Posted on 02/15/2006 10:42:45 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Our hollow prosperity
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Posted: February 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
PATRICK BUCHANAN
© 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.
Now that the U.S. trade deficit for 2005 has come in at $726 billion, the fourth straight all-time record, a question arises.
What constitutes failure for a free-trade policy? Or is there no such thing? Is free trade simply right no matter the results?
Last year, the United States ran a $202 billion trade deficit with China, the largest ever between two nations. We ran all-time record trade deficits with OPEC, the European Union, Japan, Canada and Latin America. The $50 billion deficit with Mexico was the largest since NAFTA passed and also the largest in history.
When NAFTA was up for a vote in 1993, the Clintonites and their GOP fellow-travelers said it would grow our trade surplus, raise Mexico's standard of living and reduce illegal immigration.
None of this happened. Indeed, the opposite occurred. Mexico's standard of living is lower than it was in 1993, the U.S. trade surplus has vanished, and America is being invaded. Mexico is now the primary source of narcotics entering the United States.
Again, when can we say a free-trade policy has failed?
The Bushites point proudly to 4.6 million jobs created since May 2003, a 4.7 percent unemployment rate and low inflation.
Unfortunately, conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts and analysts Charles McMillion and Ed Rubenstein have taken a close look at the figures and discovered that the foundation of the Bush prosperity rests on rotten timber.
The entire job increase since 2001 has been in the service sector – credit intermediation, health care, social assistance, waiters, waitresses, bartenders, etc. – and state and local government.
But, from January 2001 to January 2006, the United States lost 2.9 million manufacturing jobs, 17 percent of all we had. Over the past five years, we have suffered a net loss in goods-producing jobs.
"The decline in some manufacturing sectors has more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing than with a super-economy that is 'the envy of the world,'" writes Roberts.
Communications equipment lost 43 percent of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37 percent ... The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30 percent. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25 percent of its workforce.
How did this happen? Imports. The U.S. trade deficit in advanced technology jobs in 2005 hit an all-time high.
As for the "knowledge industry" jobs that were going to replace blue-collar jobs, it's not happening. The information sector lost 17 percent of all its jobs over the last five years.
In the same half-decade, the U.S. economy created only 70,000 net new jobs in architecture and engineering, while hundreds of thousands of American engineers remain unemployed.
If we go back to when Clinton left office, one finds that, in five years, the United States has created a net of only 1,054,000 private-sector jobs, while government added 1.1 million. But as many new private sector jobs are not full-time, McMillion reports, "the country ended 2005 with fewer private sector hours worked than it had in January 2001."
This is an economic triumph?
Had the United States not created the 1.4 million new jobs it did in health care since January 2001, we would have nearly half a million fewer private-sector jobs than when Bush first took the oath.
Ed Rubenstein of ESR Research Economic Consultants looks at the wage and employment figures and discovers why, though the Bushites were touting historic progress, 55 percent of the American people in a January poll rated the Bush economy only "fair" or "poor."
Not only was 2005's growth of 2 million jobs a gain of only 1.5 percent, anemic compared to the average 3.5 percent at this stage of other recoveries, the big jobs gains are going to immigrants.
Non-Hispanic whites, over 70 percent of the labor force, saw only a 1 percent employment increase in 2005. Hispanics, half of whom are foreign born, saw a 4.7 percent increase. As Hispanics will work for less in hospitals and hospices, and as waiters and waitresses, they are getting the new jobs.
But are not wages rising? Nope. When inflation is factored in, the Economic Policy Institute reports, "real wages fell by 0.5 percent over the last 12 months after falling 0.7 percent the previous 12 months."
If one looks at labor force participation – what share of the 227 million potential workers in America have jobs – it has fallen since 2002 for whites, blacks and Hispanics alike. Non-Hispanic whites are down to 63.4 percent, but black Americans have fallen to 57.7 percent.
What is going on? Hispanic immigrants are crowding out black Americans in the unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled job market. And millions of our better jobs are being lost to imports and outsourcing.
The affluent free-traders, whose wealth resides in stocks in global companies, are enriching themselves at the expense of their fellow citizens and sacrificing the American worker on the altar of the Global Economy.
None dare call it economic treason.
You khow what, it's pointless to continue this discussion. In one of your last posts to me you addressed a number of things I never claimed, as if you were really setting me straight.
This is probably going to come as a shock to you, but I've met thousands of Freepers and discussed issues with tens of thousands of them. I did not rember that you were female. For that I appologize. No insult was intended.
You take care.
