Posted on 01/24/2014 6:36:50 AM PST by 1rudeboy
“We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us.”
So says University of California scientist Steve Davis. Smog from Chinese factories has already saturated cities like Beijing, where residents go about in surgical masks, and crossed the East China Sea to foul the air of Korea and Japan. Now China’s smog is coming to America’s West.
Among the pollutants wafting their way over the Pacific, says the Guardian, is black carbon, which is “linked to cancer, emphysema and heart and lung diseases,” and travels “huge distances on global winds known as ‘westerlies.’” Davis is one of a team of U.S. and Chinese researchers whose report has been published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. As the Chinese factories fouling Asia’s air arose to meet the demands of Western consumers, says Beijing, the West should help pay the cost of cleaning up their polluted and poisoned environment.
Seems that, despite the academic consensus that free trade is win-win for all, free trade is not free.
Great nations that have risen to global power by protecting their manufacturing, like Britain in the early 19th century, have begun their relative decline when they embraced free trade. Between 1870 and 1914, protectionist America and Germany both shoved Britain aside.
Since Y2K, China, which protects its industrial base by keeping its currency artificially cheap, has surged past Italy, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan to become the world’s second largest economy. And they are gaining steadily on us. Free trade appears to be the policy of fading nations.
Perhaps it is time for a profit and loss statement of its costs and benefits. Undeniably, free trade has been a bonanza for the top 1 percent and many among our top 10 percent. As U.S. manufacturers shut down scores of thousands of U.S. factories to finance new plants in Asia, their production costs plummeted. Wages and benefits for Asians were, and are still, but a fraction of those of American workers.
Health, safety, and environmental standards were in some cases almost nonexistent. The eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh that collapsed in April, killing 1,100 workers, mostly women, and injuring another 2,500, would never have passed a U.S. building inspection.
After having shifted production overseas and dramatically lowered costs, U.S. transnationals saw a surge in profits. These were used to push corporate salaries into the stratosphere, increase dividends to shareholders, and keep the Washington lobbyists working the Hill day and night for fast track and free trade. And the lifestyle of our corporate elites changed. Where their fathers walked sooty factory floors in smokestack towns in World War II, these masters of the universe fly Gulfstream Vs to Davos and Dubai to dine with titled Europeans, Saudi princes and Chinese billionaires.
These are America’s winners from free trade. The losers? Middle Americans. The average U.S. family has not seen a rise in real wages in 40 years. This is directly traceable to the loss of more than one-third of all U.S. manufacturing jobs. And that loss, that deindustrialization of America, is directly tied to the $10 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I. Writers who celebrate how U.S. imports have risen in this month or that year almost never mention the trade deficit for this month or that year. Perhaps that is because the United States has not run a trade surplus in four decades, whereas, in the first 70 years of the 20th century, we never ran a trade deficit. Trade surpluses add to GDP; trade deficits subtract from GDP.
And when in a company town the company closes the factory, the town often dies. And all the little satellite businesses—bars, diners, food stores, pharmacies—that rose around the factory, they die, too. The tombstones of countless dead towns across America should read: Killed by Free Trade. Tenured economists on college campuses call this “creative destruction.”
The stagnant wages of two generations of U.S. workers also help to explain the crisis of Social Security and Medicare. For, as workers’ wages fail to rise, or fall, so, too, do their contributions in payroll taxes. If, as Simpson-Bowles contends, our largest entitlement programs are heading for insolvency, free trade played a lead role in that American tragedy. And where is the liberal morality in passing laws to ensure U.S. workers a living wage and clean and safe conditions, and then, through fast track and free trade, signaling their bosses that they can evade these laws by shutting factories here, moving their plants to Asia, paying coolie wages, and subjecting Asian workers to conditions that would earn a U.S. industrialist a tour in Leavenworth?
Whatever happens from free trade is what should happen, free traders say. As Dr. Pangloss explained to Candide, whatever happens, happens for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Sure.
Well let us see who is an expert.
Now your claim is that unions in the private sector are small so they have no bearing on our economy and the problems with it.
