Are There Any Free Traders Out There That Can Fill Me In?

[mikepira]

Free trade.

Aside from the fact that I can go to Home Depot and buy a $2.00 showerhead, how does it benefit us as a nation?

Most of the arguments that I've heard revolve around lower prices for consumer goods.

What other arguments have I missed?

[VOR]

None mike, cheap consumer goods are our opium, and the chinese are making up for lost time. While Mr Chase Aldredge Maytag Peu Rockefeller the VIII still makes his 15% on each sale the rest of the value added leaves the country never to return. Meanwhile we are paying tax taxes because there is not enough wealth being created to service existing infrastructure let alone expand the infrastructure to accomodate the increase in population. But tires and washing machines are cheap but not as cheap as they were 5 years ago because the buck is not worth as much as it was 5 years ago because so many of them have been sent over seas.

[p2k1f]

don't forget the benefit that lost jobs in the US has created for us all. see now these huge corp's get to shop the globe for the cheapest labor. things aren't made in 1 place anymore. parts of things are made all over the globe and then the thing is assembled somewhere else. this leads to huge corp's dictating nations policies. we'll never have a war with china - why? - because it would disrupt both of our economy's. this could seem good, but the net effect of lower prices is the drop of wages at home. if americans are going to get jobs - they have to be willing to work for less.

[VOR]

excuse me, but if americans are earning as much as chinese then who is going to buy the manufactured goods as it is a known quanity the folks for the most part can't afford to buy what they make. That is what the excuse was for allow all the cheap stuff into the country for. Do you mean we should destroy our socio-ecnomic system so manufacturers can run the world? Besides it's not labor that is the real reason companies leave the US but environmental compliance. If the US demanded goods be manufactured to US environmental compliance the jobs would come back home quickly.

[Piper]

There's winners and losers Mike.

It's a better paying job to know how to fix a computer than to build one at a plant. Winner: computer tech. Loser: Factory workers.

Services is the largest growing component of the economy. Consultants like me tell everyone how to use this and that, or in my case how to comply with this and that when doing this and that. The upshot is you pay for pay half of what it costs for 8 hours of work. I'll let you figure out who's getting shafted.

They'll tell you that our own products have been opened up to more markets, and they are right. Our trade deficent will always be large because we consume more than anyone else, but our total exports have risen signigicantly. But the upshot is to compete for those markets and stay competitive, we've had to do twice the work, with the same workforce, for less money.

So the upshot is corp America gets rich, blue collar workers get shafted, and skilled proffesionnals get to do twice the work for the same price. Yeah.

[p2k1f]

hey vor, you're mistaken about why factories are headed out of the us. environmental factors are basically a non-concern when cheap labor is available elsewhere. when i say cheap, i mean cheap - phillipines, a few years ago - 19 cents/hr. if there wasn't so much money at stake environmental factors would play a larger role, but at this point it's $. i do realize $ is saved also with looser regulations.

[VOR]

Originally posted by p2k1f
hey vor, you're mistaken about why factories are headed out of the us. environmental factors are basically a non-concern when cheap labor is available elsewhere. when i say cheap, i mean cheap - phillipines, a few years ago - 19 cents/hr. if there wasn't so much money at stake environmental factors would play a larger role, but at this point it's $. i do realize $ is saved also with looser regulations.

If the labor is so cheap then why are goods not priced comparatively cheaper? Labor is only 15% of the cost of an item. If saftey and envronmental laws of this country were extended to all goods sold in this country suddenly factories would begin reopening in this country. The cheap labor argument doesn't wash, it still costs almost as much in transportation and warehousing costs after manufacture as manufacturing the stuff here. The really big savings is in cost of compliance, that's why the republican controlled gov of the US has slithered away from the Kyoto agreement. The real hope of the industrialists in this country is that they can starve the liberal lobby into submission get environmmental regulation repealed and turn the country into east germany.

[mikepira]

Originally posted by VOR
Meanwhile we are paying tax taxes because there is not enough wealth being created to service existing infrastructure let alone expand the infrastructure to accomodate the increase in population.

Voice, don?t get me started :)!

Our city infrastructures are surely crumbling, and are in dire need of repair and modification, but there would be plenty of money for improvements, if only the Fed reduced the size and waste of Government.

But my response it twofold. Here?s part number two:

Originally posted by Piper
There's winners and losers Mike.

It's a better paying job to know how to fix a computer than to build one at a plant. Winner: computer tech. Loser: Factory workers.

Services is the largest growing component of the economy.

Great post Piper! While we?re in agreement, I wanted to address the above comment, reasoning that is often given me by free traders (which leads into the second part of my response to VOR):

"Services is the largest growing component of the economy."

As we both know, the service and retail sector pay shit; usually half of what the manufacturing sector pays.

