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.
They become Pat's followers. ;^)
That's where Buchanan -- even if he is correct -- has absolutely no credibility. 10-15 years ago he was complaining that these "high-tech and brain power related jobs" weren't as good as the manufacturing jobs we had 50 years ago. When he complains about the loss of jobs that he never thought were worth a damn in the first place, he really comes across as a chronic malcontent.
Do the search yourself...
You can document a payment to Nike?
What taxes?
Nike paid $648,200,000 in corporate taxes last year. Many states collected sales tax on Nike products.
Dividends are paid to shareholders not citizens.
So any American shareholder gets a dividend. $1.06 per share last year.
Nifty shoes, you're joking.
Right, they only sold $13.7 billion in shoes. How could they be nifty?
That's what I figured - you can't find Pat's anti-American articles either.
Words have meanings, many words and terms are used incorrectly; which muddies the water.
If blue means ORANGE, because that's what you think it means, but everyone else knows that blue means blue, then YOU are at a disadvantage and nobody will ever understand what you say.
Yep, and his hordes did so every day!
Don't worry, the rest of the nation understands the distinction.
It is not a theory. It is written in the Constitution in ink. You could go look it up and read it sometime. It's not that long a document and you might find it quite educational.
What would you call companies merging into larger and larger conglomerates?
Really? In ink? It says the WTO trumps our Constitution? I don't suppose you can cut and paste the relevant section? Because that's not in my copy of the Constitution. Thanks.
Probably just an oversight. Patsy's a pretty busy guy you know. Can't be responsible for every detail.
I have a problem with the premise of absolute free trade. I posted an (obviously) over the top example, basically to try to get a handle on the warring factions here, and find out what they really mean. You seem to be on the absolutist free trade side. I won't repost 431 here, but my question, to any of the free traders here, is "Is there no point at which the government should step in as far as free trade goes?" Answers, anyone, because I've never considered myself a socialist, but I do not believe that "the ends always justify the means" or that "anything goes, as long as it turns a profit."
I never said anything of the sort. Perhaps you should take a break when drinking heavily. Your posts lack coherence.
That has ALWAYS been the case! Only now, far more people are able to get a mortgage and own their own homes, than ever before in the history of man.
Is there any actual evidence that it is no longer the case, or just a fear that it is no longer the case? I mean, it may not be, but I have seen no data to suggest it is.
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