Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Bah, stop calling it the Clinton economy. People give far too much credit to presidents in correlation with the economy.

Zeek

I agree, but you have to speak the language of those you are trying to reach. Most of the Blues think Clinton did it and I don’t know that he didn’t. The point about NAFTA’s success remains no matter the cause.

You can see the organizing ability and power of special interests if you look at the add section of this blog. I had not finished writing this five minutes, when a “Stop CAFTA” click add appeared next to my article. Do click on it to see the sophistication of the attack. Then ask yourself about the money it must take to produce such a presentation and make it ubiquitous.

I work for nothing. In fact - as you should - I even donate to the blog. The fact that special interests shadow even me is flattering, but reach of special interests in general is disturbing.

Considering the Republican Special Interest Groups that keep the US 4 BILLION DOLLAR Subsidy of Agricultural Products from leveling the playing field, I find Jack’s Comments to be the height of hypocrisy.

Republicans only want to enrich themselves. This is what CAFTA will do. In the end, South America will only become more poor.

Aldous
Of course there are no Democrats that want to enrich themselves, seeing how they are great servants of mankind. Bah!

That’s right tom, you know how those Democrats are!

They give away all their money to charity and don’t have a greedy bone in their bodies.

In fact most of the Democrats I know spend all their free time in third world villages unloading sacks of UN grain and rubbing medicine into the sores of lepers! LOL!

Sanger
The only democrats I know just go to Washington, DC and make fools of themselves while on C-Span. Like The swimming and diving champion from MA. Like the female Boxer from CA. Like Charlie Schummer from NY. Like San Fran Nan also from CA. And I won’t forget little Dickie Durbin from IL. Or Hairy Reed from NV. Mispelling was intentional. Oh, yah, Plagarist Biden from DE. Oh well you get the pix.

Jack, I respect your article and perspective represented in it very much. And I agree with you when you say CAFTA may benefit them more than us, and if that is the goal, it is a worthwhile effort that MAY have long term returns for Americans.

I have to however, point a simple fact. Our trade deficits have only deepened and deepened for well more than a decade, and each free trade agreement over the last couple decades has done nothing to stop the huge increases in our trade deficits. Some argue, and not entirely without merit, that free trade agreements (none of which have truly been free), have only enhanced our partners in these agreements to better compete against American workers, and have had a depressing effect on American wages and occupational benefits.

Now, I grant you, lower import prices compensates to varying degrees the depessing of American wages. But, not enough to offset the overall decline in value of real wage dollars earned compared to previous decades.

In my view, these free trade agreements have had short term negative effects on America in terms of wages and trade deficits, neutral effects in the mid-term range by reducing import prices for necessary goods. I think the jury is still out however, as to whether the long term effects will come out in our favor or not. I think they could, if we managed our domestic affairs far more prudently and efficiently (i.e. deficits, service on the debt, and inflation in housing and health care). But since we are NOT managing our domestic internal affairs well, I fail to see how we will come out ahead on these free trade agreements in the long run.

Jack,

I agree with free trade, but if we continue losing all our mfg. companys, what will Americans do for work? The tech jobs are going to india ect,the mfg. plants are moving anywhere to avoid unions,high taxes and regulations.

At what point will we all be selling pizzas to eachother?
A friend of mine(stonch Dem.)mfg.’s fishing lures(salmon spoons). He insists that the dies are union made and the stamping be done in union factorys in USA. Painting,mounting the hooks, and packaging has to be done in mexico because of regulations. OSHA rules have run almost every fishing lure mfg. out of this country. There are so many regulations on handling fish hooks that they would go out of business.
When they come back, they are sold to fishermen, that guess what, handle fish hooks!

Clever huh?

Jack, allow me to explain my opposition to CAFTA..

To me, this isn�t some kind of a feud between Labor and Big Business, or an attack on the whole idea of Free Trade, or merely a great opportunity to make the president to look bad (he�s been doing a great job of that all by himself!).
No. I think the real question is over what the benefits of globalization are going to be for Latin American and Central American countries.

We�ve already seen that globalization has brought very few benefits to those areas — which have the worst income inequality between rich and poor in the entire world. The majority of the citizens of those countries are extremely impoverished, and there is practically no middle class. CAFTA will do nothing to raise living standards for that majority, though it�s supporters act as though the mere expansion of trade will automatically bring widespread benefits to everyone. It won�t.

The truth is, that won�t happen unless fair rules of competition and trade are laid down first, and until workers in those countries have laws that can protect their rights. All CAFTA will do is shore up the staus quo, rather than help everyone, because it expects these countries (by offering more financial resources) to voluntarily enforce internationally recognized labor laws and standards — an entirely idiotic assumption.

