[Phaedrus]

When "The Invisible Hand" and the politicians' "free trade" mantra allows short-sighted corporate greed to export manufacturing and technical jobs and proprietary technology to nations that do not permit the import of our goods, what we export is our standard of living. That is, we lose. It's happening, Folks. Your kids and mine will pay.

[Phaedrus]

ping ...

[F-117A]

Bump for later reading...

assuming the country is still here when I get back!

[PeterPrinciple]

"corporatism; that is where government and business corrupt the market in unison. "

Centralization of money and power is not a good thing.

[GingisK]

Excellent post. I've been beating this drum, but not as factually or eloquently. People seem to have forgotton their "Economics 101": You must produce a tangible product in order to survive.

I can't help but wonder how those corporations expect to sell their products in America when Americans are unemployed? Similar circumstances have led to two world wars, certainly numerous revolutions.

[Phaedrus]

... and the politicians' "free trade" mantra allow s ...

no excuse ...

[RLK]

Motorola, of course, has spent $1 billion in transferring its production to China. It is about to invest another $90 million in research and development in China.

---------------------

Wrong. So far Motorola has invested four billion and intends to spend $10,000,000,000 at Chines prices and land/labor values.

This is one of the things that happens when you elect a globalist love-in airhead as president.

[Dataman]

When "The Invisible Hand" and the politicians' "free trade" mantra allows short-sighted corporate greed to export manufacturing and technical jobs and proprietary technology to nations that do not permit the import of our goods, what we export is our standard of living. That is, we lose. It's happening, Folks. Your kids and mine will pay.

We are paying right now. A few of my clients were at that show. Usually a good show will yield 250 solid leads. The average this time was around 40 or 50. As far as government contracts go, they all have ropes (not strings) attached so that you not only have to transform your company into a socialist utopian model but have to do business with the same. The result is decreased efficiency which costs more of our tax dollars.

[Semi Civil Servant]

"Then the [tech] bubble burst, and we began to learn a very hard lesson and that is there's only a few ways to create wealth," he said. "You have to either farm something, mine something or manufacture something..."

Apart from their lack of morality and tendancies toward criminality, one of the things I find most disturbing about the current crop of CEO's is that many don't seem to want to build anything. They just want to "do deals" and manipulate stock prices. Unfortunately, this creates wealth for THEM in a way that is completely unrelated to the theoretical PURPOSE of the business.

In the past thirty years, there is an outrageous history of CEO's cleaning out the wealth of a company by wounding or destroying it. "Chainsaw Al" is the cover boy of this kind of parasitic management. The fact that this man is NOT in jail is a rather telling commentary on the government's attitude toward corporate crime.

A generation ago, CEO's tended to be outstanding citizens who were leaders within their companies and their communities. There are still many examples of that type of CEO, but I'm afraid the parasites have gained the upper hand. And the government has given these people both a "hand up" and a free ride. It's very sad.

P.S. Sorry to hear about Maytag. I used to know a couple members of the Maytag family 25+ years ago.

[BureaucratusMaximus]

There is a willful blindness on the part of some to the damage being done to American society, the nation-state republic, the citizens, workers, taxpayers and to our national cohesion.

Good article PING.

[betty boop]

...what we export is our standard of living. That is, we lose. It's happening, Folks. Your kids and mine will pay.

Phaedrus, you are so right: That is exactly what we're exporting -- the American standard of living. Short-sighted politicians and so-called "American" corporations (which are effectively transnationals) are selling the American worker/consumer down the river. The American worker/consumer, in order to make the rest of the world prosperous and "stable" and "more democratic," will wind up being a pauper himself, if present policies continue.

[vanmorrison]

I was responsible for designing, installing and managing a booth at the International Machine Tool Show in 1979 for a Connecticut company called Unimation, which was the first company in the world to market an industrial robotic system. The display included a small-batch manufacturing process incorporating machine tools made by DoAll, a Chicago company. At that time, I recall reading a voluminous amount of trade publications that decried the manner in which our industrial base was being undermined by off-shore production and foreign competition. These arguments made sense to me then.

