[LowCountryJoe]

ping

[fortheDeclaration]

The question is, is the trade really free or is it managed?

Americans can compete with anyone, but they are being betrayed by these international trade agreements that are nothing but mercantalism under the guise of 'free trade'

[Bushwacker777]

“All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices.”

Bet this guy would have a different tone if the major newspapers started outsourcing their writer’s jobs to India. Wish they would; highly educated Indians are just as good with English as these snobbish journalism school grads are and with the avalability of computers we could send this guy to the local community college to be trained as a greeter in a yuppie resteraunt.

[Man50D]

Duncan Hunter is the only GOP candidate who understands and is willing to address the dangers of the so called "free trade". To quote from his website:

“American workers are the most productive and innovative labor force in the world. Unfortunately, they are asked to compete in an unfair environment against other workers who make only a fraction of a living wage and are employed by companies that face few, if any, responsibilities to the environment or the long-term prospects of their employees. Our domestic manufacturers are forced to compete against foreign companies that benefit from their country’s currency and regulatory regimes. Ominously, China is cheating on trade and using billions of American trade dollars to build ships, planes and missiles at an alarming rate while, at the same time, taking millions of American jobs. I will reverse this “one-way street” with a new policy of fair trade for the American worker.

Further, America’s one-way-street trade relationship with China and other nations has reduced manufacturing jobs severely in the U.S. I would change the one-way-street into a two-way-street by putting the same charges on foreign goods that they put on ours.

[jiggyboy]

Just as a matter of logic, his shampoo analogy doesn’t hold up. You’d have to be the pharmacist’s only customer.

[Halgr]

According to Department of Labor Stats here

http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm

Over 2 million manufacturing jobs have been lost in America since 2000.

I rest my case.

[mysterio]

What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices.

Cool. Maybe by the time we get paid 34 cents an hour like the Chinese, everything will be free!

[Surtur]

Wonder what the good professor would think if his university decided to do away with the tenure system.

[Sender]

All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices.

Good morning, I'm too sleepy to be responding to globalization yet but I'll bite.

If you're speaking strictly as to what is the bottom line in an individual's wallet, the above may be true. When we buy something for $1.00 from China that used to cost $5.00 when it was American-made, assuming that we have found another job to buy things with (I haven't yet), our net expenditure is less. If we assume the quality of the item is the same (not to mention pride of ownership, etc), then we "win".

There are less-tangible aspects though. This great country used to be proud of its strengths in manufacturing, productivity and quality. We used to be relatively secure in our jobs. Does it benefit me individually if I can buy that item from China for $1.00, yet my job is gone, and whole towns are turning into for sale signs? No, it doesn't. Does it benefit me personally when I buy that $1.00 item from China and I have no pride of ownership of it? No pleasure in using it or showing it to others? No feeling that I have purchased a great piece of my history? No, even though these are intangible "feelings", I don't benefit at all.

Now to be fair, America hasn't gone to hell in a handbasket just yet. But when I hear statements such as "ALL economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners", I have to believe that we are seeing the roadsigns to hell.

[nicmarlo]

All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners.

Besides the fact that we have MANAGED trade, not FREE trade, the leftists and "free traders" goals are not only to create the demise of American jobs.....they want to MANAGE American education. This was initially done through the outcome-based education, GOALS 2000, and currently, through the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which has shifted the PURPOSE for educating our children. They are to become TRAINED, not educated. We see the poor results of the implementation of these "economic gurus" not only through the outsourcing of American jobs, but the lowering of American students' education. Our children are being trained to be nothing more than laborers in a global economy....no longer EDUCATED to have basic knowledge and skills.

Final Regulations Issued for No Child Left Behind
January 2003

Some experts assert that NCLB [No Child Left Behind Act] represents the final takeover of American education by the federal government, a process that began in 1994 with the passage of the Goals 2000 and School-to-Work laws. Sue Ella Deadwyler, education researcher and editor of Georgia Insight, points out that "the Constitution of the United States leaves control of education to the respective states. . . . NCLB is said to be 'voluntary' but uses this directive: 'Each state educational agency that desires to receive funds under this subsection shall submit an application to the Secretary. . ." If the state doesn't comply with the mandates, education funding will be withheld.

* * *

This is top-down control of America's public schools as envisioned by Marc Tucker in his 18-page letter to Hillary Clinton in 1992.

***

School-to-Work Will Train, Not Educate
April 1997

The School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STW), signed by President Clinton in 1994, is an attempt to use federal mandates and funding to browbeat the public schools into changing their mission. STW is being implemented nationwide by STW state laws, federal and state regulations, and the federal mandates that control the granting of federal STW funds.

School-to-Work is the implementation of Marc Tucker's "cradle to grave" plan outlined in his "Dear Hillary" letter, and it is moving rapidly through the schools. Tucker boasts that he has written the "restructuring" plans for more than 50% of public school children. Designed on the German system, it is a plan to train children in specific jobs to serve the workforce and the global economy instead of educate them so they can make their own life choices.

The traditional function of education was to teach basic knowledge and skills: reading, writing, math, science, history, etc. School-to-Work deemphasizes or eliminates academic work and substitutes mandated vocational training to serve the workforce. Instead of the focus being on developing the child, the focus is on serving the labor force.

There's a big difference between educating a child and training him to serve the workforce. According to the dictionary, to educate means to develop the faculties and powers of a person by teaching. Becoming skilled at reading, writing and calculating is essential to developing as a student and as a person and being able to fulfill the American dream. To train means to cause a person or animal to be efficient in the performance of tasks by responding to discipline, instruction, and repeated practice. That's what you do to your dog. That's what School-to-Work is: "performance-based" training of students to move into predetermined jobs.

