...So, for all of you who so rabidly and blindly advocate total free trade post answers back to these questions:
1 - When nothing is made here any more, where will you work?
2 - When the majority of the country is unable to earn a living wage, who will you serve?
3 - What do you think constitutes a reasonable balance??
I don't know what the right answer is, but I do know that if we do not stand together, we will fall apart together...
Free markets simply put:
Necessity (need or want) is the mother of invention.
- If American workers are out of jobs, it is because those workers have fallen into the trap of thinking they can "coast". As in a previous example: If suddenly buggies are no longer needed, you MUST accept that life means change, and you then retrain yourself - new skills, or a new service. A large number (a majority???) of Americans have adopted the idea that life should be "safe", and thus will gravitate towards those who promise them a continuous saftey "net" to save them from life's little annoyances. In the end , like a spoiled child, having been given everything it wants, they are shocked and dismayed to find that the only one that gives a damn is the politician who says 'Follow me to the promised land of free milk and honey - I feel your pain and I will keep you safe'. Which really means keeping you from hurting yourself - doomed to never learning from your mistakes.
Supply & demand
- GREEDY corporations - or anyone for that matter - don't get rich unless they provide a good or service that someone else is willing to purchase. That is why Free Market Capitalism is the most moral of all economic systems - if the seller disrespects the buyer, the buyer will go somewhere else.
(Frustratingly)
I don't know how the early pioneers ever made it across the Great Plains without the Guvmint making sure they were treated fairly each step of the way...
Regards,
Now you and some others are trying to cloud the issue that the 'Guvmint' had no part in creating the debacle we are in right now. They had much more to do with it than cheaper products.
They promote the moving of businesses offshore.
They made loans to businesses to build factories offshore. They used our tax dollars so businesses could build factories in other countries so we could loose our jobs. No government involved here.
Why in the world the government have 'trade missions' if not to promote business moving offshore.
When a person looses his job due to NAFTA - why does the taxpayers have to pay that person unemployment for 2 years and train them for another job - no government interference here - just free trade.
The government did'nt tax companies to death, they didn't affirmative action them to death, they didn't politically correct them to death, they didn't in general regulate them to death - no no government interference here - just the old bad unions and good old free trade.
I think there would many government actions that would make all of us turn blue if we knew of it.
Now the pioneers did make it across the prairie without the government - but we would not have made it to this very precarious position without the government.
I suspect this country wouldn't know free trade if they saw it.