Why doesn't either party talk about what really happened to the jobs?

[happy_liberal]

Republicans blame Obama, rejecting facts that illustrate one man could not do that much damage in that short of time, using selective amnesia on the last 8 years of Bush.

Democrats talk about creating jobs, but never where they went and how to really get them back.

Cancel NAFTA and the WTO. We had tarriffs for a reason.

The job losses are CLINTON and GORE's fault. Can't anyone remember the debate, what Ross Perot was saying about the "giant sucking sound" of American jobs. I know that Democrats do not want to face this but Perot was right. What Gore and Clinton did was wrong. And Al Gore, in particular, is a hypocrite because these policies moved all our industries to countries where they pollute freely. CO2 anyone? But they want to cap and trade tax us to fix the environment?!

You want to fix the environment, create our goods here where we know they are made in an environmentally(not to mention decent human rights) sound environment. Punish BUSINESS that purchases from polluting companies overseas.

You want to create jobs?

Cancel NAFTA and the WTO.

[conscious evolution]

1. Why not?

Because their corporate masters will not allow them to talk about what happened to the jobs.

[liberalmike27]

167. Globalization, Means to Discipline Labor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

I keep spreading this around, as it is so accutely accurate as to what has gone on for the last years, and he ends with the question about when we're going to have this discussion.

It's an entertaining economics professor's white-board, magic-marker rendering of what has happened in the last years.

But yea, race to the bottom still going, exporting jobs, still happening, no discussion whatsoever in media, check. And weirdly, most seem oblivious to the absolutely DIRECT connection between the loss of 20 million jobs over the last 3 decades, and a nearly 20 percent un, and underemployment rate.

[Octafish]

2. The Great U-Turn, pub. 1988, chronicled what Reaganomics would mean for the USA...

Spot on. Unfortunately.

http://www.udel.edu/htr/Psc105/Texts/bluestone.html

No one in power listened. Tragically.

[reformist2]

23. That was from 1995.

[Octafish]

33. Thank you. My mistake. That book is from 1995. 'The Great U-Turn' is from 1988.

Sorry, I was not clear. "The Great U-Turn" was published in 1988, a copy of which is in front of me. Here's an article with background:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n3_v41/ai_7768457/

The other article, I believe, contains valuable background. It is from: "The Polarization of American Society: Victims, Suspects, and Mysteries to Unravel," (New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995.

Both books are on the money.

Most important: Welcome to DU, reformist2! Great catch!

[FredStembottom]

131. My wife and I actually changed our plans based on that book.

It was so patently clear what was coming after reading that back in 88*. We set ourselves up in non-outsourcable jobs. We left the stock market. We stayed in our tiny starter house and paid it down. We paid off debt. Consistently. And did without a lot of thing

We looked like fools as everyone else was flying high, first on the .com bubble, then on the real estate bubble. We didn't soar with them - but we haven't crashed with them either.

Still, neither of us got to live our dreams. I want an America that's economically secure enough to let my kids live their dreams. Right now..... the future is quite dark for them.

Tariffs up. Manufacture our own stuff. China manufactures for the billions of Chinese (build internal demand). Economic borders that fit political borders. A halt to the cargo ships that exist for the sole purpose of taking American jobs away to places that exploit the poor populations of those places.

* which was: lowering tariffs means joining the "Third World".

[Enthusiast]

133. We could have incredible

internal consumer demand if we only could make a good wage.

[FredStembottom]

198. Exactly... and equally true for China, India, Mexico.

If the multi-nationals were cut off from the U.S. teat, they

1)would likely dissolve

2) the remaining sold-off pieces would then be forced to set up as "nationals" and pay wages high enough to create internal demand among each nation's population.

[ProudDad]

201. It depends on what the "dream" is

If you dream of a world where communities are strengthened...

Where elders are valued...

Where work is following one's passion not enriching some absentee boss or capitalist "investor"...

Where there are no "jobs"; extra hours of labor primarily on mindless tasks just to "add value" for the capitalist masters.

Where food is grown and consumed locally and in season...

Where an "economy" exists to enhance interrelationships between people and people and people and nature...

Where nature is enjoyed and not "dominated" and tortured...

Where communities are self-reliant and resilient...

Then welcome to the future...

-------------------------------------

The "USAmerican dream" that most folks have been conditioned to internalize was a horrible, demeaning, destructive waste of everyone's time and energy.

Let it go!

=------------------------------------

And it sounds like you're on your way to a better future. Congratulations :hi:

www.transitionus.org <-- for a start

[FredStembottom]

231. I agree with much you say.

To be clear, though, what I meant by not living our dreams was jettisoning what would have been our true career choices had America not gone insane. Instead we chose careers that satisfied 1 single, over-riding concern: that they were jobs that could not be sent overseas. We got in early "to beat the rush" so to speak and established high seniority. That these jobs provided health insurance was really the only other criteria.

We now work jobs far removed from what we would have chosen. The book (The Great U-turn) fleshed out what we feared were the REAL implications of the absolutely daft idea of Global Free Trade,,,,, and we knew that this was no time for the standard career advice: "follow your passion".

My wife has managed to wring some satisfaction out of her career, anyway, I'm happy to say. While I.....

Oh well..... There once was a country.....

[ProudDad]

232. I hear you...

To be clear, our "career choices" have always been severely limited within the dominator hierarchy and its latest handmaiden, the capitalist economy.

My point is that the very concept of "job" itself is perverted and, along with the unnatural "nuclear family" is a set of artificial constructs created to fulfill the needs of capitalism NOT to enhance human potential.

By seceding from the death culture, first in our minds and then in our deeds (or the other way around :)), we can short-circuit it...along with the pathologies it causes; depression, poverty, hate, war, etc.


On edit: USAmerica was BORN insane...

[FredStembottom]

236. That zips right past my views of it all.

I believe all that is needed is a return to Regulated Capitalism such as we had from FDR to (almost) Jimmy Carter. I think the nuclear family is what is natural. And having jobs is a good thing.
So we part company there.

[JDPriestly]

205. Fred Stembottom -- great post.

You describe the strategy that young, middle-class Americans should be adopting right now.

Here is my advice to young people just starting out:

Buy a home that is worth much less than you can afford. Try to pick one with the land for a garden just in case. Pay it off as quickly as possible. Buy only used cars that have proved to be reliable, safe and economical.
Save cash. Invest in your house. Live very frugally. No country club. Inexpensive vacations. Enjoy your friends, good books, DVDs (not movie theatres -- too expensive). Eat in as much as possible. And when you eat out, eat as healthy as possible.
Stay away from too much sugar, carbs, fat, alcohol and never smoke. (Saves on medical bills.)

Exercise. Walk a lot. Have a couple of kids and raise them to enjoy living the way you do. They will enjoy it if you spend your time doing things with them rather than going on expensive vacations or eating out.

In other words, teach yourself to live a contented happy life THAT COSTS YOU LESS MONEY THAN YOU EARN REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH YOU EARN. You really won't regret it.

[ProudDad]

235. Thanks for posting

The numbers and trends in this article are quite consistent with end-stage capitalism...

On to a better world!

:hi:

http://www.transitionus.org/
http://steadystate.org/

[Citizen Worker]

173. The Deindustrialization of America also by Harrison and Bluestone is worth the read

[Dogmudgeon]

3. "The job losses are CLINTON and GORE's fault."

Poor Dubya! That mean old Slick Willie really left him in a fix!

:eyes:

Those job losses came to -22 million jobs.

In other words, 22 million jobs were CREATED between 1993-2001.

Which Ailes/Murdoch talking point is next? The Clinton Body Count? Gore's "sexual assault" on a masseuse? Hillary smoking cigars at a nude socialist lesbian coven assembly?

Jesus H. Christ, this bullshit NEVER goes away.

--d!

[Yuugal]

8. Watch this:

It is Al Gore lying his ass off about Nafta. Perot was right and I deeply regret my vote for Clinton who also gave us workfare and repealed Glass-Steagal.....then went on to make over 100 mill in 6 yrs after he left the presidency. Obama is going to do the same thing to us with his pacific rimjob and he will get even richer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yww5Z3PJIs&feature=related

Pay special attention around 5:30 and tell me why Gore is such an environmental hero to some?

[Uncle Joe]

35. Thanks for the link, Gore absolutely cleaned Perot's clock, but be sure to view the last 2:00

or so of part 3 and the first 6:30 minutes of part 4, where Perot is exposed on national television for the hypocritical, monopolist free trader that he was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYsK0fKjiPY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpCnkj1XDg0&feature=related

Perot was never the same after this debate.

I see nothing about the 5:30 mark of your link which attacks Gore's environmentalism.

[Yuugal]

41. Al From is that you?

[Uncle Joe]

42. If Perot's private free trade zone was good enough for him, why wasn't it good enough

for the nation?