That said, I also agree with VOR (although I believe that bloated Government certainly plays a part): Leaving hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers in the cold, means that we?re wiping out a substantial source of revenue (tax money). And that?s on one hand. On the other, we have large masses of people who can no longer afford the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed; and I am not talking about reckless spending. Blue collar workers are forced to take jobs that pay them %100 less than what they used to make. Being that they can no longer afford their mortgages and car payments, they file bankruptcy. Others might not even be able to find work at the local Home Depot, and start receiving government assistance. They can't move, because they don?t have the money to move. They're stuck.

Once productive members of society, making good contributions to our overall tax pool, are now paying little or nothing into the system; often times seeking government assistance. And their once thriving, now ghost, towns and cities are left in the wake.

[mikepira]

Originally posted by p2k1f
this leads to huge corp's dictating nations policies. we'll never have a war with china - why? - because it would disrupt both of our economy's

Using that reasoning, then why are we going after Iraq? Up until recently, we were purchasing 1.5 million barrels of oil from them per day. If we fully dropped our sanctions against the Iraqi Government, and purchased much larger quantities of oil from them, then that should keep them in check, no? We also source %17-%18 of our oil from the Saudi?s. Is that way 15 of the 19 terrorists that committed the dastardly acts on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia?

And mark my words: The greatest long term threat to our County is China.

[VOR]

Ok so we make 100,000,000 computer technicians and the pay is now 8 bucks an hour to be a computer tech how does that solve anyone's problems? Look at all the hot shot web developers who say "would you like fries with that" in their sleep. Behappy you've found a sucker willing to pay a premium for a computer tech your next job will not pay nearly as well.

[p2k1f]

hey, mike if you don't think the fact our economy is dependent on oil affects our foreign policy, i'm not sure what to say. perhaps when i used the word 'dictates' i should have said 'influences heavily', but we are headed more and more into a world where states and nations have less power than border crossing huge corp's. writers are calling it mcworld. and china is operating under a new type of system coined - market leninism - not being run by a religious fanatic. btw china is also having trouble with muslim sectors in china. the 9/11 did more for our relations than anything in a long time. now when you are talking about missing tax revenues - what happens if these huge corp's are threatened, that's where the tax money is coming from, US and china get no money from them - we need the money - they need the money - war won't happen. think we'll go to war with the saudi's? wtf do you think all this lobbying the us govt did for enron in india was for? wtf do you think all the campaign finance reform is about. these corp's are making decisions all around the fucking world man. you can't tell me seriously that you don't think that $ isn't 'dictating' policy. wake up.

[mikepira]

Originally posted by p2k1f
now when you are talking about missing tax revenues - what happens if these huge corp's are threatened, that's where the tax money is coming from[/B]
I won’t argue that. In terms of absolute moneys, your statement is correct. But many of our towns and cities have been gutted. Many of our fellow Americans are paying the price; they’re overworked and underpaid. Gone are the working class, and the disparity between the have’s and have not’s is growing larger every day.

Originally posted by p2k1f
hey, mike if you don't think the fact our economy is dependent on oil affects our foreign policy, i'm not sure what to say.

Of course it affects our policy towards the Middle East. But let’s go back to what I said:

If trade were the sole component of good working relationships between countries, then why were 15 of the 19 terrorists from Saudi Arabia? Why is the Saudi government giving monies to the families of said terrorists and suicide bombers? And why are we looking to war with Iraq, because, if trade conquers all, we could easily lift sanctions, thereby making them economically dependent upon us – meaning that they pose no threat.

Does Saudi oil dictate our policy toward them? Of course it does. Then again, we only import 16% of our oil from Saudi Arabia. The Russians are branching out, as their resources match the Saudi’s. As they build their infrastructure, I think that the Saudi’s will become increasingly irrelevant; not completely irrelevant, but enough so, that they can’t pull the kind of shit that they have in the past. And they know that.

Originally posted by p2k1f
wtf do you think all the campaign finance reform is about. these corp's are making decisions all around the fucking world man.[/B]
I guess you missed my posts railing against campaign finance reform.

Originally posted by p2k1f US and china get no money from them - we need the money - they need the money - war won't happen. [/B]
There’s so much stuff on China that it’s mind boggling. Here's a good start: Dr. Harry Wu's book, “Seeds Of Fire”.

In short, I agree with most of what you wrote, but vehemently disagree with your belief that "free trade guarentee's peace between countries".

[Piper]

Well, the services sector is increasing in pay, but that's only because certian proffesional, medical, and technical services are emerging with greater pay. The core of the services sector is still shit.

And even with these emerging technologies, the problem with this new economy philosphy is you have to make something in the end so you can have someone to provide a service to. It's all well and good for me to be able to provide an envionmental Site assessment to an industrial plant, but they've got to keep building them and keep them open for me to provide that service.

