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Exactly!

The "free trade" snake oil salesmen were NEVER talking about the "fair trade" espoused by Ronald Reagan!

Free trade has meant we buy cheap goods from you while you can price our goods out of reach for your citizens or refuse them altogether.

That ugly reality has resulted in closed factories, shuttered up store fronts on Main Street and large big box stores selling cheap goods from third world countries using slave labor or worse yet, poisoned dog and cat foods, toys containing high lead contents that we don't allow our manufacturers to use but mostly government regulations that strangle our manufacturing base while we make our enemies rich enough to be building up their military to challenge our military superiority one day.

Do you mean that we have 25% unemployment, people in bread lines everywhere, falling housing prices, and tent cities? I understand, you are talking about Michigan with the protectionist and monopolist unions.

Dynamic economies with less regulated trade are a bumpy ride. On balance, however, less regulated trade makes everyone wealthier in the long run. You do raise a good point about military power. Less regulated trade has enriched China, enabling them to pour money into military spending. As long as China does not make war on us or others, I do not see a problem if they want modernize their armed forces.

I agree that we should enact policies that make us more competitive by reducing wasteful regulations, lowering corporate taxes, enacting market driven energy policies, retioinalizing litigation policies, and so on. Unfortunately, we seem to be heading in the opposite direction of competitiveness if the dims grab control in 2008. Less regulated trade with anti competitive policies is a very bad combination.

Exactly!

The "free trade" snake oil salesmen were NEVER talking about the "fair trade" espoused by Ronald Reagan!

Free trade has meant we buy cheap goods from you while you can price our goods out of reach for your citizens or refuse them altogether.

That ugly reality has resulted in closed factories, shuttered up store fronts on Main Street and large big box stores selling cheap goods from third world countries using slave labor or worse yet, poisoned dog and cat foods, toys containing high lead contents that we don't allow our manufacturers to use but mostly government regulations that strangle our manufacturing base while we make our enemies rich enough to be building up their military to challenge our military superiority one day.

That's my view. I term the above social entropy. We don't build nice main streets that last 100 years. We build disposable box stores that are a blight on our landscape. We have sacrificed our quality of life.

We also have hidden inflation. Buying products for the same price we did 10 years ago but that don't last as long or taste the same. 10 years ago a quality ribeye steak cost around $6 - $8 a pound and were readily found at the supermarket. Today the supermarket sells similarly priced steaks. But what I would term equivalent quality go for $12 - 15 a pound. Yet somehow our core inflation numbers don't register that fact.

“That ugly reality has resulted in closed factories, shuttered up store fronts on Main Street and large big box stores selling cheap goods from third world countries using slave labor or worse yet, poisoned dog and cat foods, toys containing high lead contents that we don’t allow our manufacturers to use but mostly government regulations that strangle our manufacturing base while we make our enemies rich enough to be building up their military to challenge our military superiority one day.”

Oh, that was so well put. Bravo.