[Yuugal]

45. I am not of fan of either Gore or Perot

I was just pointing out that Al Gore took part in convincing the country that Nafta was a good thing and it turned out to be one of the worst things to ever happen to either Mexico or the US. I despise the DLC more than guys like Perot though, at least Perot wasn't trying to co-opt my party with his corporatist bullshit when he ran.

[Uncle Joe]

49. No Perot was pretending to be a populist while feathering his own nest.

The worst thing that happened wasn't NAFTA, it was the coup of 2000; that dramatically altered history putting the most corrupt and incompetent Administration in U.S. history in power.

A Gore Administration would have been far more alert, active, flexible, just, and competent, thus the results of NAFTA would be entirely different and therefor I believe it's unfair to blame any present circumstances on Gore, as he never came to full power, and hasn't been in political power of any kind since 2000.

[Yuugal]

53. Good point

Gore did seem to be coming into his own those last few weeks before the election. I'm more of a nafta-hater than a Gore hater, otherwise I wouldn't have voted for him.

[Enthusiast]

136. NAFTA was pretty fucking bad.

Bush vs Gore proved that the SCOTUS had been compromised. And just look what happened during the Bush years.

One curious part is why the new Obama Administration said we have to look forward after the greatest malfeasance in our nation's history, including the election debacles of 2000 and 2004. Election fraud should have been investigated thoroughly, among other crimes.

[Raster]

161. The sham elections of 2000 and 2004 should have been investigated thoroughly, but weren't.

The "facts" surrounding the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq should have been investigated thoroughly, but weren't.

The circumstances surrounding 9/11 should have been investigated thoroughly, but weren't.

Bipartisanship = not rocking the boat.
Bipartisanship = collaboration.

[Flatulo]

177. Come on, I remember jobs going to the Far East in the early ''80s.

First, it was Japan. Then, Singapore and Malaysia.

We were constantly being told that if we didn't work 60 hour weeks like the industrious Japanese, our jobs would go away. So everybody started working long hours w/o pay and the jobs left anyway.

You can't blame this on W.

[Uncle Joe]

189. There has been a perfect storm of events but I can most certainly blame W and the Republicans

for much of it.

After World War II, the United States ruled the roost. the vast majority of the rest of the industrial world had been bombed to the Stone Age, the United States was relatively unscathed from a structural/industrial standpoint. Our position was supreme but our military industrial complex had a difficult time being weaned away from the mega bucks days of World War II, so the Cold War took over where the hot war left off.

As we were so wealthy and powerful compared to the rest of Earth, this was economically sustainable for a couple of decades up until the late 60s - early 70s, and that's when other nations began catching up again having rebuilt their industries, creating more demand for fuel combined with the Middle East Oil Shock.

If the United States had any vision or sense, we would have radically changed course leading the way to green, sustainable energy sources developing new industries as the old ones; were dying out due to increased international competition. Under Jimmy Carter that process started, but Reagen and the Republicans turned back the clock, using gun boat action to coerce favorable action or to obtain resources, thus we as nation became increasingly belligerent, addicted to and vulnerable to fossil fuel energy sources.

Europe started biting at the bit regarding their continued subordinate position in regards to our general arrogance as they perceived it, they formed the European Union as a result. Increased competition came from the rising Asian Tiger nations, this is what motivated the need to form an expanded North American Free Trade Agreement which would include Mexico along with the U.S. and Canada.

When Bush was appointed to power, his economic, domestic and foreign policies were catastrophic on multiple fronts during a time when the U.S. was just beginning to turn the corner, from a financial/budgetary standpoint.

W's policies; both domestic and foreign were so arrogant, backward, shortsighted, rigid, narrow and contemptuous, I don't see how any body can't see the adverse impact, if rough economic times were equivalent to sun shine, Bush's policies were the magnifying glass aimed at dry leaves, near a vulnerable forest.

I have no doubt if Gore had been President after 2000, having the surpluses from the Clinton years at his disposal, the United States would have greatly expanded the push in to green, sustainable alternative energy sources creating new industries, and leading the world in that regard. Infrastructure jobs would have been greatly increased instead of wasting money on needless War and we would be well down the path of having built a smart grid.

[Flatulo]

218. But jobs haven't been outsourced due to high energy costs; they've

been outsourced due to high labor costs.

Even if energy were free, or nearly free, the jobs would still be going the Far East. Yeah, there would have been new industries to develop solar and wind, but the turbines and cells would still be made in China.

It's the nature of capitalism to seek the highest profit margin. It takes very little energy to fund an IT infrastructure, but these were the first 'knowledge' jobs to be sent overseas.

[Uncle Joe]

219. Self-delete due to bug error n/t

[Uncle Joe]

220. If the U.S. led the world in sustainable green energy technologies, rebuilding and modernizing

our infrastructure including a smart grid, we would have major competitive advantages over nations with much higher energy costs and less infrastructure development.

If cheap labor costs were the sole criteria, Bangladesh would rock the world.

In addition, most all of the labor required to build and maintain critical smart, national infrastructure would be domestic along with much of the manufacturing.

Our labor costs would not need to be reduced so far, if at all, to stay competitive and if our labor costs were reduced, lower energy costs would make it easier for the American People to adapt.

Having stagnant or reduced wages is hard enough, but it's especially difficult when fuel prices escalate which of course drives the price of everything else up, that's a double crunch; which kills our economy.

The key for the United States is to avoid the rigidity of arrogance in our thinking, to believe that we've reached the peak or perfection.

We must value the ideal of evolving our society to an ever changing world and this includes embracing or at least respecting science, knowledge and the lessons of other nations; including universal health care, instead of trashing those concepts for the narrow sake of greed and living for the day.

[Oregone]

12. While I think job losses our both parties fault (Democrats signed a Republican negotiated treaty)...

Examining a temporary job gain in a capitalistic boom (followed shortly by a bust) doesn't really work well to pin responsibility on anyone.

[Sebastian Doyle]

13. It's the fucked up economic policies of the last 30 years. Period.

Clinton is as guilty as Chimpy or Poppy (who had an illegal 12 year Presidency, the first 8 years of it with a senile old man in front of the cameras)

The Bush Crime Family AND the DLC are equally guilty of systematically destroying everything FDR did to save this country from the economic royalist fascist robber barons, and build the American middle class.

There are no excuses. Not for the Repukes. Not for the DLC. We either return to the policies that saved this country, or we cease to exist. That is the reality. Stop pretending otherwise.

[closeupready]

18. Amen to that.

n/t

[Enthusiast]

137. Oh baby!

I'm with you all the way. What both parties have done to this nation is no less than treasonous. The damage is all around you.

[deutsey]

180. Thank you.

:thumbsup:

[happy_liberal]

36. Clinton policy began the outsourcing...took a while to move everything...

the thing is neither party even mentions it...they are just pretending it didn't happen...even now, people who have been working at companies for 30 years are being let go by companies moving to other countries. The greediest moved first, but the rest are figuring it out. What is the incentive to stay here if $$ is your bottom line? That is why we had tarriffs.

[HughMoran]

90. They were outsourcing jobs to Korea when I worked at AT&T in 1988!!!!!!!!!!!1

You don't know what you're talking about.

[maryf]

97. my welding job moved to Mexico in 1985...

as a means to break up unions...I was called back two years later, as were many others with years of experience, but the last contract had stated loss of seniority after 2 years laid off...guys with 10 years experience were like newbies...Reaganomics...

[Art_from_Ark]

93. Outsourcing began long before Clinton

I was working at a factory in 1984 and they were talking about outsourcing a lot of work to South Korea. And electronics companies had been outsourcing for some time before that.

[Flatulo]

184. No, the outsourcing began in the early '90s.

Japan, Singapore, Malasia, in that order. China didn't come on strong until the last 10 years or so.

[unpossibles]

56. Why does everyone forget that NAFTA was initiated under BUSH I

Jesus, I know I wasn't exactly happy Clinton signed it, but it was yet another Republican invention he inherited and which he did try to at least modify to help protect American jobs. Furthermore, it had more support in Congress from Republicans if I recall correctly. I know it did in the House but can't remember how the Senate split.

[sendero]

71. Initiate..

... or go along, WHAT FUCKING DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

Just like Obama. IF YOU GO ALONG YOU ARE ONLY A RCH LESS CULPABLE THAN THE INITIATORS.

[MadHound]

79. Umm, Clinton signed it into law in December, 1993,

Almost a year after he took office, after both the House and Senate passed it in November of '93. Clinton and the Democrats had plenty of time, and opportunity to kill NAFTA, they didn't, thus they bear a large part of the responsibility for the destruction that NAFTA has unleashed.

