The hidden cost of free trade

THE WASHINGTON TIMES ^ | September 18, 2005 | Jeffrey Sparshott

[Willie Green]

Angel Mills worked at GST AutoLeather in Williamsport, Md., most of her adult life. She cut, inspected, packed and shipped leather upholstery until she was laid off in June 2003 as the company scaled back local operations and shifted production to Mexico.

"It's sad. It's scary. I've been a factory worker all my life, and I didn't know what I wanted to do," said Ms. Mills, a 38-year-old Williamsport resident with a teenage son.

But by March 2004 she was taking a half-year course to become a state-licensed massage therapist. A federal program that helps workers who lose jobs owing to foreign competition paid for her training and offered extended unemployment benefits.

In July, she started working at Venetian Salon and Spa in Hagerstown, Md.

~~~SNIP~~~

Mr. Thomas said that for all trade adjustment program workers passing through the consortium, the average wage was $14.36 an hour before the layoffs, while after retraining it was $11.87 an hour, a decline that is common for factory workers who have to restart their lives.

U.S. Labor Department figures indicate that among the retrained, those that find new jobs end up making only 70 percent to 80 percent of their old wages on average.

[Mase]

Yes, Mase, the redistribution of wealth.

Maybe we should define our terms. Taking assets from those who earned them and giving them to those who didn't is how I define the redistribution of wealth.

Capitalism is not about the redistribution of wealth. It's about the creation of wealth. I guess I'm just not aware of all the social programs Americans depended on prior to FDR. I thought it was all about the protection of rights, private ownership of property and production and providing the opportunity to build a better life by pursuing ones self interest etc.

American's rejected Marxism for these reasons. The West, simply by offering opportunity for all, addressed the grievances of the disaffected.

I know you two love Ayn Rand - A. Pole even asked earlier what children could possibly learn from her. The answer is, a lot. I like these quotes:

Capitalism has been called a system of greed – yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.

Capitalism did not create poverty – it inherited it. Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive. As proof – the enormous growth of the European population during the nineteenth century, a growth of over 300 percent, as compared to the previous growth of something like 3 percent per century.

Observe the paradoxes built up about capitalism. It has been called a system of selfishness – yet it is the only system that drew men to unite on a large scale into great countries, and peacefully to cooperate across national boundaries, while all the collectivist, internationalist, One-World systems are splitting the world into Balkanized tribes.

It's your cherished socialistic policies of wealth redistribution that threaten the survival of the West. Dependence on government is certainly not what made us great.

[1rudeboy]

Let's have some fun. Quoting the great economist and philosopher Gordon Gekko:

The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated.

In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you.

I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them!

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Full text and audio clip here. Enjoy.

[expat_panama]

405  "...40 year and interest only mortgages..."  406  "If England, for instance, had ditched free trade ..."  407  "The West won the Cold War because it promised workers security..."  411  " ... America lost TV manufacture, it also lost VCR manufacture, DVD player ..."   423   "the decline of blue collar living standards since 1980 ...because of free trade."   440  "the buying power of the purchaser has dropped considerable from 1970."

So basically you're saying that America is in bad shape ---low purchasing power, lost manufacturing, increasing debt.  

Let's focus.  Please tell me how you know this stuff.  I'm always interested in new sources.  My family and I really need to know how the economy is doing, because to be able to run my business (and feed my family) I have to really know what's going on.  So far, I've been really studying these things, and what I've been finding so far is that purchasing power, manufacturing, and family wealth is up.  By knowing this, my business has made my family rich (so far). 

Please tell me where you get your info.   Look, I've got to tell you that the info has to be right.  I mean, if I just listened to say, someone's buddies at the union hall, or if I just went with say, your feelings, then my family would be poor, and I'd be calling for higher taxes on others to protect me.

[RFT1]

Sometimes its no use argeueing with these people who support "free" trade. They believe what Limbaugh, the WSJ op ed pages and their ilk tell them to believe. The so called mainstream conservative movment is every bit as bankrupt as liberalism was by the late 70s. The fact "free" traders can not follow though on simple logic, much less have any sense of history shows me their ideas are bankrupt.

