Wow in all three countries? I guess it was a bad idea. Sorry I have to run to the Post Office and pick up some dividend checks.
I'm reminded that the number one rated cable news show of all time is the Algore/Perot debate back in, I think, 1993. That's when Ross shared with us the "great sucking sound" quote.
fyi
for some background on EPI
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/about
one of the co-founders, Robert Reich
The Economic Policy Institute is a socialist/unionist group.
They want a "Living Wage," too.
Pfffft. What is unemployment 4.7%, 4.8%? I thought under 5% is considered full employment.
Since when did the findings of left-wing thinktanks become "news"?
What kind of metric is that? More people are off the dole so NAFTA's no good? I'll say it again. Pffft.
http://tinyurl.com/odlf6
"Jeff Faux and Gene Sperling are two titans of Democratic economic policy. Last week, at a forum sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future, they debated the core economic policy differences that define and divide old Democrats from new Democrats (click here for transcript).
Jeff Faux is the founder and former president of the progressive Washington think tank the Economic Policy Institute. Gene Sperling was the head of President Clinton’s National Economic Council from 1996 to 2000. Both have just published new books. Faux’s book is titled The Global Class War: How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future—and What It Will Take to Win It Back. Sperling’s book is titled The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity.
The two books provide a marvelous window on today’s Democratic Party. Faux is an old labor Democrat, Sperling a new Democrat. It is striking that two leading Democrats could come up with such fundamentally different accounts of the American economy. This suggests that the Democrats are really two parties when it comes to the all-important economic agenda.
Faux is a political economist, and therefore emphasizes politics in his analysis. Political power lies behind economic policy. His core thesis is that America’s elite, drawn from both Republicans and Democrats, has abandoned America and joined a new global political party—the Party of Davos. Globalization therefore represents a new class war. On one side is a new globalized uber-capitalist class. On the other side are the rest of us, workers everywhere—not just in the United States."
One thing I never see quantified in such studies is the net gain made to consumers because of lower prices. For those who think the reduced costs aren't passed on through lower prices, just take a look at the income statements for companies involved in NAFTA-type businesses.
I hear the same argument from the steel workers' union that Japan is dumping cheap steel in the US. Well, which would I rather have: 1) cheap steel for several million US cars, construction materials, and other steel products or 2) higher steel prices to keep a couple of thousand steel workers employed in a technologically backward domestic industry? If Japan is truly selling steel in the US at prices below their cost, we should buy all we can and force their losses so high they go out of business. The gains to consumers through lower-priced steel products far outweighs the minute gain a few steel workers make through higher wages.
Sorry, I don't buy this or similarly-flawed studies.
Well, hurray! That's about a third less money stolen from the productive and given to the unproductive. If anyone can figure out how to persuade the U.S. government to do the same, happy days will be here again.
Hurray again! Show us how to cut more!
>> ...and prompted wages to stagnate or even fall
Now you know they are lying. Government spending destroys jobs. A reduction in social spending = more investment capital in the private sector = higher wages.
E.P.I. ping.
EPI was founded by a group of economic policy experts that includes Jeff Faux, EPI's first president; economist Barry Bluestone of Northeastern University; Robert Kuttner, columnist for Business Week and Newsweek and editor of The American Prospect; Ray Marshall, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas-Austin; Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor and professor at Brandeis University; and economist Lester Thurow of the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Hey, the Economic Policy Institute is more full of sh*t than a portable toilet in front of a Mexican muffin factory. Don't buy it folks. Free trade is good.
Spending on social programs goes down for one of two reasons. The benefits are cut, or less people are in need of the programs.
There were cuts in spending, but the article (written by a big government, pro-socialist group) doesn't provide any information about why the spending was reduced, or even provide any evidence that it was related to NAFTA.
They refer to one of the shortest recessions on record as the slowest recovery, yet they ignore the tremendous obstacles, such as the uncertainty in our economy after the 9/11 attacks, and after the multitude of corporate scandals that happened under the accounting rules allowed by the Clinton administration and weren't found discovered until the Bush administration took over.
The economy has done an amazing turnaround considering how many things it has had to overcome.
The article also ignores that what they condiser to be a horribly slow recovery is a faster growing economy than most all socialist countries can claim currently.
This article is very thinly veiled crap.
You ain't seen nothin yet, wait till the CFR is finished erasing the borders.
NAFTA improved my standard of living...but that's only because I invested heavily in aluminum foil futures.