Free trade's victims turning against Bush, GOP

The Herald Sun ^ | August 25, 2003 | associated press

[per loin]

Use whichever criteria you prefer for calling a country one with or without a strong industrial base. But I'd suggest that those in Mali who sell stickwood on market day are not a strong example of industrialization.

[etcetera]

"You and who else?"

People who supported Bush in 2002 but who have lost jobs, or are disappointed in his lack of support for gun rights, or are furious at his protective stance towards the Saudis, or are disappointed with the Bush DOJ for arresting sick people, or don't want American tax payer money going to Palestinian Authority...just to name a few.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The fascinating thing about free traitor types is their obliviousness to anything but libertarian doctrine.

The irony is specially rich when they want to open the doors to exploitation of said trait (er, trade) by gummints that are the furthest thing from being libertarian.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Whatever stereotypes Jefferson may or may not have had about Jews is manifestly not an issue here. Gentiles and Jews alike, the merchants are selling out their country. "And money is the solution to everything!"

[WRhine]

Who was worried in the first place? Did you heart flutter when they bought Rockefeller Center and got soaked on the deal?

You miss my sarcasm. Unlike you I don't overestimate Japan's financial problems or underestimate their ability to cut into important industries that are integral to our nation's success as a leader in technology and manufacturing. They have been doing it for decades and even in their weakened condition still represent a serious competitive threat to this nation. I also don't think China is stupid for following Japan's mercantile trading blueprint on how to play America for suckers on trade. I think they know exactly what they are doing and their economic growth speaks for itself.

And in case you haven't noticed we have been accumulating quite a National Debt ourselves and under Bush are busy piling on hundreds of billions more in debt from his most excellent new socialistic endeavors. Tell me, where are we going to come up with the money to afford prescription drugs for seniors with an estimated cost well excess of 50 billion a year when our SS and Medicare are going bankrupt?

Perhaps you'd rather whistle in the dark about that while talking up the problems of other countries, the very same ones that are running up massive trade deficits with us.

[snopercod]

...oil is to Arabs as labor is to communist Red China.

...which is why America should have initiated gasoline rationing on September 12, 2001, and Bush should have issued an executive order opening up all federal land to oil and gas drilling. Cut the arabs off at the knees.

But of course this is a "parlor" war on terrorism, not a serious one, so we continue to buy weapons for our enemeies every time we fill up the tank.

Sorry for the thread creep...

[snopercod]

As I recall, you didn't vote for Bush in the last election?

Actually, I did. Liddy Dole, too. Why do you ask?

[snopercod]

By the way didn't you steal these jobs from the north to begin with?

Lordy no-suh. We wuz' just down heah pickin' cotton and mindin' to our bidness when along come some yankees wit dere big factories. What wuz us ole' country folk to do?

[snopercod]

LOL! Gimme' an F!

[Tokhtamish]

Your rebuttal of common sense is absolutely astounding. The black community is the most pious in America. But all the piety in the world is no match for the fact that deindustrialization destroyed the economic base of urban black America. When that was done law abiding, respectable people lost the power to control young people by being able to offer them hope for the future. Deindustrialization destroyed the power of respectable society and left a vacuum to be filled by street culture.

It happenned in England. What tamed the underclass of "Oliver Twist", an underclass that was created by another free market upheaval (the mass dispossession of English peasants by their landlords when the British gentry deemed it more profitable to raise sheep for wool than to raise grain called "enclosure") was the combination of the Victorian reform movements of Wesley, Wilberforce, etc, emigration and a fresh start, and a growing demand for industrial labor which offered them a chance to leave the street and enter respectable society. Funny how you have such trouble with the obvious fact that people's worldview is based upon an assesment of their economic prospects.

[Texas_Dawg]

Your rebuttal of common sense is absolutely astounding.

Your doom and gloom is absolutely astounding as well.

[Tokhtamish]

US military power is unmatched.

Given the technological base China is creating, that will not be true 10-20 years from now. Even now we are militarily overextended.

1. Prices in Europe are (best case) 2X prices in US. Salaries in Europe are comparable to US salaries. In some cases, in fact, they are far lower - my boss in a Western European Bank had to get a special permission from senior manager to be able to higher me at a competitive US salary.

Then you also know that they get something like two months vacation and generally work 9-5. It is true that their prices are higher but they have a much easier quality of life than we do. So it's a cultural choice.

2. Our IT industry has no significant competition either in Europe or Japan. (India is providing some competition in the narrow field of IT consulting.)

Our IT industry ? Again, our technological base is being transferred to Asia. IT consulting is hardly a narrow field when senior American analysts and engineers cannot find work. It is a wholesale decimation of our technological intelligentsia. Who these days would go into computer science or electrical engineering as a field ? Extrapolate that 10-20 years into the future and what does that tell you about our ability to remain the preeminent technological superpower ?

The "giant sucking sound" has resulted in huge number of high quality new jobs

Free trade briefly resulted in benefits for college educated workers at the direct expense of the jobs of non college educated American workers. Now, obviously, college educated workers are seeing that their "high quality new jobs" can be exported to Asia to be done at a fraction of their salaries. They are in precisely the same boat manufacturing workers are.

[Tokhtamish]

Yeah. I'm doing lots better than in the previous 30 years of full employment...

You are in the small minority.

What nonsense you talk. His story is extremely common these days. I know plenty of people who were very skilled and experienced and senior who have been months without work.

And please explain to me how you pay a mortgage on McDonalds's pay.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Ha! You called me a commie. You are nothing but a name-calling trouble-maker.

The world owes me nothing. I work for a living and have never accepted a hand-out from government in my life.

I don't expect government to give me a job by I don't want government taking away all of my opportunities by destroying my nation's economic strength through its anti-American policies.

I'll give you my address and cordially invite you to come to my home and call me a communist to my face. I won't need the government to help me respond to trash like you, I assure you.

[bimbo]

It is really sad to see N. Carolina’s Senators and Congressmen in Washington ( both Democrat and Republican ) cast votes which reperesent the interests of their Party rather than the interests of their constituents. It is even sadder to consider that N.Carolina is not unique.

[Texas_Dawg]

And please explain to me how you pay a mortgage on McDonalds's pay.

Get a smaller house?

Sell the stupid computer you are using to get online about what jobs you've been too good for over the past year of unemployment (as that guy was doing) and cancel your internet bills?

[Texas_Dawg]

It is really sad to see N. Carolina’s Senators and Congressmen in Washington ( both Democrat and Republican ) cast votes which reperesent the interests of their Party rather than the interests of their constituents. It is even sadder to consider that N.Carolina is not unique.

They must all hate "the little man".

[Tokhtamish]

And notice how Texas_Dawg ignores other indices of well being such as twice the family size then than now, less need of a college diploma (your least earning years aren't spent paying back thousands in college loans so you can jump right into home ownership in your 20's), no need for a working spouse (so you can do with one car, no day care, no preschool), marrying sooner because you can afford to start a family in your 20's, etc. Nowadays the marriage age is creeping up and up because it takes longer for people to get economically settled.

[Tokhtamish]

Bush and the GOP crushes you people ? Are you connected with reality at all ? Every trend line is going down. Bush is in precisely the fix his father was.

Even if Bush is reelected, the Democrats will retake the House and Senate.