[Umbral]

149. Because every President from Carter on down sung its praises, and Clinton signed it into law.

And what's worse, Gore was his chief proselyte on the job. Try and sell me some more bullshit about Democratic values, I fucking dare you.

[unpossibles]

217. my bad - I'll try not to point out any historical facts or anything. nt

[polmaven]

159. It would have become law

with a VETO override even if he had not signed it. The thing about NAFTA is that it needed oversight and an alert administration to make it work. We had neither with W. The Clinton administration ADDED jobs, as pointed out above. The Clinton haters among us ignore that, as the do any positive aspect of the Clinton Administration.

[Enthusiast]

134. Right on, Dogmudgeon!

Great handle, btw.

[ProudDad]

203. The good jobs were outsourced and/or destroyed...

the "service sector" McJobs were "created" to fill the void...

And the whole Ponzi scheme was fueled by increased debt, fossil fuels and economic bubbles...

When the dot-bomb burst, the housing bubble began - "bigger and better"... KABLOOEY!

And it was all enabled by Slick Willie and his friends in the republican controlled Congress...

[msongs]

4. u mean offshoring jobs, and HQ's to avoid taxest? no populist leadership at the moment nt

[Unvanguard]

5. No, the job losses have nothing to do with outsourcing. They are cyclical. It is the recession.

We had very low rates of unemployment during Clinton's second term, and even during a brief period under Bush. There has not been a sudden push toward trade liberalization since. What there has been is a massive financial crisis, a stock market crash, a collapse of growth, etc.

[Spike89]

21. Right on the mark

Part of what people don't want to hear is that in many cases, the jobs simply don't exist any more. It is so much easier and satisfying to blame outsourcing, illegal immigration, or other outside factors. The reality is that the entire world is shifting to a knowledge-based economy. For instance, it takes a heck of a lot fewer assembly line workers to make a car today than it did 40 years ago. Robotics and computers have greatly increased productivity and most of the manual labor they've displaced will never be needed again.

It isn't about shifting to a "service-based" economy--there are only so many waitperson and cashier jobs. A knowledge-based economy however is almost unlimited in potential. The robots and computers can only create what a person designs and only people can anticipate and develop products that people need and want.

I guess it is natural that the buggy-whip manufacturers wail and moan about how they've been displaced. Transitions are never easy and without pain for a significant faction, but they are inevitable. A knowledge-based economy isn't a utopia, but it will seem like in retrospect.

[NoNothing]

26. +1 insightful

Most people are aware of the disappearance of relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs. But they are often surprised to learn that the U.S. manufactures more stuff than ever. It's just that we're able to manufacture so much more stuff with so much less labor.

[Octafish]

39. Like cheeseburgers.

George W Bush changed the way jobs are classified so that many service sector jobs, such as hamburger flipping, are now manufacturing jobs.

[northzax]

61. no he didn't

technically, under the rules, assembling a hamburger can be manufacturing. that is, if you are working in a factory assembling burgers to be frozen and sold later. if you are working at McDonald's it is classified as a service job.

there are equivalents, you know, if you put oil in a car at a factory, you are manufacturing. if you do it at Jiffy Lube, you're service. exact same action, different contexts. install RAM in a factory: manufacturing. install RAM at Best Buy? service. see?

[Octafish]

65. Sorry, I misremembered.

Bush TRIED to have hamburger flipper jobs reclassified as manufacturing jobs.

[NoNothing]

62. Nope.

From your source: "The report does not recommend that burger-flippers be counted alongside factory workers."

Anyways, I'm talking about U.S. industrial output, which has been measured in a consistent way. It's lost some ground in the past two years due to the economic downturn, but has about doubled since 1960 or so.

[Octafish]

66. Sorry, my mistake.

I remembered it as having been a done-deal bush and his cronies could make the numbers look better.

No matter how you cut it, unless you are big money or a robot, American manufacturing is in the crapper.

[Unvanguard]

28. You're not wrong, but like the OP you are talking about long-term trends.

And those trends simply don't have much to do with the present unemployment levels. Arguably they are important to understanding long-term wage stagnation, and certainly they are relevant to the particular problems faced by states like Ohio. But we are at our present unemployment level because the financial crisis generated a huge hole in the economy, and the stimulus was too timid. It is a cyclical problem, i.e. it is the product of the economy's failure to equilibrate after what happened to it in 2007-2008. It would not be that different even if we were aggressively protectionist, or had frozen our technological level at 1970 (well, the methods of the financial markets would be different, so that isn't quite true.)

[girl gone mad]

129. I think the hole was already there...

hiding underneath the giant debt bubble.

[HughBeaumont]

32. You're overlooking two things:

1. Knowledge jobs can be done by cheap exploited peoples just like manufacturing has.

2. Nothing replaced the outgoing liveable wage jobs here in America. Where are all of these innovations in green energy, transportation, genome research, R&D, etc? Where are the co-ops in abundance? There hasn't been any investment at all in America's future occupations, and if there has been, my state sure isn't seeing it. It looks like a tumbleweed ramshackle flea-market rife with old factory hulks that used to house employed and spending American workers.

If the notion that millions of workers will be left behind thanks to "gains made" in productivity, how can that be deemed a success? How does that speak of the strength of a free-market economy if it fails to be capable of employing ALL people? What's the message here - "Get a Masters/PhD or starve to death"? What do these people do? How do they pay their bills?

[Raineyb]

37. Bullshit. They're outsourcing the "knowledge based" jobs as well.

The same companies that would have the line workers retrain for the "new" economy are sending jobs like bookkeeping, accounting, engineering and other white collar jobs overseas as well.

What you're advocating, despite your claims to the contrary, is a shift to a service based economy. In case you hadn't noticed, service jobs don't pay enough to stoke the demand for all these doo-dads that the "knowledge based" worker will be coming up with. And without demand you've got nothing. Companies don't come into existence because they have an idea about some item and think they can sell it. They come into existence because there's a need and they think they can fill it. Your knowledge based economy, as you've described it is hogwash. It doesn't exist. It can't exist because it assumes that there will be people who will just not be employed and thus will be unable to make a living, and you can't have a healthy economy unless even those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder make enough money to cover their basic living expenses and allows them to save money to buy something besides that.

[Spike89]

54. Semi-circular, but nonetheless some valid points

No, I'm not advocating anything, and no, a knowledge-based economy is not the same thing thing as a service-based economy. Your main argument that a knowledge-based economy can't exist is awful lot like the arguments that an idustrial-worker economy wouldn't work because it would put so many craftsmen out of work. Your other argument is not very strong either...of course knowledge workers will seek to fulfill needs. You don't think there is a need to design/invent fuel-efficient vehicles, socks that don't get lost in the laundry, or a coffee cup that doesn't spill, but still allows you to drink without dripping?

It really doesn't matter if you or I like this, the reality is that the world doesn't need all the people it currently has to make the things we used to need. Just like the industrial age cut the labor hours required for almost everything, the info age is cutting those hours even more. The transition to those factory jobs in the 1800s was terribly rough and initially, pay wasn't high enough for a man to support a family (thus, early factories relied heavily on children and women). Over time, and with lots of progressive work, factory jobs became the "good" jobs everyone seems to remember.

[Raineyb]

58. Without demand who is going to buy those things? Your "knowledge based" economy

is based on buying incidentals and luxury items; things people don't buy unless they have extra money. And without jobs that pay a living wage, something service jobs don't provide, there's no demand for the things that your "knowledge worker" will be coming up with. There is absolutely no excuse to accept the notion that there are just going to be people who can't make a living because they're not needed. And it's not reasonable to expect everyone to be able to obtain the schooling needed for some of the other professions. Without people who have money to spend, your knowledge worker has no bloody customers. It is demand that drives the economy. No one is going to bother to come up with the better coffee cup if no one is able to buy it.

And your factory analogy doesn't work at all. Early factories relied heavily on children and women because they could undercut the men by hiring and exploiting, children and women at a lower salary than a man would work for. Abolishing child labor is one of the biggest reasons factory jobs had to bump up those salaries. It took workers out of the labor pool. Unionization also had a hand in raising salaries for workers. What it did not depend on was the largess of the people who owned the factories. You're advocating for a system that will return us to those condition. You'd have workers compete with women and children in foreign countries who are working for pennies an hour and somehow you think this depression of wages is going to allow the "knowledge worker" to make a living? And based on the subsistence wages you think your "knowledge based" worker is going to be able to make a living as well? It a ridiculous notion on its face.

[Enthusiast]

139. Thanks for saying that.

It's right on the mark.

[JDPriestly]

209. The idea of a "knowledge-based economy" had another flaw.

We learn not just through reading and seeing pictures. We learn through doing, through using our hands. American children today do not learn to make real things. My dad learned about how things around him worked on a farm where he worked with and fixed machinery. He could drive at 12. He took apart radios -- and eventually, after a lot of frustration, learned how to put them back together.

