Patrick J. Buchanan Examines "The Slow Awakening of George W."

Washington Times ^ | 09-17-03 | Buchanan, Patrick J.

[VxH]

>>Awesome. Did they have any good "how to make a tin foil hat" articles in there?

Why? Do you own stock in Alcoa?

[AmericanInTokyo]

Here's one you and I will agree on.

There should ALWAYS have been a much more stringent "performance assessment tied to salary" component for Zoellick at USTR and when he was at State in the 1990s going up against Japan. The more this guy got on the plane to Asia, the more he and his ilk negotiated, why the more US industry lost ground and more markets were kept close, the more his salary should have been docked. Based on the poor figures, the guy would have been earning $12,500 per annum at the end of the Bush Administration if I had my way.

That rational-choice theorist twerp could prattle out the most excellent sounding, high flying trade agreements in flowing legalese, and stroke himself silly about American Victories On Procedurual Issues Only, yet at the end of the day, whole American industries and strategic technologies were gutted because of no enforcement procedures, and the Japanese laughed behind the guy's back the moment his United flight was wheels up at Narita Airport. Those of us left behind who had to live there, heard it all upon his departures.

Zoellick is highly intelligent, and highly naive. He is useless. I don't know why Bush brought him on in the first place with his dismal record of failure (but hey, he negotiated some "GREAT" multilateral agreements!!)

[ninenot]

Besides being a complete ass, Williams has a nice, fat, tenured post. Can't be fired.

[Penner]

U.S. manufacturing jobs are vanishing, and unless he turns it around, Bush's presidency may vanish along with them.

It's deja vu all over again. Domestic issues are a Bush family weakness.

[Theodore R.]

I'll try again, Willie. People think the president is the principal figure in the "management" of the economy. This may not even be true, regardless of who sits in the White House. And there is surely no constitutional role for the president to be "manager of the economy."

Why do you think Bush has refused to veto anything so far? At one time, presidents "let" Congress pass what they want and would not consider a veto unless the veto was a clear constitutional violation.

[ninenot]

He earns his living in the open market of academe

Williams has delusions of grandeur and is NOT subject to ANY "open market" in academia.

[EternalVigilance]

Do not give up your day job to attempt a career in speech writing.

It isn't a speech. It's a written article.

However, I won't necessarily argue the point. Perhaps my response written on the fly was deficient in itself.

But I still think the way it was stunk.

Later...

[ex-snook]

"Pat's been right about Trade and Immigration for at least a decade, and the only RINO response is usually: "well, he's a racist, homophobe, protectionist, anti-Semite, who can't be elected, and that's why he's wrong on Immigration and Trade." "

And you can throw in that Pat was right about foreign entanglements bringing war to our shores, accepting gay and abortion practices is destructive to America, and China should not be a 'most favored trading nation'. You know Pat is right, when Goebbel's big lie name-calling is the retort.

[ninenot]

ONE thing Stalin/Lenin understood was greed.

And we have that in spades--just ask X42 and the Hildebeeste.

[dogbyte12]

Sam, manufacturing jobs are bleeding faster than IT jobs. Twice as fast as a matter of fact. It's a crapshoot for the layed off. Do you get offered a job at 1/3 your wages in the first place? The employers out there do not like hiring people they know will be gone the second a better paying job is available. Honestly, many of these people won't take the low paying jobs. They refinance their mortgage, and hold out hope that they can get their old paycheck back.

This is leading to some employment opportunities waitressing and the like. The trends though aren't good. As I pointed out, much is being automated. Go to a McDonald's sometimes and carefully observe. They are soon going to be able to employ less people. Everything, from the menus, to the soda dispensors are going electronic, taking away the low skilled job.

The restaurant industry already has created an automated hamburger flipper. Cost is the only thing keeping it out of widespread usage now. It actually flips burgers on a grill with multiple burgers, probes them for temperature, sterilizing the probe each time, before checking the next. Once actual production models are starting to be made, 5 years perhaps, those jobs are gone. No point in hiring 3 hamburger flippers, with workman's comp potential, salary demands, when you can get a faster safer job done by machinery.

