Replies

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.

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've sacrificed our quality of life? Are you serious? Oh yes, we had it SO much better in 1955, right? Our quality of life was so much higher!

By the way, what percentage of people owned two or more cars in 1955? What about now? What was the size, in square feet, of a home built in 1955? What about today? How many people owned two or more television sets in 1955? How many today? How many people had a microwave oven in 1955?

How many people went down into coal mines every day--breathing in coal dust and facing serious risk of cave-ins or explosions in 1955? How many people do that today?

What percentage of people had white collar jobs in 1955? What about today? Seriously: by what standard do you believe people before today had a better quality of life?