How many American kids today can take their computers apart and weld them back together? How many of them have ever made a hard drive from scratch?

My parents had simple, home-made toys. They knew how things were made. They understood where their food came from. Even in my generation, kids learned to sew and to make things out of wood. We can do things. Kids today play with computer games. But do they learn how things work? How to make complex things? Most of them do not. And they never will.

Those who become chemists or physicists or mathematicians will be OK. But will American children be good mechanical engineers in the future? Not many of them, not as many as in past generations. There are exceptions, but not as many as we need.

[LooseWilly]

124. Everything Raineyb said, and I would add that "knowledge working" can be outsourced as well.

Here's a list of over a score of software companies in India: http://www.indiaonestop.com/listings-service-infotech.htm

Here's a list of 10 pharmaceutical companies in India: http://business.mapsofindia.com/india-company/pharmaceutical.html

That took all of 69 seconds to find. I've talked to Apple employees, and, while they design software and come up with the parameters desired for iPods, iPads, and what have you... all they do is send those parameters to Chinese factories, and it is Chinese hardware engineers who design the actual hardware which those Chinese factories then build prototypes of... which US "knowledge workers" go and test... and then Chinese manufacturers build and ship back to the US.

The "knowledge economy" you mention seems chimerical from my point of view. The only hedge the US economy has is greater access to financing, which has largely been eroded by the latest financial melt down, and more experience in guessing what US customers are liable to "want" (or at least what can be successfully marketed to them)— but as the jobs to build these commodities and even the jobs to service the customers of these companies are eliminated and outsourced... then, as Raineyb has said, there aren't customers for these products...

I would like to hear more specifics on your theory of a "knowledge economy" though... to hear how the software and pharmaceutical firms I mentioned above factor in. Are you picturing the entire city of Detroit, for example, working on developing a cure for cancer?... I really don't understand.

[girl gone mad]

126. Not only can these "knowledge jobs" be outsourced, they will be outsourced.

Innovation follows manufacturing. I was reading reading an interview with a group of German plant owners. Germany has largely kept its manufacturing base. These German owners scoffed at the idea of moving production overseas, the reason being that the factory workers have been directly responsible for many of the product design improvements implemented over the years. Without this ongoing feedback, quality would suffer.

[LooseWilly]

127. Well then Chinese factory production staff product improvements will be ironic...

... leading to, presumeably, a new line of I ChingPods, I ChingPads, etc. coming out of ... Toshiba?

Ahh, the irony is nauseating... :)

(And I wasn't even touching on the H1N visas to "insource"...)

[JDPriestly]

210. You are so right, girl gone mad

[Enthusiast]

140. I join you in your

failure to understand.

[girl gone mad]

59. Andy Grove, the man who made Intel what it is..

completely http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-01/how-to-make-an-american-job-before-it-s-too-late-andy-grove.html">disagrees with you:

(snip)

How could the U.S. have forgotten? I believe the answer has to do with a general undervaluing of manufacturing -- the idea that as long as “knowledge work” stays in the U.S., it doesn’t matter what happens to factory jobs. It’s not just newspaper commentators who spread this idea.

Consider this passage by Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder: “The TV manufacturing industry really started here, and at one point employed many workers. But as TV sets became ‘just a commodity,’ their production moved offshore to locations with much lower wages. And nowadays the number of television sets manufactured in the U.S. is zero. A failure? No, a success.”

I disagree. Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today’s “commodity” manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry. Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best economic system -- the freer, the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief, largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better.


Such evidence stares at us from the performance of several Asian countries in the past few decades. These countries seem to understand that job creation must be the No. 1 objective of state economic policy. The government plays a strategic role in setting the priorities and arraying the forces and organization necessary to achieve this goal.

[Raschel]

73. I'd say you're wrong Spike. Ask any long-time auto worker.

Companies have added so much work to each job that a worker barely has time to tie their shoes anymore. As for machines, they may take care of a job here and there, but many of these machines break down so often that they barely improve efficiency.

Companies also started buying crap parts from the cheapest vendors. Management sends crap out the door just to show numbers.

AFAIC this is due to trying to compete with low wage-workers across the globe. How could we ever compete with that? We can't. That's why the jobs are gone.

Oh, plus American consumers believing the myth that the Japanese cars and workers are better.

[pokercat999]

158. If you are correct and I think you are, it means we have

experienced a dramatic shift in the way our world "works". We will have to change with that, weather it means we have to pay people to not work (like farmers get paid to not plant crops) or move to a 30 then 20 then 10 hour work week, whatever, change must and will come. The problem for most of us is the pain we will experience in getting there. But this is one more reason why conservatism will, must, fail. By definition conservatism resists change and change we must. It's adapt or die and now we are headed for the die thingy.

[immoderate]

169. Yes. There is not enough meaningful work to go around.

And whatever we do make is headed for a landfill.

--imm

[valerief]

170. Knowledge-based jobs? With Texas writing our kids' textbooks? nt

[lark]

206. Why don't the jobs exist?

What magical thing happened 9/08 driving all the jobs away? It's not the buggy whip example, there are no new thing invented that made our economy obsolete. It was the rich taking all the money and giving it to themselves and then cutting off the rest of us - creating a new poverty. So, now, all of a sudden, small businesses couldn't get the loans they needed to stay in business and it grew from there. Also, they ended most of the incentives for businesses to create more jobs in America when Bushco changed the tax laws so the large corporations got big tax decreases for offshoring. NAFTA is bad, but not as bad as the tax changes and end of regulations and enforcement of regulations, nothign being done to fix infrastructure. It's all been a very successful plot to enrich a few at the enduring expense of the other - create a serf class that will work for anything.

[happy_liberal]

40. why is it when I call customer service they are in India?

It takes a while to move. It looked good under clinton, but that was only the beginning of everyone moving everything overseas. What is the incentive to stay?

[Unvanguard]

44. Because we live in a global economy.

I didn't say that trade wasn't real, or that all the goods and services we use are produced here. I merely said that this particular problem, the present elevated levels of unemployment, have nothing in particular to do with that phenomenon.

[reformist2]

51. So what kind of jobs do you think we will have???

It seems the rest of the world gets jobs from stable industries that already exist, but here we here have to wait for the next bubble to come along?

[nadinbrzezinski]

52. And CAFTA

the South American Trade Pact and the East Asian Pact...

Jeezus just becuase the paper of record don't publish this too often...

[Unvanguard]

55. Find me a serious economist who thinks that unemployment is at 9.3% because of CAFTA.

I can save you the time: you won't.

Insisting that free trade is responsible for current levels of unemployment is as silly as the conservative argument that it is due to the fact that taxes are too high. It makes no theoretical sense and it has no empirical support. You get recessions and high unemployment when there is a general oversupply of goods as a consequence of a sudden decrease in demand. Trade has nothing to do with this.

[nadinbrzezinski]

60. And insistitng that they had no effect is just as silly

yes, you can make an argument for advantageous competition... see David Ricardo for the earliest exponent of this... but you cannot be serious as to think that one reason THOSE JOBS are not comming back is because of it.

Now you can make the argument that in the short term the disruptions are serious... or not. I guess you are in the CONSERVATIVE, RIGHT LEANING school of thought, that does not see the effects of it in short to medium term. I happen to hold the more LIBERAL view that the disruptions are more than just serious. Paul Krugman happens to see the disruptions too.

Does a Nobel Prize Winner Economist qualifies as a serious economist? Or would you only take the Chicago School, Friendman thinking, as serious?

[Unvanguard]

69. Paul Krugman does not think the unemployment is the result of free trade either.

This has nothing to do with the debates that exist among economists. It has to do with people on Internet forums making claims for which they have no support.

Yes, our economy is in a serious mess; yes, it is not clear that it is going to end any time soon. But, no, the problem is not free trade. Free trade may well cause other problems. But the mechanics of recessions are as old as market capitalism.

[nadinbrzezinski]

74. Keynseian Economists have pointed for years

at the serious disruptions of the modern form of free trade. No, they are not saying free trade is the singular reason for this economic crisis, but I guess disruption is just part of the imagination.

I understand from what you are posting that you are far more of a follower of the Chicago School and that is cool. Realize that many net denizens magnify some things out of kilter, and some are not magnified out of kilter.

And economists do argue how far to take free trade or what form it should take. Chicago School wants no limits (in general) while Liberal Economists want far more ahem regulations to go with it.

But from your posts I'd say you are far more of a Chicago Boy, and truth be told that is cool... I admit more to the Left Leaning (in somebody's imagination) of Keynes. But Homo Economicus is a figment of Neo Classical Economics, which this free trade is all about... and we are about to pay a huge cost for it in the short to medium term, if all the rosy scenarios even come to be.

