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If it’s contributing to the standard of living for our citizens, I’m pretty much for it. If it puts some folks out of work so someone who is still working can get a 25% discount on what they purchase, I think it’s a decaying process on the well-being of our nation.

Free trade -- even the real kind based on actual freedom -- will always cause some to lose work. People in other countries with different economic situations will be able to produce some goods more cheaply and more efficiently.

Except one thing. When you have rogue states, you don't do business with them. You don't want them to become an economic powerhouse with evil intent. That's precisely what we have with China. You don't want to do that with a Hugo Chavez, a Fidel Castro, or the People's Republic of China. It's suicide to do it.

When you make this kind of assertion, you're pretty much sticking to the Holy Grail of Conservative thought. I'm not convinced that is a good thing.

My rule of thumb has been tied to something most people enjoy and can understand. Sex. Sex is great. Can we participate in it 24 hours a day every day? Most thinking people would recognize there are limits to even the best of things in life. We moderate on the issue of multiple partners, setting down ground rules that make families more strong and stable.

If this is true, and I believe it to be, then why should trade be any different? Is trade good? Yes, it is good, but being honest with ourselves, there are times when it can be bad too.

What would be an example of bad trade? I would say that it could be when it strengthens what would be an obvious adversary. I would also say it could be wrong if it were to pit our workers against other workers when our workers have absolutely no chance of competing. I'm not a union sympathizer by any means, but I do think we should be very careful about destroying jobs and industry in the United States. That's not to say that union shops haven't caused part of the problem with their demands. We recognize that. That was wrong too.

One has only to look at China, what has happened there, to realize there can be some VERY BAD downsides to trade. China benefited from the trade. We did not as a nation. China became wealthy, productive, and a world class nation. We languished, our people were put out on the street with no jobs, and China also became a threat along the way. There was nothing free about this trade. China manipulated it's money value so that our goods going into China had to hurdle a 30-40% exhange rate that made it next to impossible to sell our goods there.

The last thing that I want to mention, is that when our business sector sells it's soul on the world market, to get cheap labor, it spreads it's patent and industrial secrets far and wide. China won't allow anything to be made in it's nation until it has all proprietary supporting information and technology. Out little 20 year scamper into the world of senseless free trade gone absolutely mad, was to gift China with 200 years worth of tecnology. We gave them the secrets, gave them the tools, gave them the know how, and basically handed them the guts of our industrial machine, for free.

In what world does it make sense to undermine our ability in this manner, when the obvious damage can only result in what it was predicted to by people such as myself?

We can sit here and pat ourselves on the back for being free and doing what we want, but at the end of the day that was the main focus of the 1970s Hippies. It wasn't realistic then. It's isn't realistic now. You have to use common sense. Over the last twenty years, trade mavons used none. Well, here we are.

Obama has doubled down, and actually made things exponentially worse. That's not to say it was all the Democrats fault though. Bush had a Republcian Congress, and look what that ultimately resulted in.

Our economy is sick, no doubt. Financial practices were abysmal. Our overseas business aqumen was downright suicidal though.

I would also submit that yes, there are times when it's best to operate as a closed shop rather than do what we have done. What is the benefit of free trade if it facilitates our nation becoming a second or third tier nation? Right now were in the midst of a depression that has touched at least 50% of our work-force negatively. Is that just because we have a sick economy right now? Well, the economy didn't help, but we were sick long before the 2008 crash. It really hit the fan in about 2000.

In a four year term, we generally add about 9.0 million jobs. Over two terms in office, a president can expect to see jobs go up by at least 17 million jobs. This took place from 1960 to the year 2000. Do you know what the job growth under Bush was? For his first term, it was negative (around 800,000 jobs). This was the first time in over 40 years we had seen something like that. I submit that all other things being equal, the loss of jobs under Bush was the result of inexcusable trade policies.

We should take advantage of that and shift our capital into lines of production that are more capital-based and more profitable. In a well-functioning and free economy, that process would more than compensate for the losses.

Please tell me what restrictions were placed on business in the last 20 years. You'll have to excuse me, but business did whatever the sam hell it pleased. It there too much taxation and regulation? I believe so. It's pretty well accepted that we do. None the less, business moved off short. Every job it could send away, it did.

Our government messed with the lending industry to make it easier for people to get homes who couldn't pay for them. That did finally hit the fan around 2008. That was the double-whammy that sent our nation into a death spiral.

It is the gradual erosion of our economic freedom that causes the overall job losses -- not the freedom, itself.

I appreciate the argument, but the economic freedom flowed for twenty years. Business wasn't blocked from doing what it wanted to. As any Conservative I do believe the government screws things up, but in this instance the major problem was something being passed off as Free Trade that was anything but Free Trade. We paid one hell of a price.

We've pretty much moved production away from the U. S. Now R & D is taking place off our shores as well. We are turning into 20th Century Great Britain. Either we pull our heads out and put an end to this nonsense, or we will no longer drive global dynamics. I'm talking five to ten years before we're dictated to.

So much for our Free Trade dividend..

And while you think I'm crazy, the corporations and businesses that moved off shore will do just fine, as our populace implodes with no jobs in sight.