Posted on 03/03/2008 7:38:57 PM PST by jazusamo
It is fascinating watching politicians say how they are going to rescue the "rust belt" regions where jobs are disappearing and companies are either shutting down or moving elsewhere.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is being blamed for the jobs going elsewhere. Barack Obama blames the Clinton administration for NAFTA, and that includes Hillary Clinton.
Senator Obama says that he is for free trade, provided it is "fair trade." That is election year rhetoric at its cleverest.
Since "fair" is one of those words that can mean virtually anything to anybody, what this amounts to is that politicians can pile on whatever restrictions they want, in the name of fairness, and still claim to be for "free trade." Clever.
We will all have to pay a cost for political restrictions and political cleverness, since there is no free lunch. In fact, free lunches are a big part of the reason for once-prosperous regions declining into rust belts.
When the American automobile industry was the world's leader in its field, many people seemed to think that labor unions could transfer a bigger chunk of that prosperity to its members without causing economic repercussions...
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Most people who understand the economics of illegal immigration, aren’t clamoring for more cheaper labor in other sectors. Just because I get low cost lettuce, doesn’t mean I advocate illegals o bring the cost down for high ticket items.
No, but low cost of goods (like lettuce) means you have more disposable income to buy big ticket items.
You just summed up the Globalist's "level playing field." NAFTA was supposed to created those conditions (Mexican jobs in Mexico) and now it's various programs funded by the US for Mexican and Latin American "opportunity."
The illegal’s price is not an artificial price, it’s your price that artificial, artificially propped up by government regulations that force employers to pay extra.
The illegals are actually practicing real free mark with the employers, their are bargaining and contracting without being interfered with by government intervention.
You either have Free Markets or you don’t. This “I’m for the free market except when the Government interferes on my behalf” is pure hypocrisy and what gets us into trouble. Because everyone will then want the government to intervene on their behalf, and pretty soon there is no free market to speak off and everything is controlled.
Capitalism's way of competing with Chinese slave labor wages?
Nobody is born entitled to a standard of living they are comfortable with. Everyone is only entitled to whatever the standard of living they can *EARN* in a free market.
The attitude that “I don’t need to earn it, it should just be given to me as a matter of right” is what’s leading us down the socialist path.
—Minimum wage, workmans comp, family leave, etc, are all free lunches that the politicians tried to give to the public to buy their votes, and once again, those lunch do have a long term cost.—
American workers do not wish to be treated like medieval serfs. Big business, it seems, likes to employ serfs, that’s why there is so much outsourcing.
—We would have won Viet Nam w/o Dim interference—
Funny you say that, as it was the “Dims” who got us into that unfortunate enterprise in the first place. Moreover, the real interference was from the Soviets, who supplied weapons to an enemy willing to fight to the death, while we supplied weapons to ARVN, who was willing to fight to ... um ... a really nasty bruise?
I wasn’t aware that businesses could force people to work for them and forbid them to seek employment elsewhere.
Seems to me you have a problem with capitalism. I’m sure everyone would be better off in a planned economy where business did what “the workers” told them. Oh wait, we tried that last century and 100 million people died.
OK, I criticise outsourcing, so I’m a communist. Yeah, whatever.
Do you really think the communist movement were started by people who wanted to kill 100 million people?
It was started by people such as yourself, who didn’t trust free market and business and wanted to use the power of government to force businesses to be “nicer” to the workers.
All well intentioned I’m sure, but in the end, being against “outsourcing” is really just another way of being against freedom. Business can’t hire whom they want, they need government’s permissions, and Americans can’t buy products made in other countries unless they get permission from the government.
—It was started by people such as yourself, who didnt trust free market and business and wanted to use the power of government to force businesses to be nicer to the workers—
Ok, I understand now. If we don’t have total, unfettered faith in the flawless free market, we’ll start shooting Kulaks and turning churches into warehouses. Makes sense to me. </sarc>
—Do you really think the communist movement were started by people who wanted to kill 100 million people?—
FWIW, those communist countries that butchered and/or starved large numbers of their own people were cruel even before they became communist. Does anyone really believe Tsarist Russia or Imperial China were nice places to live, places that never had peasant massacres, pogroms etc.? Puhleeze! If the communist governments massacred even more people, it was because they were atheistic governments. If you don’t believe that you have to meet your maker, you’ll commit any sin, no matter how heinous, because you don’t have to worry about then consequences—at least not in the next life.
“Ok, I understand now. If we dont have total, unfettered faith in the flawless free market, well start shooting Kulaks and turning churches into warehouses. Makes sense to me.”
This is what the anti-free market people don’t get. Nobody ever suggested the FA is flawlessly perfect. The free market is flawed because human beings are flawed, so any system that has people in it will always be flawed. The point is that every attempt to tinker with it when the tinkerers are themselves flawed human beings only make matters worse, not better.
The worst thing in all is that the problems that these tinkerers create are then used as reason why more tinkering is needed, and we start this vicious cycle of more and more tinkering, more and more problems created that justifies every more tinkering. Until in the end you end up in socialist hell.
I’d just as soon not go down that road altogether.
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