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.
Now THAT would be a neat trick! LOL
Your question was absurd. Free trade does not give anyone the right to violate the human rights of another. Free trade means that humans have the right to freely enter into mutually beneficial agreements with others. Your quetion did not address that.
I'm sorry. When you defended this post:
As far as the free traders being unpatriotic, well, my understanding is that the highest law in _This Land_ is the US Constitution and all its amendments. The WTO however, by treaty, apparently trumps all. Now that's unpatriotic.
250 posted on 02/15/2006 4:42:09 PM CST by markedman
By saying this, The Constitution elevates treaties to the same level as it occupies: "the supreme law of the land."
I thought you were defending the idea that the WTO trumps the Constitution. Glad you don't. Enough ignorance on this thread already.
Unless you do claim that a treaty trumps the Constitution?
Just WHY these people imagine that they are "Conservatives", is beyond me.
That's right. Because without the first party, this country would make Somalia look like the Garden of Eden.
You sure do hate people who have succeeded through their own hard work and merit. So where did you get that silly picture, from your "Workers of the World Unite" handbook?
Are you against the antitrust laws? If yes, what would happen if one corporation won the whole economy through the free market?
Sometimes smart business - and sometimes not. Companies that can avail themselves of synergistic organizations and values, compatible systems, cultures, and distribution channels can provide their customers with enormous benefits: lower costs and better products. Those that cannot - will not succeed.
The Yen dollar ratio is kept artificially high by Japan for their own reasons.
The Yen might be a bad example for you.
And the dollar is stronger against the Euro over the last few years.
You're just showing how uneducated you are; dear.
Pilfering the Reform Party provided Pat present prosperity.
Anyone with even a modicum of intelligence, reviles Pat.
Female logic?
Please don't forget the valuable contributions freely given him by his followers...and the eight people who purchased his last book.
1 million new truckers working for 50% of the prevailing wage in your chosen industry, by special legislative loophole, might have impacted your earning and pissed you off like the computer geeks are.
Anyone looking down there nose at someone who earned enough to retire by 47 is pretty stuck up.
I'll get back to you..........hehehehehehehehehehe
Distribution matters a lot. If your number is right and my tagline is right it means that one worker from top 5% owns on average 4.37 million (51 T * 60%) / (140 M * 5%) while one worker in bottom 60% owns on average 24K.
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