot!! Double digits before it gets off the first page.!! It's sad that you were pretty much right.

[Krodg]

His good news is certain to drive the posts on this thread to single digits.

No it won't, the doomsday posters will show up...it's their calling. They simply can't let any thread remain positive.

[expat_panama]

Everyone knows that business are straining cope with a horrendous labor shortage, and even with so many calls for work they're powerless when it comes to demand cost of living increases because of the president's failure to support the need for COL pay hikes.

It doesn't stop there.  What little power the homeless once had is being destroyed by the ever increasing voting majority of the winners of life's lottery.  In fact, excess personal wealth has gotten so extreme that our society is endemically infested with an elite super rich that no longer even as a need to save.   Americans used to save big-time back before the imbalance of private assets was allowed to corrupt net worth figures.  Not any more.

Bottom line is that it's all the fault of those odious "free trait" agreements.  Years ago we tried to tell them that sending all our jobs to Mexico would clearly result in the masses of Mexican unemployed flooding into the US job market. 

The fact that we still have falling unemployment, even with a third of Mexico's population already here,  proves that there's no hope, no light at the end of the tunnel.  We're doomed.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Free-market economic growth is enabling millions of people to rise out of poverty every year, even more than the experts expect.

The only way they can do this is by stealing millions, if not billions, of American jobs. You can tell these jobs have been stolen from us because our unemployment rate has risen to the unsustainable level of 4.7%. If they steal many more jobs, our unemployed will no doubt jump to 4.0% or even 3.5%.

Someone, maybe Paul Ross, posted a link to a Michael Moore type video called, IIRC, Ha Ha America or Stupid America, something like that. It proved that China was beating us at every turn. The part I liked best showed Chinese workers weaving coaxial cable....by hand. Yeah, those sneaky foreigners taking the jobs that Americans will need in this high tech century.