Those predetermined jobs will not be selected by the student or his family....

* * *

School-to-Work is a direct threat to the individual student, his privacy, his goals, and his acquisition of an education that can help him reach them. Furthermore, a planned economy, with bureaucrats trying to predict what jobs will be needed in the next five years and training students for specific jobs, is a failure all over the world...

Robert Reich, Ira Magaziner, and Marc Tucker are the social engineers driving the School-to-Work concept. They dream of using the schools to implement industrial policy, a.k.a. national economic planning, following the German and East European models.

Robert Reich's and Ira Magaziner's 1982 book entitled Minding America's Business bemoans America's "irrational and uncoordinated industrial policy" and that we lack a single agency to monitor our domestic economy and adjust it to changes in the world markets. They think we need an economic czar.

Robert Reich, in his 1983 book The Next American Frontier, wrote enthusiastically about Germany and Japan, where government-managed industrial policy uses loans and subsidies to shift resources into favored industries, and "induces" disfavored firms to exit from the industry. He praised the high percentage of their national economies that is poured into numerous, generous, tax-financed social benefits and "elaborate programs of job training," which he claimed resulted in low unemployment.

Marc Tucker, in his 1992 book Thinking for a Living, expressed admiration for the Soviet bloc countries. He wrote that they "have done a better job than we of building human-resource development programs."

The alleged economic efficiency of the German and Eastern bloc countries, so highly praised by Reich, Magaziner and Tucker, is now on the rocks. Germany's unemployment rate is 12% [2003 | 9.80 %; 2004 | 10.50 %; 2005 | 10.60%; 2006 | 11.70%; and 2007 | 7.10 %] and the extravagances of the welfare state are heading that nation into economic decline.

School-to-Work is the "human-resource development" segment of the Reich-Magaziner-Tucker strategy to inflict America with a national industrial policy dictated by government economic czars. These elitists have convinced themselves that they possess "extraordinary insights" to restructure our economy. But central planning is a failure everywhere in the world!

[xjcsa]

Ping to the best defense of free trade I’ve seen in a long time...from the NY Times no less.

[xjcsa]

Ping to a free trade article; thought it might interest you.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

“All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices.”

Whoopeee! Lets do away with everyone’s job and the world will be perfect!

Strength through total unemployment!

[William Terrell]

Human beings need certain things to survive and prosper in a body on the Earth. To survive and prosper comfortably, human beings need a certain range of choices available in each category of those needs.

In America, we can provide not only each category of need, but a proper range of choices to fit the individual wants in each category of need by making the items here with American workers and trading amongst ourselves. We became a world power doing that very thing; we've become a debtor nation by abandoning that very thing.

What is the sense of becoming dependent on other countries that bear us no love, couldn't care less about us beyond our wealth and would destroy us at the first opportunity? Why, by the living God, deliberately develop those nations so they can defeat us?

It is madness, but it is globalism, and engineered, not for the good of our people, but by those who desire the extreme power dependence bestows on the granter.

From my view point, anyone who argues for this idiocy, works toward it and throws their hearts and minds behind it is, at best, stupid, and, at worse, a traitor to our nation and its people.

[nicmarlo]

Economic Policy Institute
http://www.epi.org

_____________________________

Snapshot for June 27, 2007.
Wal-Mart’s reliance on Chinese imports costs U.S. jobs
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm?id=2749
_____________________________

October 9, 2007 (revised) (originally released May 2, 2007) EPI Briefing Paper #188

Costly Trade With China
Millions of U.S. jobs displaced with net job loss in every state
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm?id=2674
_____________________________

No Cheers For CAFTA
THIS PIECE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY TOMPAINE.COM ON OCTOBER 19, 2007

by Ottón Solís
October 19, 2007

The Wall Street Journal may say “Bravo, Costa Rica” on its Opinion page October 9, but almost half of the people who voted in the Central American Free Trade Agreement referendum October 7 are not celebrating.

We are proud that our health and environmental policies are, by far, the best in the region, that our democracy is founded on an extensive system of family farming, that our telecommunications services are lower priced and more efficient than those of our neighbors, that we abolished all military forces 60 years ago, and that our laws forbid the trade and production of weapons and their parts. All these sources of national pride are threatened by CAFTA. That is why we tried to stop it through a popular referendum.

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm?id=2813

[DungeonMaster]

25 dollar an hour union janitors don’t want no stinking training for no stinking new job.

[maui_hawaii]

In order to compete in a global economy one must be willing to fight like hell.

Everyone needs to change in the process.

I will list the people who need to change...

1. Government. They need to lower taxes and burdens on business.

2. Business. They need to develop new products and streamline the ones they have already. If it means adding new technology to a manufacturing line so be it.

3. The worker. They need to continue learning new things such as how to operate the equipment mentioned in #2.

But the overall factor here is that the industry is still here.

If you just say 'screw it we don't need auto manufacturing anymore'.... then tell everyone to go find new jobs...that is crap and that is wrong.

The auto industry of today is different than that of 1950. And the auto industry of today will be different than that of 2050.

McCain said everyone else needs to change except himself and big government. Its tantamount to blaming the worker for something the management and more importantly the government does wrong.

Education of workers won't do crap as long as the government continues doing what it is doing.

[NRA2BFree]

What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices.

The ignorance of liberals is unbelievable. Does this moron not understand that NO ONE lowered their prices. In fact, EVERYTHING has gone up! Do you suppose he really thinks free trade is also fair trade? Well, here's a little tidbit for him. It's NOT! It's not free and it's not fair. The US ALWAYS gets screwed in ANY and ALL trade deals.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Moral instincts and politics do not mix.

At all.