In addition to the fact that it won�t help the average people in those countries, it isn�t fair to our workers or to US businesses in need of markets — instead it forces both to try to compete with oppresive regimes who have a long history of suppressing their workers.

The president has been championing CAFTA claiming that it will automatically bring “stability and security” to those regions — but that doesn�t have a chance of happening unless CAFTA�s framework is designed to actually help narrow the enormous gap between rich and poor, and make solid demands on those countries to allow labor unions, and improve labor law enforcement.
If that could happen, then we most likely would see those people feeling like they have a real stake in the economic and political futures of their countries. Let�s face it, once they get self-determination in the workplace, it is only a matter of time before they�ll begin to demand the very same in every aspect of their societies — which WILL then lead to greater stability and security in Latin and Central America.

I always forget that everytime I organize my thoughts in my regular word processing program and then paste it into here, I’m going to get all those crazy symbols in place of apostrophes. I can’t stand that — it totally ruins the flow of what I’ve written!

Adrienne

I often have the same WP problem. I dare not write directly on the Watchblog, as I spell so poorly without Bill Gates’ helping hand.

Globalization and free trade can be hard, but the alternative is worse. The poorest parts of the world are those least integrated into the world economy, not most. The poorest place in the world are those that have the most barriers to business, not the least.

The Index of Economic Freedom publishes a list of the freest economies for business trade. It correlates almost perfectly with measures of other sorts of freedom and prosperity.

The most business friendly countries (rated as economically “free” on the index) in the worlds - in order - are: Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Estonia, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Denmark, Iceland, Australia, Chile, Switzerland, United States, Sweden, Finland, Canada and Netherlands

Notice you have a variety of internal systems. The U.S. is not the top of the list, but still makes the cut, but so does Sweden.

The least free market oriented (rated economically repressed) are: Belarus, Tajikistan, Haiti, Venezuela, Uzbekistan, Iran, Cuba, Laos, Turkmenistan ,Zimbabwe, Libya, Burma and North Korea.

Notice the pattern?

Jack, as an interesting sidebar to this discussion, the most intolerant group of people to free trade on the face of the planet is a tribe in S. America living near the Amazon. Brazil (if I recall correctly) recently passed laws protecting their habitat. They want no, and refuse any, trade with the outside world and for good reason. Trade will scatter their small tribal identity, culture, and progeny to the winds, never to be seen again. It would be a form of genocide.

I bring this up, because this real current event story carries in it the necessary information needed to understand motives behind anti-western and anti-globalization sentiments and reactions. The human race is at, or has recently passed, a cross road, where the world’s people can

1)move toward global civil unrest in defense of cultural, historical, and geographic identities, and all out war against corporatization/amalgamation of human populations, cultures, and geographies, or

2)move to a true one world order and psuedo government in which corporate interests make secondary all other human interests and concerns or

3) move ever onward toward a balanced globablization of trade while fiercly protecting geographic, cultural, and historical differences in law. In this case, the most optimum one from my point of view, regional wars and terrorism have become the blackmarket to globalization in as inevitable a manner as black markets are cornerstones to free enterprise dominated open societies.

Pick your poison.

Jack:
“Notice the pattern?”

Uh yeah — but I already knew that, Jack. I don’t feel you addressed what I said at all, however.

David:
“move to a true one world order and psuedo government in which corporate interests make secondary all other human interests and concerns”

My guess is that this is the Neocon’s poison of choice.

Adrienne, that would be my guess as well, since, it would be the ultimate free enterprise scenario, beyond regulation from any government or body of people.

Globalization is inevitable. Civilization spans the globe now, and no part of the earth will remain untouched by trade in goods and culture. The short-term effect will be to reduce the standard of living of the richer nations and increase that of the poorer ones. In the long run, growth will even things out at a higher average level than the world is at now, but a lot of pain will come before then. The wealthy will not suffer, as they will continue to accrue wealth by skimming off all the excess production, leaving the work force only enough to keep them working.

Note that in any game of chance, the player with a statistical edge over the other players will eventually have all the money. When new wealth is developed, it doesn’t change this law, only delays the time to complete victory. Without active redistribution of wealth, the scenario will unfold that wealth will continue to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands (although those hands will change over time and generations), and the rest of the world will be maintained at some bare minimum, so that wealth can continue to increase. There will be a few spots where starvation and disease will kill large numbers (but in a competitive economy that can’t be helped, so we tolerate it). Of course, active redistribution is something the wealthy will prevent as they increase their grip on control of each country they inhabit or reap wealth from. Elimination of any estate taxes in the US is just the start.