[Unvanguard]

75. I am not even remotely an adherent of the Chicago School of Economics.

My macro-economic inclinations are Keynesian, my view of the role of government in the economy is essentially socialist. Both of these, obviously, are totally anathema to the Chicago School. I am anti-protectionist but also vehemently anti-neoliberal. Yes, that is a perfectly consistent view.

Nowhere have I said or even remotely suggested that regulations are bad or unnecessary. What I have said, repeatedly, is quite simple, and far narrower than you seem to think it is: the general failure of the economy to reach full employment (in the economist's sense of the term) has nothing in particular to do with free trade. There is nothing Chicago School or non-Keynesian about this observation. I very much doubt Paul Krugman would disagree. His prescription for solving the economic crisis has not been a repeal of free trade agreements, but a stronger stimulus package.

[nadinbrzezinski]

76. His prescription has been keynseian

but he has also written that some of these free trade agreements lead to serious disruptions in first world economies the way they have been carried out.

And yes you are being narrow... I am pointing out that what we saw was the consequence of economic and political policies of the last forty years... Chicago school in all it's glory.

By the way I am not saying repeal them, but lord knows they need quite a bit of changes for them to work for everybody... and so far the process of globalization has benefited a very narrow group of people... unless we all look at the availabity of crap.

It is also creating a class of people that are beyond the nation state. And their loyalty is beyond Metternich. But hey I think we are beyond anything that can be done about it. There is truly NO POLITICAL WILL in DC, or for that matter, plenty of magical thinking in DC... just one more tax break... yeah that's the ticket.

[rhett o rick]

78. You keep refering to "free trade" like you know what that means. Plez enlighten us.

Every other modern country uses tariffs to protect there products, EXCEPT THE FUCKING "FREE TRADING" US OF A. So what does free trade mean to you?

[Unvanguard]

82. I'm not sure I want to play this game.

It doesn't seem to me that you are particularly confused about what I mean when I use the term, or that the issue you have is particularly relevant to my point. If you think there is some ambiguity, ask a more specific question.

(Incidentally, your statement is incorrect: most countries, including the US, use tariffs and other protectionist policies to protect their industries. It is a strange exceptionalist myth that the US is somehow cruelly put-upon by everyone else, a weakling forced to pursue free trade policies for everyone else's benefit...)

[rhett o rick]

84. Thom Hartmann doesnt agree with you re. the tariffs. I am willing to listen

if you have some sources to back up your claims. I am serious. I want to learn. If you disagree with Hartmann, go for it.

[Unvanguard]

87. It's particularly prominent in agriculture.

Not only do we subsidize agriculture with tens of billions of dollars (classic protectionism), but we also tax, e.g., sugar imports from developing countries.

Agricultural subsidies
Sugar tariffs

Not to mention the way that we are willing to bail out domestic auto companies, or the interconnections between the defense budget and the US companies who contract with the Pentagon, or any number of other examples.

The entire reason we continue to hear about free trade agreements with countries like South Korea is the fact that the US does not have a fully free trade policy.

[reformist2]

108. So Whirpool closes a factory and moves it to China.

Now a whole town of people is out of work. They didn't lose their jobs because of free trade?

[Unvanguard]

111. Undoubtedly they did.

I did not say that nobody ever loses their job because of free trade. But it is a different kind of unemployment (in economic terms, not necessarily in terms of human cost) from the sort that is leading to the high joblessness numbers today, and it is a spread-out phenomenon, not a sudden massive loss of jobs like we have seen with this recession.

Again, recessions are as old as capitalism. They were not invented with the WTO.

[reformist2]

115. OK, bear with me here.

Let's stay with the town that lost their jobs because the washing machine factory left. Now along comes the housing bubble, and they all start getting in on the game. Some become realtors, others work for the bank as loan officers, those with less white-collar abilities go into homebuilding and landscaping. So on paper, the number of jobs in the town goes back to what it was before Whirlpool left. Great! These are the kinds of statistics economists were looking at as late as 2007 to claim that everything in the economy was just fine.

But then the housing bubble bursts, as all bubbles do, and all these people are out of work again. So not only are there no factory jobs, all the bubble jobs are gone too. Now what are they supposed to do? Wait for the next bubble to come along, I suppose? How can you hold a community together on an economy like this???

[Unvanguard]

119. Well, at least you acknowledge the role of the financial crisis, that's a start.

But you are still mistaking a regular feature of capitalism for a particular consequence of a particular phenomenon within capitalism. Whatever kinds of jobs people have, there will sometimes be bubbles, and these will sometimes result in recessions and high unemployment.

This one is particularly severe because of its immense scale and because it heavily impacted fundamental economic institutions like banks, but the reason it results in unemployment is not qualitatively different from the reason in any other recession, and has nothing in particular to do with outsourcing.

[Enthusiast]

145. But when we have outsourcing

as with the example Whirlpool it can be especially egregious for older workers that often make up the bulk of a workforce. These older workers don't have time to retrain and find work in depressed areas. And people that have been paying for homes for 20 years are not going to pull up stakes and move on. It just is not feasible.

Millions of American workers find themselves dealing with these circumstances right now. Free traders see these human beings as just acceptable collateral damage. I can't and I won't see it that way. We are real people, not some barely significant numbers in some boardroom presentation.

[Unvanguard]

191. Look, if you want to talk about the negative consequences of free trade, that's fair.

I agree, actually, that present free trade practices have been designed without much concern for people in the situations you describe, but rather in an imaginary world where labor and capital flexibility is perfect and substantial sudden shifts in the structure of the economy are adjusted for instantly. The consequence is that free trade has substantial human costs, that are exactly as you described--understood as "acceptable collateral damage", not seriously addressed or dealt with in any way.

I don't think protectionism is the optimal solution to this: protectionism has substantial efficiency costs for the rest of the economy, costs that we would keep on paying forever if we always refused to lower trade barriers. But leaving it to the "free market" certainly isn't either, and that's basically been the approach so far. That needs to change.

In any case, though, my point, in this thread, has not been that free trade is harmless. It is that free trade, to the extent that it causes problems, causes problems that don't have all that much to do with the recession.

[reformist2]

211. But you do acknowledge this recession is different, right?

This is not your average cyclical recession....



Maybe you don't want to blame "free trade", but that chart indicates something is broken...

[Enthusiast]

228. It might be cyclical recession combined

with the disastrous effects of outsourcing. Bad combination.

[Enthusiast]

226. Germany and France

have protected their heavy industry and the jobs that come with it. This is not protectionism. But it is characterized as such by advocates of wholesale outsourcing. Outsourcing is destroying this country.

If you don't believe outsourcing is damaging how about having YOUR political allies campaign on more and bigger trade deals. I'll watch as your influence shrinks right before our eyes. The nation's working people recognize the damage this outsourcing has done. Those that don't have their eyes closed.

[girl gone mad]

213. You see neo-liberal apoligists clinging so desperately..

to the last shreds of their failed ideology, even as our economy descends into a likely lasting state of despair.

I think these are the ones that really bought into the idea that we could just destroy labor and easily replace it with knowledge-based work. They never applied any kind of real logic to discern whether or not this plan made sense, they just fell hard for the glossy brochure.

There's another tier of individuals who knew all along that the end game would be annihilation of the American middle class and they plan to profit handsomely from it.

[Enthusiast]

227. So right you are. nt

[Romulox]

174. "...a different kind of unemployment..." = made up gibberish.

:hi:

[Unvanguard]

188. People lose their jobs for different reasons.

Sometimes people leave their jobs because they want another, or because they move; sometimes people are fired for misbehavior; sometimes people are laid off because the company is outsourcing to somewhere else, or is downsizing due to technological changes; sometimes people are laid off because the economy is in a mess and the company can't sell as well as it did before.

These phenomena are obviously different. They have different causes, and they merit different policy approaches. It gets even more complicated if we talk about reasons people can't find jobs, where similarly there are cyclical factors (i.e. recessions) and non-cyclical ones (e.g. structural changes as a consequence of free trade.)

[reformist2]

163. Speaking of Whirlpool...

They just announced this morning that their profit more than doubled in the most recent quarter, partly due to "cost cuts". It's obvious they view their own workforce as a "cost", and therein lies the heart of the problem...

[Enthusiast]

143. A significant part of

that decrease in demand was because higher paying manufacturing jobs were outsourced. This is a fact, I have lived it. So trade, in fact, does have something to do with it. The middle class has lost BUYING POWER.

[Unvanguard]

182. That's not particularly compatible with the chronology.

What free trade agreement in Bush's second term caused the sudden plunge in demand?

