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.
When the men came home, after WW II, they either married, or resumed family life. After having lived through the GREAT DEPRESSION and war, they were ready to and in all cases HAD TO buy a lot of stuff. That is what engendered that "BOOM"; not government policies.
One government policy, which raised many boats, so to speak, was the G.I. Bill. A vast number of men went to college, who never would have been able to do so, before. Also, because of the G.I. Bill, people, who otherwise would NEVER have been able to get a mortgage, were able to get one at lower rates.
People, who could see and take advantage of all of these things, built cheap housing, cheap furniture, made things that babies and children needed, and got rich.
Because companies needed workers and lots of them, to geerup for peacetime, the unions had them over a barrel and squeezed them. Strikes, really crippling strikes were something that happened on a pretty regular basis. So did recessions.
Could a family live on one salary back then? Yes, they could. They still can today. The difference, today, is that even the poorest of the poor, believe that they should have the latest thing, lots of luxury items, and goodness only knows what all else.
Right after WW II, America was just about the ONLY nation untouched ( discounting Pearl Harbor ), by the war; as we had been untouched ( on our soil ), by WW I. With almost all of the rest of the world struggling to regain ground, it is hardly surprising that American supremacy was the rule of the day. Heck, we were even selling spaghetti to Italy in 1950!
Times change. At the turn pf the 20th century, most people didn't have indoor toilets; not even in New York City; they had outhouses! By 1916, the average working man's pay, in N.Y. was $15.00...what my grandmother's wedding shoes cost that year. By the 1950s, having more than one T.V. was pretty rare and having a color set, was rare indeed and most people didn't have more than one bathroom,either!
Because times change, because world events change things for everyone, and because what people can have and want changes, it is difficult to compare and contrast eras, in any true way.
Lots of illegals aliens are caught and returned. It's YOUR problem, that either you don't know that, or chose to ignore it.
Go back to the late 1800s and the TONGS would EAT the MS-13ers for lunch. Go back a bit farther, to Five Points, for example and the MS-13ers look like school boys at a nursery party.
It depends upon the context.
And you have even less of a one.
You must have missed when Buchanan endorsed Bush for reelection.
Since you say that taxes were NOT lower in the 50's, please clarify the tax structure for me. Because I had always read that they were lower in the 50's, but I'm willing to be educated about it.
Buchanan-bashing by neo-con Freepers....what a surprise
Yeah, they get the paper, and the patents, and the investements in R&D and the factories. One day the show ends and our dollars don't buy much, like expensive gasoline, oil and gas....ooops.
Note how quickly Pat is assaulted as a moon bat but a crowd that says not a word to dispute his facts. Character assassination is the name of that game.
Yes, you've noticed the indepth discussion and counter proofs to Pat's arguments too, didn't you? /sarcasm
And all we've had to do is also give them our factories (now in China), our R&D centers (now in India and Russia) and most of our patents. Wow, what a great trade for expensive but crappy made junk.
BTW...Ronald Reagan was a NEO-CON!
JFK's tax cuts came in in the '60s, but didn't really go all that far.
Taxes went up in the '60s ( another halcyon time, according to some here ), but it wasn't until Reagan, in the '80s, that there was any tue tax reform/tax cuts.
BTW, the tax level ( where the cap on wages for FICA ) went up in the '60s.
You say the TOP LEVEL income tax rates were very much higher in the 50's...but what about for the average family income? I read that the figures were low enough that a single wage earner could provide support for the family, enabling the wife to stay at home with the kids, which is the lifestyle that most of us in the 50's experienced.
I should have said top levels. But really, taxes and all tax levels have come down.
And it an absolute canard, that ALL wives/mothers were stay at homes, in the '50s and '60s. It is also an absolute canard, that ALL two income families, today, are due to the fact that families can't live on one salary.
"Let's be consistent-- tariffs are taxes."
Let's be truthful too. Tariffs paid for the operating costs of the US government before state and federal income taxes.
"Please explain why it's bad."
better yet...defend your position that ever expanding trade deficits are good and healthy for the US economy.
"Look, I remember when the NASD was called OVER THE COUNTER and I do know more than enough about this topic, to not need a lecture from you or anyone else. LOL."
Yes many of your posts are about how much you know and how little anyone else does. I had hoped for a response which demonstrated any knowledge of the world of stock promotion, versus just a 2000$ paid spam deal which you apparently think required a bucket shop...though I will admit I had privately bet that you would just talk about how much you knew rather than actually demonstrating any real knowledge - but wait, you know the nasdaq was previously called the OTC market, so you are very smart.
You do serve a purpose though. Since you are know more than anyone I assume you know what that is?
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