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It was evident to anyone paying attention thirty years ago. Conservatives and liberals drank the koolaid in the seventies and eighties. Five years ago if you posted a comment that free trade was looting our nation and destroying our industry you were flamed and ridiculed right off the thread. Too late our citizens are beginning to realize what predatory socialism and globalization are going to mean to them. So...all should understand that in the not too distant future an American laborer will have the same average wage (buying power) as the average laborer around the world. The same goes for Doctors, Engineers etc. Don't believe your degrees will save you. You cannot make a widiget with labor at 20/hr and compete with people making widigets for 1/hr using machines that are as good as or better than yours. Oh one more thing, most foreign governments don't penalize successful businesses in their countries. Like our government does. Where does this end? I would say a feudal system of world government. Nice to contemplate huh.

The Chinese are trying to break this lower wage trap. Unlike the US, employment is a critical factor in regime stability. Unemployed Chinese workers is a threat to the authoritarian Chinese government. China pursues capitalism tempered by strategic needs. China will protect its emerging technologies, they will protect their technological advantages once they achieve it, they will secure their natural resources for their industries and most important they pursue a balanced policy of profits and employment. I always challenge freepers who pooh pooh the Chinese model. After twenty years of Chinese approach to capitalism and the American capitalist model, which nation has the trade surplus, government surplus, full employment and secured natural resources?

Ross Perot talked about it almost twenty years ago, and while the elites pooh-poohed him the American people knew better (giving him 19% of the vote, and BJ Clinton the White House).

Five years ago we all knew; ALL kinds of jobs were already leaving the country, and it was obvious to anyone with eyes.