There still will be some workers there to actually hand you your food, but the jobs will shrink. There will be a rise in teen-age unemployment, when jobs teens traditionally take are cheaper to do through automation. Retail is what is left, but the teen agers will be competing with 20-25 year old, non college material types for those jobs.

I am not blaming anybody for this. It is progress, but there are large potential consequences.

[RLK]

That is what I see also, jobs is the only issu the dems have that can touch Bush.

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

Bush has one thing going for him. A room full of people were able to blow up a pile of ragheads using pushbutton warfare while high school minded members of the public cheered. Meanwhile, an invasion continues across out Souther borders financed by our social service system. He issues peoclamations about how America must share its wealth with the world. Bush does little or nothing right. If the Clintons were doing this crap you and others would be howling for impeachment.

[Tokhtamish]

Your folly is to see this as an example of "creative destruction". It isn't. It is destruction pure and simple.

The buggywhip industry was replaced by the automobile industry. Well, what if the automobile industry had been in India ? Then those out of work buggywhip makers would simply have had nowhere to go, now wouldn't they ? When whole industries are shipped overseas as they are now, you are not simply shipping the present. You are shipping the future. You are guaranteeing that when nanotechnology becomes viable, when someone comes up with a cheap way to turn coal into oil, when flat panel 48 inch tv's cost less than $500 it will be Chinese industry that is in a position to benefit (just as the typewriter and adding machine industry became the computer industry, just as the bicycle industry became the aircraft industry).

And as for retaliatory tariffs, China already does impose heavy tariffs on American imports. China only imports what it cannot produce domestically.

What is the cost to America of a permanent and growing underclass ?

[Lazamataz]

Why is it that you insist you have a college degree when it is so obvious that you lied about it?

[Recourse]

You know who else agrees with Pat that free trade is bad? The lunatic left. Here's a list of your fellow travelers who protest against the WTO & GATT:

Tom Hayden (former head of SDS and a Marxist)
Ralph Nader (Head of Green Party)
AFL-CIO
Socialist Workers of Britain

As Pat became more isolationist he also becomes more anti-free market. Watching Pat, it is pretty clear that he can't be against immigration and opposed to free trade without also becoming more and more sympathetic to subsidies and various social welfare programs (after all trade barriers are subsidies to domestic businesses).

Pat has recently advocated caps on executive pay, boosts in unemployment benefits and deplored the "harshness" of the free market. Are you on board with this?

[BMiles2112]

It wasn't clear. He stated it as a wage and as a cost, (with a $1000 difference), so you may be right, it seemed a bit high. My point still holds, though.

[Theodore R.]

Williams could likely move around as a "visiting professor" (considering his age now) at many universities. He could retire too. He has quite a few options for a man in his mid-60s.

[Texas_Dawg]

Like it or not, far more conservatives all over the US are in the Ralph Hall or John Conally mold rather than the Dick Armey mold.

I'm sure they are. Why do you think Bush is a big government, pro-tariff, pro-farm subsidies, "compassionate" conservative? He's not stupid. I understand why Bush is a trade protectionist in practice. I also know he personally realizes how economically dumb trade protectionism is. I'm all for political expediency though. He's a great President.

[RockyMtnMan]

Supply-side economics - An economic theory which holds that reducing tax rates, especially for businesses and wealthy individuals, stimulates savings and investment for the benefit of everyone. also called trickle-down economics.

Trickle-down - An economic theory which advocates letting businesses flourish, since their profits will ultimately trickle down to lower-income individuals and the rest of the economy.

The whole point of "trickle-down" is job creation and domestic growth, moron. Reagan was about creating jobs and growing the economy by increasing investment in the local economy. Something you don't believe in.

[ninenot]

Where is capital being invested as a result of cost savings/higher returns made from offshoring?

Neat question. (I haven't cheated---did he mention China?)