Is this your position.
A yes or no is all that is required.
Fixed. Answer yes.
The logical conclusion of Mad Dawgg’s position is to outsource all American manufacturing to really teach those unions a lesson!!!
He would kill the patient to cure a rash.
The logical conclusion of Mad Dawgg’s position is to outsource all American manufacturing to really teach those unions a lesson!!!
He would kill the patient to cure a rash.
Public sector is over 35% Private is just slightly below 7%...
He is just ignorant and has bought the Free Trade lies. He just needs education and a little common sense.
The problem is the US public has been fed so many lies, for instance they think if TV’s were made in the USA they would cost $5,000 apiece. $10.00 screwdrivers etc.
About 10% of US Mfg workers are in a union.
Chief among them are onerous EPA regulations, onerous Labor relations, high taxation and high cost of serviceable infrastructure. Mostly political reasons as higher government spending and associated costs just force higher and higher taxation.
100% correct!
Question: Why don't those who always say "we need to bring those jobs back home" understand this? These are the reasons why those jobs left in the first place!
Jesus Christ: You can’t impeach Him and He ain’t going to resign.
I know that, I posted it wrong and had to correct it.
Correct. So 90% of the manufacturing jobs outsourced were non union jobs. We treat our fellow Americans so well all in the name of gloBULLism.....
OK then please explain the bailout of the Auto industry.
What sort of jobs were supposedly saved by the multibillion dollar Bailout.
I will make it easy for you and give you multiple choice:
A. Private sector manufacturing Union Jobs.
B. Private sector manufacturing Union Jobs.
C. Private sector manufacturing Union Jobs.
Bonus Question: How did this come about?:
A. By using union dues to buy Congressional votes.
B. By using union dues to buy Congressional votes.
C. By using union dues to buy Congressional votes.
Extra Bonus Question: To bailout these private sector union jobs where did they get the money?:
A. Tax payer Dollars
B. Tax Payer Dollars
C. Tax Payer dollars
And finally the super Duper extra special bonus question: "Are you really going to try and continue to tell us that Private Sector Unions have no bearing on our economic problems in the USA?
A. Yes, because you deny reality and can only spread the unionista propaganda because admitting you are wrong would destroy your sense of of self.
B. Yes, because you deny reality and can only spread the unionista propaganda because admitting you are wrong would destroy your sense of of self.
C. Yes, because you deny reality and can only spread the unionista propaganda because admitting you are wrong would destroy your sense of of self.
Is it my imagination or did 1rudeboy post an article critical of free trade to start this thread?
Yes he did, but don't read anything special into that. It is just nothing more than hubris.
” So 90% of the manufacturing jobs outsourced were non union jobs.”
Huh? How did you jump from the fact that today 10% of US Mfg is union, to 90% of off-shored Mfg was nonunion?
Those two are unrelated.
On average how man man hours of labor does it take to make a car? (industry average)
No, And I will type the rest slowly so your finger can keep up while you strain to read it.
My position is to stop the Government intervention into the market that caused this crap in the first place.
Hint: Its not to do even more of it like you Unionistas claim will fix the problem that was created by the same crap you propose in the first place!
Our regulatory environment may be more hostile to business, but as the article points out, the Chinese building that crushed 1200 workers could have never been built under US building codes. Some of our regs and "hostile environment" are good things.
The question is really whether or not we want to let third world economies dictate the US wage rate. If we don't then we need to protect our market.
It's not like there is an equal exchange of trade goods. There is one consumer market in play here, ours. Letting third world labor compete for our market without enforcing an equal exchange of trade goods is national suicide.
Our regulatory environment may be more hostile to business, but as the article points out, the Chinese building that crushed 1200 workers could have never been built under US building codes. Some of our regs and "hostile environment" are good things.
The question is really whether or not we want to let third world economies dictate the US wage rate. If we don't then we need to protect our market.
It's not like there is an equal exchange of trade goods. There is one consumer market in play here, ours. Letting third world labor compete for our market without enforcing an equal exchange of trade goods is national suicide.
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