[moneyrunner]

I am going to assume you mean well, but have simply not thought through some of the beliefs you have about free trade and global sourcing. Let’s take your first assertion and put in under the microscope:

”Free trade allows big companies to hire labor world wide. It becomes obvious that they hire the lowest cost labor. Right? Right! If they are paying less in labor costs per unit, then overall wages must be going down. Right? Right!”

Actually, free trade does not necessarily allow big, or small, companies to hire labor worldwide. It allows people to exchange goods across borders without excessive tariffs. However, to your point about outsourcing: let’s say FloridaCracker Inc. makes TV sets in Florida and pays assembly line workers $15 per hour. Finding that the price of its sets has to be $300 and the price of sets made in Taiwan is $200, FloridaCracker Inc. has a decision to make. It’s materials costs are already as low as the Taiwanese, but the labor component is too high. It offers its workers a 50% pay cut. It’s workers refuse, figuring they can get more elsewhere and begin practicing “want fries with that?”

FloridaCracker, Inc. - run by you - decides to go the Taiwanese one better. You have heard about the low labor costs in Uganda. Much lower than in Taiwan, Mexico, China, etc. Pollution laws? Never hear of them. So what do you do, Mr. Cracker, but move your assembly line, lock stock and barrel to Uganda. You labor costs have now dropped from $15x8x5=$600/week (+benefits) to $2. There’s lots of abandoned farms where you can set up your factory. People are starving so you have labor lined up outside your door. All of a sudden you can make TV sets much cheaper than they can in Taiwan. Right? Right?

But … but … You mean that there is more to making TV sets than choosing the location with the lowest labor cost and most permissive pollution laws? Who would have thought it?

[Jethro Tull]

#6: "Actually, free trade does not necessarily allow big, or small, companies to hire labor worldwide. It allows people to exchange goods across borders without excessive tariffs."

With no entry tariff to the American consumer, transnationals have indeed searched the globe for, and found, slave labor.

WalMart is chock full of products made in communist China by prisoners. And since all communist Chinese companies are nothing more than fronts for the PLA, dopey Americans are, in effect, buying the rope that will be used to hang them...