Calling in Jim Robinson, who was, after all, the one who purged the vast majority of the Patsies, in 2000, so he could see that I stated a part of FR's factual history, is a bit silly.
How am I "squashing dissenting voices"...by refuting them with hard, cold, facts?
Hmmmmmmmmm...a bit of FR history: there have been purges on FR, as well as defections, since at least '99. It is now February 16, 2006 and FR doesn't look as though it has "gone down the tubes", though I admit that some posters either ARE actual DUers, or sound like them.
And since you're supposedly oh so HOT for "dissenting voices", since mine is not in sync with yours, why is it that YOU ( to use your description ), you good little Communist, you want mine to go away?
Your "feelings" hurting, because most people find Pat not only irrelevant, but nuts? LOL
You are in over your head here. Educate yourself about intellectual property, patents and copyrights.
You know what? I'm thrilled to know that I am so completely forgettable, to you, Doughty. :-)
Well I'm not thrilled about it, but it is reality. If we were to meet again I'm sure I would remember you. I appologize for the unintended insult.
Gang warfare has been a part of American life, from almost her beginning. Read "GANGS OF NEW YORK", "FIVE POINTS","GEM OF THE PRARIE", and "BARBARY COAST" for a view of early gangs in America. For a view of gangs in the 1930s through the '60s, Harlan Ellison's book and later T.V. play, as well as "THE SHUCKUP GENERATION", and quite a few other books, should help you. But, when I said "blood in the streets", I was actually referencing the Civil Rights Movement and the reaction to that, lynchings, hippy/Yippy actions, race riots, from coast to coast, and union thuggery.
There were knifings and shootings and even kids murdering teachers, in the 1950s and '60s. What there wasn't, back then, was 24 hours of T.V. and a lot or regional news never made it into nationally known news broadcasts.
Strikes used to CRIPPLE this country; H-1B workers and outsourcing hasn't ever done that; not even close.
The COLD WAR and what's going on today, are two completely different things. There is absolutely no comparison between the Korean War and the Cuban Missile Crisis and today's N.Korea and Iraq, Afghanistan, nor anything else you decided to throw up and see if it sticks.
No, people didn't worry about their kids playing outside, but children WERE kidnapped, raped, molested, and murdered in the '50s and '60s. Heck, in the mid '60s, Kitty Genoveese was stalked, raped, and murdered in full view and hearing, of an entire neighborhood and NOBODY CALLED THE COPS, NOR TRIED TO STOP IT. Lots of children were kidnapped, never to be seen or heard from again. It just didn't resonate with you, perhaps.
Yes, road rage is new. So are all kinds of other terrible behaviors. Are you blaming THAT on the trade deficit?
Please, don't give it another thought.
The funny thing is, I remember your handle very well. Unfortunately I can't tie it to the face at the moment. Oh well...
Almost every FREEPER sees Pat for what and who he has become. You are in the minority.
Yeah, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, you called in Jim, because you wanted him to know how great FR is. ROTFLMAOPIMP
I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night! LOL
And there have been hundreds, if not thousands of FR threads, which have far exceeded the number of posts that this one has now and which this one will end on. Many of them with NO "dissent" whatsoever! Go find the original UNDEAD THREAD and all of the LIVE threads; especially the ones on election nights and the 9/11 threads, that were up and rfunning on 9/11/01 !
I didn't say I "wanted" another purge; silly n00b, I said that the return of some of the once purged, should necessitate a new one. Retreads SHOULD be purged! Retread are you? Is that's what got under your skin? ;^)
FRYI...Jim doesn't allow all THAT much "dissent". If he did, there'd be no ZOT threads and no bannings.
Again with the silly post count? Post numbers don't always mean that there's "dissent". Boy, you do LOVE that word; one could even say fixated or obsessed with it.
There are many stripes of Conservatism; more so for those who wear the mantle of REPUBLICAN. OTOH, there are also people who imagine that they are Conservatives, but who, in reality aren't.
There ARE lots of DUers who come here to post. Some rant and rave right away and get ZOTTED. Some come and play at being a Conservative, for months or even years, but then implode. There are and always have been, trolls, disruptors ( yes, there is a difference between trolls and disruptors ), and just crazies here. Some get zotted right away, some don't; also, whole groups HAVE been purged.
Some, who make a big todo about how THEY CAN THINK ON THEIR OWN, implying or outrightly saying that those who disagree with them, are usually the very ones who really are incapable of logic and true thought.
That's okay, Doughty; really it is. Don't worry about it.
You are wrong. I used the term "values" correctly.
But just to call your bluff - what is the proper definition of values according to you?
You do not have a clue.
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