I know, it’s a dismal outlook, but I just don’t see any way it can work otherwise.

It may be inevitable, Mental Wimp, but, I don’t think it will come with a global backlash and revolt at some point. The seeds for such a scenario are already sown. A global world order is, I believe, contradictory to the human species’ psychological and social needs for diversity, freedom, and independence of action. Such a global world order brought forth by international corporate cartels, will seek preservation and dominance over all other human organizations which hint at resistance. I think that is contradictory to an innate social need of humans to view themselves as self determinant, and free from forced controls.

Since I am not a maven regarding NAFTA I am quite prepared to get nailed to the wall for my comments. I will thank you in advance.

“Between 1993 and 2003, the U.S. economy added almost 18 million new jobs, grew by 38 percent, and increased exports to Mexico and Canada from $134.3 billion to $250.6 billion. U.S. manufacturing output rose 41 percent.”

Unless I am mistaken, among the many provisions of NAFTA were a) elimination of “quotas” on imported goods and b) it became permissible to import “partially assembled” goods.

If that is true I suggest that while we added 18 million jobs, the level or pay scale of some of those jobs was lower than the ones that were lost. Make no mistake we did lose millions of jobs in certain industries.

Example 1
Company A is importing an item from the orient pre-NAFTA. This item has a quota on it and the company needs more than the quota amount to meet sales, so it also manufactures some of the same item in it’s domestic facility.

NOW here comes NAFTA and does away with
the quota. Company A now gets all the
product it needs from offshore. They
do away with their higher paid
manufacturing people.

Example 2
Pre-NAFTA there were laws that governed importing certain products in a partially completed state. This resulted in US manufacturing facilities had to gear up to process the product from start to finish.

NOW here comes NAFTA and allows products to be imported in a semi-completed state. US manufacturers can now have the more tedious work or, in fact all but the very finishing touches done offshore and complete the product with fewer people in their domestic facility.

In both examples US companies are able to utilize less manufacturing space, wages are significantly reduced. In fact this “boom period” causes/results in Temporary Help Agencies becoming a primary labor supply. Companies now enjoy a fantastic reduction in overhead, fringe benefits, etc.

The increase in jobs (while certainly a good thing) is in traditionally lower paid employment in retail, delivery, clerical, etc.

steve smith, not to mention the fact that during those same years you quoted, our trade deficits increased significantly over that period. Despite increase exports, we continued to import at an even faster rate.

And trade deficits mean, of course, that we are consuming more as a nation than we produce. That can’t be good, can it?

It would be important, however, to normalize the deficit to the GDP or something analogous, since the percentage basis is the most important. Also, we need to consider history of the deficit as well: have we been this far down and come back?

David Remer,

What a nice graph. Does that mean I have escaped your wrath with my post. Actually I think I nailed that one pretty well.

A half trillion dollar trade deficit is a half trillion dollars that went overseas and never came back to the US. Dollars can be reused again and again, the imported products have a useage life, afterwhich, they become garbage.

The trade deficits put pressure on the free flow of capital, especially creating an increased need to BORROW from foreigners to float our federal debt and forcing us to open our corporate doors to foreign investors, which is why such a large amount of real estate in America is foreign owned. It has an indirect inflationary pressure on interest rates.

But the biggest impact of trade deficits is that American dollars go overseas rather than being invested here at home in infrastructure, tax revenues, and jobs. The cumulative deficits in the chart above represent 1.8 trillion U.S. dollars no longer in circulation in the U.S. economy. That is 15% of our current GDP.

Steve Smith, your comment which I replied to was solid and I agree with it. I don’t judge other people here at WatchBlog and impart wrath or scorn upon differing views. I do analyze what others and I say to see if it matches up with real data and facts, logic and rational thought. If it doesn’t, I offer a counterpoint. I have even corrected myself on occasion.

Some of politics is not about right or wrong, just differing rankings of priorities and values. Other aspects of politics however are goal oriented, and those goals and actions to reach them can be objectively assessed and debated as to their practicality and worthiness according to real world facts and data and measures.

The graph above also points to two historical market events. The Japanese invasion of US markets with their own car manufacturing which coincides with the beginning of the trade deficits, and the huge steepening of the trade deficits which coincides with the digital revolution brought on by the IBM and Microsoft product proliferation throughout the world as well as the rapid onset of internet transactions. These event’s relationship to our trade deficits are spelled out in detail in Thomas L. Friedman’s book, The World Is Flat. A highly recommended read for all literate Americans.