[A. Pole]

Sometimes its no use argeueing with these people who support "free" trade.

One needs to be patient. It takes time and repetition before some people get the point. And when they get they might be not willing to admit it openly - it hurts to be found wrong in public.

[superiorslots]

Quote: The fact "free" traders can not follow though on simple logic, much less have any sense of history shows me their ideas are bankrupt.


RFT1; You mean like the quote below by rude that we will never be in another major war so we can now get rid of those anitquated factories and send them overseas?


Rude's quote: But it's not very likely that any future conflict will require the sort of private-to-public economic diversion on the scale of WWII. 419 posted on 09/21/2005 11:47:22 AM PDT by 1rudeboy

[superiorslots]

Expat
Many including myself have agreed the economy has been doing fairly well right now-I've told you so in the past. However what you and many others are missing is our concern for what holds for the future of the US in 10-15 years by letting our manufacturing base go to get todays cheap goods. I have the impression that many of the free traders are just looking at the picture today.

[RFT1]

Because of the mentality behined "free" trade(and open borders also is part of the same mentality), with the attitude of making money in the short term at all and any cost, I have resigned myself to the US becoming a full on welfare state. Do these people understand what is going on right now is not politically sustainable?

[Nowhere Man]

Sometimes its no use argeueing with these people who support "free" trade. They believe what Limbaugh, the WSJ op ed pages and their ilk tell them to believe. The so called mainstream conservative movment is every bit as bankrupt as liberalism was by the late 70s. The fact "free" traders can not follow though on simple logic, much less have any sense of history shows me their ideas are bankrupt.

You got that right, that it until it affects them personally then they will change their tunes. Arguing with them is like a Warner Bros. cartoon character pushing a lump on his head down only to have it pop out from somewhere else. I know I get flak for this, but as Michael Savage said one night, "the free market only exists in textbooks." You have so many factors in the economy, mostly by human nature that affect it all. I'm not much into mainstream conservatism, I'm more of an "independent conservative" again, as Michael Savage would put it.

[Mase]

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Always liked Gordon Gecko. His character never stood a chance though with a socialist like Oliver Stone managing the script.

In Stone's world, just like Sham's and A.Pole's, only a greed obsessed capitalist pig like Gecko, who thinks free markets, unfettered competition and self interest are good, would be immoral enough to flagrantly violate the law and unfairly game the system to his benefit.

I'm sure, in the minds of the anti-freedom-to-trade crowd, Gordon Gecko was a traitor even before he broke the law. Anyone who makes money by forcing companies to compete has to be doing so at the expense of working Americans.

The government ought to do something about guys like this.

[Mase]

The so called mainstream conservative movment is every bit as bankrupt as liberalism was by the late 70s

Exactly why this country needs a right wing wacko fringe demagogue like Pat Buchanan to straighten things out!

The fact "free" traders can not follow though on simple logic, much less have any sense of history shows me their ideas are bankrupt.

That's rich. The only ones supplying facts and employing logic here are the proponents of freer trade. I don't suppose you'd have any facts you'd like to share with us that support, in any way, your claims that free trade has bankrupted our economy. I'm sure you can find a study somewhere that proves that the amount of prosperity and wealth a country experiences is directly correlated to the amount government control exercised over the economy.

[NormalGuy]

One of the problems is the Chomsky problem. Facts are communicate by words... and was said repeatedly at the Dem Natl Convention... "Kerry has his own truth".

Buchanan, in true Chomsky fashion, is clever with the words to build his own truth.

"There is a mess in Washington..... and it's all the fault of the illegal immigrants." Summary of Buchanan logic of year 2000 election season.

The fact is that we have the facts on our side. When we can play on our home turf, we win. But when we play on the Chomsky turf, we will always be out-maneuvered by people who are not distracted from their agenda by the facts.

[austinTparty]

1. Kenya is a coastal country; Mombasa is a seaport. Whether or not a seaport becomes prosperous is a function of the trade going in and out of it. If you restrict trade, then obviously there is less prosperity in the seaport. QED.