[Enthusiast]

224. All our jobs were not

were not outsourced on the day of signing NAFTA. It was a slow process to move all these jobs overseas. What was a trickle during the 1990s became a crescendo during the Bush years. That loss of buying power, inflated gasoline prices and the burst housing bubble put us over the edge.

[OhioChick]

100. LOL

Most blue collar jobs have gone to China, whereas the white collar jobs went to India.

Job loss has everything to do with outsourcing/offshoring.

[Unvanguard]

103. It's hard to argue with assertion.

Given your analysis, presumably you expect that unemployment will rise further? After all, China and India still have far lower real wages than the US. And since, according to you, the unemployment is a product of trade policy rather than the recession, certainly the economy recovering shouldn't make any difference.

How high do you think it will get? 15%? 20%? 25%? More? Will we all be unemployed due to the outsourcing scourge?

[OhioChick]

122. Of course it will rise further....

As for the wages in China & India, corporations will soon tire of paying them their current low wages and take their business to a cheaper destination.

[Skittles]

154. a gal returned to work today after time off to get a heart stent

they laid her off immediately - her job is now in India

[OhioChick]

193. That's terrible.

I don't know if you remember "Azlady" here from a while back. She had to train 4 H-1B's at 4 different companies to resume her job(s). Her home (even though small) just went into foreclosure.

[dana_b]

196. damn! was she the only one to get laid off

or were there others too? I ask because if she was the only one or one of even just a few, she should fight it. Especially if she filled out a FMLA form.

[Skittles]

222. they laid off my boss last week

here it is death by a thousand cuts - it never ends

[dana_b]

230. ah man - I'm sorry

I hope you escape the knife.

I am going back to work part time after being off on disability for two months and I am nervous that I may experience the same fate as your co-worker. I know tht our whole department is under a microscope so I will not be shocked if it happens.

[Unvanguard]

186. Thanks for making a prediction.

I, on the other hand, think unemployment will more or less track growth, and as we recover from the recession--which, given the idiocy of current European austerity policies, and the incapability of Obama and Congress to bring about better stimulus, might take a painfully-long time--it will recover also, though probably somewhat lagged.

We'll see who's right.

[girl gone mad]

214. The only way we can recover is to focus on employment.

We'll have to start making things here again, and the government will have to put up the capital because the private sector is not interested in investing in our economy.

[Hydra]

128. We're already at 20% real unemployment

And higher when you count underemployment.

And there's no bubble in sight to "help" us out.

And the other poster's comment is astute- the Chinese are starting to strike for higher wages. Expect those jobs to move out soon.

[Romulox]

175. Um, no. Assertions are not hard to argue with, if facts are on your side.

What else would you argue with, mere suggestions? :silly:

Your stumbling block is that reality falsifies your ideology, but you are invested. :hi:

[Unvanguard]

185. No, *mere* assertions actually are fairly hard to argue with.

You can merely repeat the reasons you have already presented for your alternative view, but unless you are talking about something trivially-verifiable, most assertions are not directly refutable.

It's different when people make arguments that support what they say. Those admit of real analysis.

[Romulox]

187. That's a mouthful of equivocation.

Your assertions are falsifiable, and are contrary to the consensus of informed observers. That is to say, you are free to decide whether job losses to globalization are "inevitable" or "worth it, in the long run," but you are not free to pretend that they do not exist. The former is an "argument". The latter is a "fantasy".

"but unless you are talking about something trivially-verifiable, most assertions are not directly refutable."

That's only true when you debate someone with the requisite amount of shame. I find that particularly zealous adherents to orthodox economic ideologies simply ignore away contrary data (e.g. a 30 year decline in Americans' wages,) or turn to some sort of semi-religious fatalism ("inevitable!").

By the way, you've confused me with somebody else. Try glancing at the pictures ("avatar") if the name is hard for you to pick up on. :hi:

[Unvanguard]

192. Have you been paying attention to what I actually have been saying?

Or just to what you think I've been saying?

First, no, I didn't confuse you with anyone else, the "you" in my previous post is generic.

Second, I certainly have not said that "job losses (due) to globalization" do not exist. I believe I've actually said the opposite. What I have said is that job loss due to the recession and job loss due to globalization are separate phenomena that should not be conflated.

Third, some of what you say, if anything, only supports my point. Take the "30 year decline in Americans' wages." I'm not sure this is tightly related to free trade, but certainly it is the kind of long-term trend that makes it a reasonable candidate: it reasonably matches the chronology of trade liberalization (as well as other economic phenomena like weakened unions and technological shifts, or, if you're Larry Bartels, expanded Republican control of the White House), and it is much more than a product of a single cyclical phenomenon like a recession. This makes it entirely different from present levels of elevated unemployment, which certainly have not been that way since the 1970s, and indeed got very low comparatively recently when the economy was strong.

[Enthusiast]

146. +1, OhioChick. nt

[Romulox]

176. +1,000,000. This guy's stammering response to you might as well be a white flag.

"you can't argue with assertions!" is worthy of a tea-party placard!

[OhioChick]

194. ....

:rofl:

[Skittles]

125. WRONG

it's both outsourcing AND the recession - most of the people I know who have lost jobs, those jobs are NEVER coming back

[Romulox]

165. Talk about a "Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain!" moment.

The jig is up. The "third way" is proven a dead end. :hi:

Tell me how I was wrong about you again, btw! :silly:

[Unvanguard]

183. No, pay plenty of attention to the man behind the curtain.

But don't mistake the man behind the curtain for anyone in particular you happen not to like.

So: blame the banks and financial institutions, blame the poor regulation that let them do what they did, hell, blame capitalism-as-it-actually-works for essentially being set up in a way that allows powerful economic institutions to gamble with other people's lives and livelihoods. Unlike the people you should actually be arguing with, I agree with all of that, and the neoliberal system--which, though it seems to escape some of the people here sometimes, actually encompasses a whole lot more than trade--ought to be called account for enabling it (though it is probably a feature of capitalism as such to a degree, and will only go away entirely when we replace that system.)

But this thread, instead, attempts an analysis that, while undoubtedly building on real worries about outsourcing, simply fails to understand how a recession actually works. It thus implicitly suggests a policy prescription that is unsuited to the problem it points out, and, indeed, distracts from the very real causes we could be discussing.

[ProudDad]

204. Not "cyclical"

They are build into the Ponzi scheme that is the capitalist "economy"...

But it IS convenient to bury one's head in the sand during the onset of the Long Emergency...



The Long Emergency
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4878856748297910182#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXsCMC0xcOY

[Unvanguard]

207. Oh, without a doubt crisis is inherent to real-world capitalism.

My objection, indeed, is to the notion that it is particular to globalized capitalism, which requires ignoring most of economic history and essentially all of economic theory.

[ProudDad]

234. Ah, very good...

I must agree.

"Globalized capitalism" is one of the concepts with which the corporate capitalist magicians misdirect our attention from the basic evil that IS capitalism.

Just a heads up; Capitalist "economic theory" ain't the only way to organize an economy. In fact, it's one of the worst for the vast majority of Earth's Creatures.

The dirty little secret: Steady State Economics http://steadystate.org/

[JDPriestly]

208. The job losses have everything to do with outsourcing.

Garment manufacture used to be a big industry in Los Angeles. I know because I worked for a company that rented to garment manufacturers in what used to be the garment district east of bunker Hill, east of Broadway in downtown L.A.

I bought a lot of clothes directly from the factory back then. You can hardly do that in L.A. anymore. Check the labels on clothes. Very rarely do you find a garment made in the U.S. They are made overseas.

We make large manufacturing and farm machinery. We make military equipment. We make a few cars, but that's fewer and fewer, and almost entirely for U.S. consumption. But that's about it. And it's just a matter of time before China and India no longer need or buy our machinery. We won't be needing or buying it either because we no longer manufacture anything.

Americans are earning less, consuming less. Strangely, those who are working work more hours per year than do the workers of any country other than Australia and Japan.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lab_hou_wor-labor-hours-worked

Outsourcing is the problem. Without it, the gains from the efficiency in the workplace could be shared at least to some extent by American workers. Wouldn't that be nice?

The whole economy has just begun to fall apart. The worst is yet to come. We will, increasingly import very low-quality goods. It will be all we can afford. And then just wait. If you think the BP spill is bad, . . . . . There will be all kinds of problems due to defective manufacturing processes, defective products.

[asdjrocky]

6. Well said.

This is proof of a "show government." It is clear to anyone that pays attention what has happened to the jobs.

[HughMoran]

89. Diggin' on some right-wing talking points!

[Ozymanithrax]

7. So the stagnation of wages and jobs didn't happen between...

January 2001 and January 2009...
So the ownership initiative under Bush afater Republican derregulation of the banks did not lead to unregulated banks creating a debt singularity that collapsed the housing market.
So the emphasis on good old globalism as just good business did not lead to the flight of manufacturing jobs.
So the largest tax cut in history to benefit the wealthy did not lead to monstrous deficits.
So fighting two wars on credit cards did not lead to massive overspending in the defense industry.