Anyone see that 60 minutes article on that business started making that Nautica ski suit cloth. The owner has no labor issues, a good relationship with the union, no strke issues, good benifits, and puts out a superior product. But he's going out of business because he's trying to do the right thing, while his competititors are going to Mexico, and breaking patent agreements (that Nafta was supposed to have safeguards against) to put him out of business.

[mikepira]

Originally posted by Piper
Anyone see that 60 minutes article on that business started making that Nautica ski suit cloth. The owner has no labor issues, a good relationship with the union, no strke issues, good benifits, and puts out a superior product. But he's going out of business because he's trying to do the right thing, while his competititors are going to Mexico, and breaking patent agreements (that Nafta was supposed to have safeguards against) to put him out of business.


It's a damned shame...

[mikepira]

If anyone has the time, here's a great piece:

Will Free Trade Ruin America, Too?
Patrick J. Buchanan
11/06/01
In "The Collapse of British Power," historian Corelli Barnett savages the men and dogmas that brought his nation down.
In 1914, he writes, Britons believed theirs was the most powerful, productive, self-sufficient nation on earth. But already the rot was deep, as a free-trade cancer had eaten away at its vitals:
British industry had ... changed its character from an army of conquest, mobile, flexible and bold, into a defensive army pegged out in fixed positions, passively trying to defend what it had won in the past. The fire of creative purpose flickered low in the blackened grate of the British industrial regions.
Nor was British agriculture less decrepit. It was the German submarine which reminded the British government after 1914 that the price of cheap food from overseas under the policy of free trade had been the ruin of British farms and the terrifying vulnerability of the British population to starvation by blockade.
Britain never recovered from its 50-year addiction to free trade. Now, America has succumbed to the disease Teddy Roosevelt called the "pernicious" dogma of free trade. To see what it is doing to us, as the mandarins of this cargo cult meet in Doha, Qatar, look at the record.
From 1900 to 1970, America ran a trade surplus every year. Since 1970, the United States has run 30 straight trade deficits. Last year's trade deficit in manufactures was $323 billion, the merchandise trade deficit $450 billion – near 5 percent of the gross domestic product. No nation has sustained trade deficits like this without a collapse of its currency and an end of its supremacy.
As our economy sinks slowly beneath the waves, U.S. industry is already in Davy Jones' locker. U.S. manufacturing has fallen for 12 months. A fourth of our industrial plant is idle. A million manufacturing jobs have vanished since the Florida recount. We are down to 17 million manufacturing jobs, the smallest share of the U.S. labor force in 150 years.
Consider our once-mighty steel and textile industries. Though the U.S. steel industry has invested $60 billion in 20 years in new plants and equipment, raised its productivity 174 percent and laid off 350,000 workers, 25 U.S. steel producers have had to file for bankruptcy since 1997.
Why? In a word, imports. Since 1991, steel imports have risen from 16 million tons to 38 million tons. Foreign steel is being dumped on us by nations we bailed out like Brazil, Russia, Indonesia and South Korea, and nations we have defended, like Japan. When the global economy revives, these regimes want their steel industry to be alive and ours to be dead. Meanwhile, the U.S. government mumbles its comforting mantra, "Mustn't interfere with free trade."
The U.S. textile industry has been even more devastated. In the three years before North American Free Trade Agreement, the United States lost 2,000 jobs in textiles and 33,000 in apparel. In the seven years since NAFTA, America has lost 227,000 jobs in textiles and 434,000 jobs in apparel.
"Who cares if those dead-end jobs go to Mexico?" is the mocking taunt of think-tank scribblers, whose upholstered chairs are paid for by global corporations, whose party line they faithfully parrot. Well, those 671,000 laid-off workers care. For the apparel jobs they lost paid 23 percent more, and the textile jobs 59 percent more than the retail sales jobs they and their wives now probably have.
What has free trade done for American workers? According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, zero: The U.S. real median wage is today the same as it was when Nixon resigned.
This does not bother The Economist magazine, founded in 1843 to promote free trade, that simpering parson at the assisted suicide of the British nation. "Displaced rich-country workers" who lose out from trade, says The Economist, "are plainly worse off than they were before ... many, perhaps most, of those who find alternative work will be paid less than they were before." Unfortunately, it is American workers, not Economist editors, who pay the price.
Barnett traces free trade's roots to "liberalism," a doctrine that "demolished the traditional concept of the nation-state as a collective organism, a community, and asserted instead the primacy of the individual. According to liberal thinking, a nation was no more than so many human atoms who happened to live under the same set of laws."
This liberalism now enthralls the Republican Party and drives the agenda in Qatar. The delegates at Doha first feared anarchists, now they fear terrorists. One day, they will have more to fear from the patriots of the countries they are betraying

[LarryD]

old school.