2. Both of you are making circular arguments. I point out that Hong Kong is more prosperous because of a free economy and international trade rather than government control as in Kenya (which has far greater natural resources), and the argument is that you can't compare a place with international trade to one without it???

3. I never said that Kenya and HK were "exactly the same place"--merely that they had similar economic outlooks when they gained independence. The basis for prosperity in HK is trade and a relatively free economy; the basis for lack thereof in Kenya is a controlled economy and poor governance.

[RFT1]

Facts are funny thing, they at times can be twisted, such as calling tariffs govrenmnet control over the economy. Fact is before the new deal when the US govrenmnet was libertarian in nature, tariffs were used, in the period of 45-70, when productivity gains were far higher than even today, tariffs were used, and it certainly did not hurt the bottom line of big or small business'.

When free trade is practiced between nations of similar ability, such as US and Europe, and when both side trade fairly, it does benifit both sides, when "free" tracde is practiced between nations of the same ability, but one side has various tariffs that prevent entry into a market, such as the way the US trades between Japan and Korea(this lopsided policy was a result of cold war policy that allowed Japan and Korea dump products into the US in exchange for use of bases), the result is a nations wealth being traded to another nation. When it is practiced the way it is in regaurd to China and India, where US workers and intellectual property are at a servere disadvantage, it is insanity, that hurts the US economicaly long term, and paves the way for greater socialism.

With GW Bush leading a government that spends more and more, there is more and more govrenment control over the economy.

[A. Pole]

I never said that Kenya and HK were "exactly the same place"--merely that they had similar economic outlooks when they gained independence.

Mainland China develops very fast with Communist government in charge. The main difference between Kenya and HK is between tribal Africans who got contacts with civilization in XIX century and Chinese who have thousands years of high civilization.

In addition HK was the key center for British trade for more than hundred years (starting with being center of forced opium imports to mainland China).

BTW, British introduced democracy in HK at the last moment before transferring control to China. Somehow Brits did not like democracy in HK before.

[1rudeboy]

The fact "free" traders can not follow though on simple logic, much less have any sense of history shows me their ideas are bankrupt.

The fact that, in your entire reply, you couldn't find a single example of anyone's faulty logic leads me to believe that either you have no idea, or are too thick to figure it out yourself.

[1rudeboy]

You get an 'A' in Inability to Comprehend the English language.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Frankly, that made no rational sense whatsoever. If the car loan has to be stretched because the consumer can no longer afford to buy a new car in 3 years,

Oh please. A car loan is a tool like any other tool. It can be misused. You can still get a 3, 4 or 5 year car loan. You can still get over leveraged with a 20% down payment 30 year mortgage.

Did you ever find a source which showed what % of car loans are actually 7 years? Or have you just been whining about something that's only 10% of the market?

and the price of the car is the same adjusted for inflation, obviously the buying power of the purchaser has dropped considerable from 1970.

Maybe consumers are using this extra cash flow to buy a larger house. That doesn't mean their buying power has dropped, just that their buying power is being used for something else.

[RFT1]

My educated guess is that there will be a breaking point where political winds will change rapidly, and the GOP/mainstream conservatives will be caught off gaurd. They seem to forget that it is social, not economic issues that has given the GOP majority party status for the time being, but as more or more people, especially blue collar white males are put though economic stress, both though job outsourcing and legal and illegal immigration, I suspect a Democrat that is both though on illegal immigration and though on "free" trade would gain much headway in the next presidential election.

Of course with a Democratic takeover of the govrenmnet will come a whole new slew of taxes, and I suspect, especially since even some in big business now want it because they say they are at a disadvantage with foreign companies, a govrenment takeover in health care.

[1rudeboy]

Speaking of logic, RFT1, reply #446 is a classic strawman . . . . Being the expert, perhaps you could help slots along?

As for you, slots, do you actually think you can win when all you can do is put words on other people's mouths? What's hilarious is that you are foolish enough to embed a quote in your reply that defeats your assertion.