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.
Your saying that "the economy has been doing fairly well" gets my hopes up that we can all work together with the kind of standard measurements that those of us working in the industry use. You are right on the money with the need to look at 15 years down the line ---but step one is to make sure we're able to see clearly what's going on now. Some say everyone has his own reality --but we can't even talk to each other unless we can both agree that there's no 'your' reality and 'my' reality -- just the reality, and the economy.
What is this "letting our manufacturing base go" thing. Is that for in 2020 or is it something we already did? When you say that the economy is good now, are talking about jobs, wages, gdp, inflation, and manufacturing output --or are you saying everything is good except manufacturing which is bad. Let's look together at stuff like manufacturing output, industry profits, pay scales-- hard measurements that anyone can run a business on. I can't use a blog that comes from say, Maurine Dowd.
In the mean time, maybe we can work on the "wages are stagnant" (498) crowd and bring them on board.