However, it is now 25 years hence. I have followed these trade and labor issues through the years. At this juncture, I admit I must reconsider my position because the protectionist market bias and its arguments do not square with the facts. It must be that the premises upon which these kinds of protectionist arguments are made are fundamentally flawed.

We have just witnessed a monumental moment in the history of the planet. Since 911, the American response to our new security threat has revealed to the entire world that there is no greater power on earth than the United States. It is now recognized universally that the United States has managed to achieve truly global hegemony. The US dominates every sphere of activity; economic, political, scientific, military. This has not happened since the era of the Roman Empire. As a nation, we must be doing something right!

I now believe that we need to rethink our categorical antipathy to foreign trade, just as we are re-examining our foreign alliances in light of new developments revealed by 911 and the resultant Afghan and Iraqi Wars. Security concerns will alter our trade relationships to reflect the support or non-support of other countries to our current crisis. Britain, Japan, Italy, Spain, Poland, Australia, the Netherlands, and others can now reap the benefits of their support. France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, China, and even Mexico and Canada can now suffer the consequences of their perfidy.

But the need for this realignment does not negate the benefits of implementing the principles of free trade and free markets. I believe that the US has achieved its overwhelmingly dominant position insofar as it has implemented and maintained these principles over time, and must continue to do so if we want to continue to prosper.

Our current dominant market position is the sum of gains and losses in individual sectors. But our achievements only validate Adam Smith's concept of "the Invisible Hand".

[balrog666]

Your kids and mine will pay.

Glad we can agree on something.

[Remedy]

 

"I didn’t mention the flow of Chinese [industrial] spies who were in and out of our booths.

• Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.

Smith was also smart enough to know that businessmen and government working together can be a dangerous mix. That is why in the U.S. today we don't really have capitalism but rather corporatism; that is where government and business corrupt the market in unison.

• Benito Mussolini - Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power.

We are still faced with the importation of cheap labor, through legal and illegal immigration. That has had a devastating impact on the social infrastructure in states like California, Texas, Florida, New York, North Carolina, Illinois, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. Even many northern states have budget deficits in the billions due to lower revenues and having to absorb higher costs in social, educational, and medical costs partly due to tremendous increases in immigration.

• CULTURE : SYMPOSIUM Q: Is Multiculturalism a Threat to the National Security of the United States?

If the WTO agrees to accept the case and the Indian group wins, that means that the U.S. will have to change its immigration laws to suit the WTO, Indian economic interests and foreign guest workers.

• CULTURE : Liberal Democracy vs. Transnational Progressivism: The Ideological Civil War

[independentmind]

It is close to impossible to get Americans today to understand that an economy based on manufacturing and an economy based on finance are not equivalent. Manufacturing provides jobs for the largest number of citizens; finance is the non value-adding but crisis-provoking segment of modern society.

Not all Americans have the skill-sets to successfully participate in an economy primarily centered around finance and information technology, either. I've read reports that state that a high school graduate in the U.S. has far less choice in terms of occupations than do his counterparts in most other developed countries.

[hedgetrimmer]

My kids! Heck _I'm_ paying right now! We all are!

[Cacique]

ping

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Bumps for an eye opening read !

[maui_hawaii]

I told the CNBC reporter that I have been informed by some Fortune 500 firms that they are not considering domestic suppliers for contract manufacturing work. I have been told that my Wisconsin-based company would not be considered for work unless we have a “presence” in Mexico, China or other countries.

Lets find this man, and find the names of those companies. We can take revenge on them. I will for sure.

[SwankyC]

Bump. good read.

[Gritty]

thousands of regulations, 75,000 pages in the Federal Register, diversity demands, countless lawsuits, and a 45,000-page tax code that requires a phalanx of lawyers and tax accountants to wade through. The regulation gorilla alone adds $700 billion to costs for individuals and companies in the U.S.

That's a HUGE albatross for business to carry!