It was Clinton that caused this. And if we just stuck to Bush's well known and safe "ABC" policy we would be just fine.

What next.

Do we all raise our windows and scream, "Damn you Monica Lewinsky! Damn you to hell!"

[DCBob]

9. We lost jobs because the "booming" Bush economy was based on a bogus bubble..

It will take a long time to recover them without another bubble of some sort.

[bvar22]

118. We lost jobs because the "booming" Bush economy was based on a bogus bubble,

which was a continuation of the Clinton Bubble Economy.
Bush was simply the last idiot riding the "Free Trade/Free Markets" Horse when it dropped dead.

[girl gone mad]

215. Even during that bubble, the private sector was losing jobs.

Only the government grew under Bush.

[OHdem10]

10. Neither Party is ready to say "We screwed up big time".

TWO BIG MISTAKES:
In addition to poorly managed Trade Policy, they made a
a deliberate decision to change our economy to a Service
Economy. This country is too large for a Service Economy
to ever sustain it. Financial Industry Jobs and Tourism
just will not cut it. Retailers make all their money from
October to December.

They are digging the hole deeper--both parties by ignoring
the elephants in the room are permitting jobs to be continuously
\outsourced. Furthermore, by not demanding some adjustments
in current trade practices, the jobs continue to leave the
country. For starters, other countries,i'e., China Asia
demand that companies come to their country and manufacture
there or they do not play ball. (Cannot sell goods in their
country). Then our country was made the consumer of the
world's goods. Everybody and his brother can bring their
stuff here practically free. There are so many lopsided
trade rules. We simply gave away our mfg base--will prove
a threat to our national security, mark my word.

Having to say We really screwed up big time, is too much
to ask of our politicians. However, they could start making
serious corrections.---OH No, this will upset Wall Street.
Wall Street likes the Trade Policy just as it is. They
would rather destroy the country in the long term rather
than take a hit in the short run. Politicians will oblige.

[reformist2]

22. +1000

The decision to dispense with our manufacturing base because it was so old-fashioned and backward-looking will go down as one of the stupidest decisions in all history. Our agricultural base became pretty old-fashioned 100 years ago, but thank God nobody then was stupid enough to say we didn't need it anymore!

[Enthusiast]

147. My sentiments exactly. nt

[earth mom]

11. Sorry, but it's NOT Gore's fault-the VP job has basically little power or influence.

To blame Gore is bullshit!

The truth is that the powers that be give lip service to the problem while they sit in their cushy offices pointing fingers at each other while doing jack shit about the problem.

Place the blame where it REALLY belongs: the banksters and the politicians who cater nonstop to corporate america at the expense of the masses.

[OZark Dem]

14. I recall the surprised look on Clinton's face

during a 92 debate when Perot told him the Government paid companies for the creation of an outsourced job. Clinton said when he become President he would fix that. The unemployment extension that keeps getting defeated has a provision to finally end the tax credits going to business still receiving it this 18 years later. But if they have to strip the bill to the bare essentials to get it passed, we will be stuck with it again.

[Bitwit1234]

15. We got a telemarketing call today from Qwest

and guess what...it came from Ontario...they are still outsourcing jobs. I told him we don't buy from foreign countries and hung up.

[Enthusiast]

150. Good for you. nt

[inna]

16. More Free-Trade Agreements Coming:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8765585

[dana_b]

197. and more job losses for us

I think the politicians are aiming for a true feudal society.

[uncommon]

17. I am with you 100% on NAFTA -

Americans would be better off over the long run in a closed economy.

[JHB]

19. But that would violate the dialectic of the glorious market....

a.k.a, some people make a lot of money keeping that discussion out of "very serious" circles.

[reformist2]

20. The tech bubble and housing bubble hid what was really going on.

It's going to be very difficult to get people to understand that the fundamental economy has been distorted by speculative bubbles ever since the early 1990s, and that only now are we seeing what damage has been done to our economy by NAFTA, GATT and global free-trade in general. The truth is, the de-industrialization of America is a disaster of epic proportions.

[Oregone]

24. Welcome to DU

I agree BTW.

I spent some time thinking the housing bubble was just engineered to keep a dead economy alive when the tech bubble went under. After seeing what some of these firms did with derivatives, it seems now like the ultimate setup for a wealth grab. I wonder if all these bubbles, one after another, was just an orchestrated effort to pump up debt in the economic system, and leave the people holding the bill at the end of the day (while the bankers walk away with the capital).

Sometimes I think it was negligence and incompetence. Sometimes I wonder if it was far more nefarious (and maybe some combination).

[Enthusiast]

151. Yes, the de-industrialization of America

has been a disaster for millions of us. The "rust belt" states have been hammered by this. How anyone could think this outsourcing and free trade was a positive I cannot fathom. And many of these cheerleaders actually attack the workforce and unions as justification for this bullshit. Funny how our European counterparts are preserving manufacturing with organized labor intact while somehow we can't.

[pampango]

25. We had tariffs thanks to Smoot, Hawley and Hoover. FDR dismantled the tariffs and pushed more trade.

Europe and Canada have more free trade than we do. The big difference is that they support their citizens with a strong social safety net and many other progressive programs, so their people are not hung out to dry. Income and wealth are much more equitably distributed there despite the prevalence of trade and their membership in the WTO (whose predecessor - GATT - was FDR's idea).

We need better health care, progressive taxation, better regulation of the markets and financial industry, stronger unions and a more effective social safety net, like Canada and Europe have, not higher tariffs which they don't have.

[Angry Dragon]

27. We need politicians that care about the people of this country

I feel once they are elected and take the oath of office and swear to uphold the Constitution
they forget all about the Constitution and just vote to stay in office and to hell with the people

[Unvanguard]

30. +1.

All of the problems caused by free trade can be more effectively addressed by genuine left-wing policy (strong social safety nets, pro-worker regulation, stronger unions) than by protectionism.

[glitch]

85. And we need to get out of the War Business, aka subsidizing war for profit. nt

[Enthusiast]

152. +1, exactly. nt

[LWolf]

29. Because they are complicit, of course. nt

[Liberation Angel]

31. I gotta say this ... it is NOT the WTO and Nafta

that is destroying our economy.

It is the insane wars.

Sucking all the life out of our economy and eating up all the resources and our hard earned (and hard paid) taxes.

It's the WAR, stupid (not the OP but in general)!

[Lance_Boyle]

48. that's really just not true

The cost of the wars is a drop in the budgetary bucket compared to the cost of W's tax cuts and the annual expenditures on SS and Medicare. Yes, the wars are unnecessary spending. Yes, that money could be better used elsewhere. But it is just plain dishonest to claim that this country's money problems would come to an end if the wars ceased.

[Liberation Angel]

63. I never said money problems would stop if you stopped the war

I said that the wars are what CAUSED the economic problem more than any other factor.

Tax cuts would not matter if we were not wasting our money on the kinds of horrors which the Nazis perpetrated.

See Restrepo

or READ "War" by Sebastian Junger (both film and movie.

No the wars have essentially bankrupted us.

The economy is f*cked too by WTO and NAFTA and all the other financial manipulations.

But if we were not wasting so much on these wars we could use ALL that money for jobs, healthcare, housing for all, PTSD treatment (Mushrooms work as well as Ecstasy according to some studies.

The would NOT disappear, our problems,

But we could begin working on them much better if we did NOT shoot our whole deadly wad at the Energy territories we are trying to conquer and colonize.

[Enthusiast]

153. It is both!

WTO and NAFTA are killing us.

[Individualist]

34. They don't talk about it because neocons and DLC worked together

to create and sustain this situation.

[JonLP24]

38. Strangely ..

I did watch the AZ Senate debate a few days ago. McCain and Hayworth kept saying tax cuts so businesses will want to stay here. The third guy who Hayworth and McCain didn't take seriously the first thing he did say is repeal NAFTA but you don't want this guy. He also wants to "dismantle" government and get rid of the light rail.

One thing to note. Hayworth on the question, how does he feel about extending unemployment benefits when he would (if elected) represent a state with a higher unemployment rate than the national average... he said people need a "safety net, not a hammock." He explained why and suggested tax cuts for businesses because with those tax cuts they will hire more people. :grr:

[immune]

43. Jeez, you're singing my song

As to why none of them will tell us the truth, its got something to do with that old dead guy who said telling the truth would result in "revolution in the morning"?

