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To: SJackson
Sounds like the wrong question was asked on a poll as usual. The problem with “Free Trade” is there is very little, if any of it. Just as an example, we still have the tariff on imported ethanol from Brazil when we are trying to cut oil consumption. At the same time we subsidize corn farmers when prices are plenty high enough. Not to mention we subsidize sugar which would be a better feedstock for ethanol. We block importing cheap sugar from poor countries that could use the money. Then we send money through the World Bank to prop up the countries we should be buying sugar from. In extreme cases we then send troops to quell revolution in the same said countries.

Now if you ask a congresscritter from Iowa, he/she/it, will say we need to open markets for their corn. There are plenty of Texas and Louisiana farmers that would like to sell rice to Asia, but their farmers would have a cat. At the same time they all insist that we buy all of their crap no matter what.

This is just one example, but it shows there is not really Free Trade. The right question for the poll would be for Fair Trade. The people that gripe about losing their jobs to foreigners are low skilled workers or they wouldn't be losing their job in the first place.( Yes, I know their are programmers and engineers overseas also) Do we really need thousands of shoe workers or textile workers in the US? If those jobs stay in the US they will go to illegals anyway.

The ones that have a gripe( programmers and engineers), are really griping because they want more money. If you are a programmer, you didn't go to school to make $30-$40k a year. They all believed they would make $60-$100k. If you really have Free Trade, then why shouldn't the company send the business to India and get programmers for $22k per year?

The terms should really be defined a little better to make a comment on them.

108 posted on 10/04/2007 8:47:21 AM PDT by chuckles
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To: chuckles

“Do we really need thousands of shoe workers or textile workers in the US?”

Just curious....

Who the hell died and left you in charge of making that decision. Not every American kid is college bound.


118 posted on 10/04/2007 8:53:44 AM PDT by taxed2death (A few billion here, a few trillion there...we're all friends right?)
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