[tomp]

46. expecting the truth form either party? how quaint! nt

[tomp]

47. delete dupe. nt

[Rex]

50. Because then the raid on the Treasury would have to come to and end?

Highway baron robbery doesn't include honesty or reality. That is how they make trillions on war and then scowl at spending millions on education or the poor.

[unpossibles]

57. NAFTA was initiated by Bush and supported more by Rs than by Ds

I realize Clinton signed it, but Bush tried to get it passed before leaving office, and Clinton signed it after trying to make some provisions to protect jobs. I'm not happy he signed it, but it pisses me off that this shit has stuck to the national wall thanks to our crappy media. Hell, Republicans have somehow managed to make Clinton look bad for NAFTA despite them starting it, just like they're doing with blaming Obama for the stimulus package/bailouts.

And by repeating it here we continue the trend. No wonder people think Republicans are fiscally responsible....

[Romulox]

178. The Big D(awg) and Gore, supposedly standard bearers for the Party, are its biggest supporters

to this day.

It would be different if either had apologized for their horrible misjudgment. But instead, they stand by it.

[Samantha]

64. I thought NAFTA was going to pass anyway with or without Clinton

Just saying this from memory; I stand to be corrected if that is wrong. Wasn't it demonstrated that the Republicans had enough votes to pass it, and it was destined to withstand even the Presidential veto? So Clinton being Clinton co-opted the Republican plan and took credit for it (as he often did when there was nothing to be done but grin and bear it), a maneuver which infuriated the Republicans.

Al Gore has said publicly that the mistake that was made during that time was the failure to negotiate labor agreements with participating parties. The assumed thought was that NAFTA would improve the lot of workers everywhere. I think others had something else entirely in mind ... that of undermining workers in the United States.

Just my impression of what happened during that time. I believe this is correct but I am thinking if it is not, someone here will not fail to set me straight! However, Gore's statement was publicly aired, so I am quite sure he expressed those thoughts; I heard him say it but I have no link.

Sam

[branders seine]

67. a sacred-cow of a narrative pervades all political speech in DC

That narrative has something very near 0% to do with reality. In the 50's and 60's the narrative was about half reality-based. Watergate bumped it down to about 33%. Iran-Contra smashed it down to about 15%. Since then, various confirmation hearings drove it down to single digits. 9-11 and the 9-11 Mythology Creation Commisssion pushed the reality quotient to virtual zero, where it lingers still.

[Enthusiast]

155. Mythology Creation Commission.

That's what it is. Up is down and down is up.

[OnionPatch]

68. I would recommend this twenty times if I could.

I already watched two of my own jobs go overseas to cheaper labor. I wish I had voted for Ross Perot.

[HughMoran]

91. Republican thinking is suddenly popular here.

[OnionPatch]

212. Well I'm no Republican.

I'm fifty years old and have never once voted for a Republican or a conservative of any stripe. Truth be told, I don't even remember what else Ross Perot said but I sure as heck remember him talking about the "great sucking sound" that I later heard loud and strong and am still hearing.

[sendero]

70. Because they are both complicit...

.. and would like to forget their culpability.

[jimmyflint]

72. "It's a big club and you and I aren't in it."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dBZDSSky0

[I saw Roy Buchanan]

102. Incredible!

Good, honest, truth about the real owners from George Carlin.

[rhett o rick]

77. What "two parties"? They are two in name only. Most on both sides belong to the Greed Party.

Until we recognize that the fight between Dem's and Rebub's is a distraction, we will have a problem. There are two antagonists here, the Have's and We the People. Those are the two entities fighting. All elected republicans and many if not most elected Democrats belong to the Greed Party.

It's time to declare war on greed.

[rucky]

80. What happened was we moved from a consumer economy to

gambling.

all the trade laws in the world won't compete with the low wages that bolster the investor-value of a company.

[MadHound]

81. Oh, it's not just Clinton and Gore.

This has been an ongoing bipartisan effort stretching back forty years. It started off slow with Nixon, Ford and Carter, small but significant actions under those three administrations (the biggest probably being Nixon's opening up of China). Reagan is the one who really got the ball rolling, and the rest, in both parties, have followed suit ever since.

The reason why they won't tell us why jobs are disappearing is because they would have to fess up about how both parties are controlled by corporate America, and they want to keep that little secret as far under wraps as possible as long as possible. Can't let the American people know that it is the same puppet master controlling both of the puppets on the political stage now can we?

[glitch]

86. Reagan-Bushes get top billing, followed by their acolytes, then everyone who appeased them nt

[HughMoran]

83. 61 recs using Republican talking points

OooooK. DU has gone :crazy:

[reformist2]

94. Why do you think it's "Republican" to be against deindustrialization?

[HughMoran]

96. Clinton/Gore + 22 million jobs - so let's blame them

Show me the proof that NAFTA caused Bush to lose all those jobs and I'll listen to you.

You can't because the proof doesn't exist.

[reformist2]

98. I don't understand what you're asking.

Free trade most certainly caused certain types of jobs to be lost over the last few decades. It didn't all happen under one administration.

[HughMoran]

101. I agree that outsourcing has caused jobs to be lost.over a long period of time

It was happening in '88 as we shipped jobs to Korea.

It happened in in '94 as I shipped jobs to Hong Kong.

It happened more recently as my job was shipped to China.

Not one of these countries is a member of NAFTA or CAFTA.

Blaming the current job losses on Clinton/Gore is a bit beyond the pale IMO.

[reformist2]

105. OK, I see your point.

But don't you think that NAFTA and GATT have made it easier for even more jobs to be shipped overseas? I think of that as the main reason Big Business wanted those treaties signed.

And what concerns me is that we have only begun to see the outsourcing and offshoring that can take place. Wages and salaries are going to collapse.

[HughMoran]

107. I dislike NAFTA a lot

I think it was a big mistake and I've said so repeatedly.

BUT! There is plenty of blame to go around - let's not give the Republicans who pushed all these treaties a pass just because some Democrats were involved in so called 'free trade' legislation. The O/P is way over the top singling out Clinton/Gore for blame - it's exactly the sort of thing I'd expect my Republican associates to do. Some might even call it 'dishonest' or 'bullshit'.

[reformist2]

112. I also blame Republicans more than Democrats for this.

Driving down wages and busting up unions are historically Republican goals. I think we're in agreement on this.

[HughMoran]

114. Yes, we do agree

:hi:

[Elwood P Dowd]

109. But those countries DO fall under GATT/WTO, GATS, and MFN.

The republicans, Reagan, Bush I, Carla Hills, etc., negotiated the first two big free trade agreements that are killing our jobs. Clinton jumped into bed with them in 1993 and 1994 by signing the required implementing legislation he inherited for NAFTA and GATT/WTO. He also lobbied hard to gain the few Democratic votes needed to pass the implementing legislation. CAFTA and all the others were all during Bush II and backed almost 100% by republicans in razor-thin Congressional victories.

None of these so called "free trade" deals are really free trade. They are nothing more than outsourcing/investment scams masquerading as free trade but designed to make obscene amounts of money for corporate executives and wealthy investors.

[HughMoran]

110. I don't disagree that these agreements are bullshit and bad for our job force

...and standard of living. Don't misread my point - all of it sucks and ALL of it was initiated and pushed by Republicans. Sadly, Clinton played a part in this that I think was a bad decision, but let's not do what the O/P did and pigpile Clinton/Gore (why Gore?) exclusively for this mess we are in now.

[Elwood P Dowd]

117. I don't blame Clinton and Gore.

There is not one fake free trade agreement in force today that was negotiated during their 8 years, though they did go along with the repukes on the ones they inherited. They also approved of MFN and China's membership in the WTO. Those two were also being pushed by the repukes. I think if you could get a few stiff drinks down both of them, they would probably admit they were dead wrong.

[SeattleGirl]

88. So, since you didn't mention Dubya, not to mention Reagan or

Bush the First, does this mean you are giving them a pass?

You are laying this all at the feet of Clinton and Gore?

Really?

Wow, I never thought I'd see this on DU, but apparently I was wrong.

[SunsetDreams]

92. no kidding, totally flew over

an entire screwed up Presidency to take aim at a Democratic Administration.

[smalll]

95. Sorry, I think global free is inevitable and good. It's the free trade/illegal immigration combo

that's makes it impossible for average people here.

Look, there's no way America either could or should still be making paper clips or T-shirts. We still are an ecomonic powerhouse, but on a much higher level: we produce entertainment, trends, fashions, design, financial instruments, advertising, etc. etc. etc. ---

There's a lot of people in this country who make TONS of money making those 21st century goods. And there's a lot of people making a good deal of money being those rich people's lawyers, doctors and real estate agents.

The rest of us could get by too, if we could still be the uber-rich and the simply-rich's landscapers, mechanics, supermarker cashiers, dog-walkers, house-builders, dry cleaners, etc. etc. etc. But we can't anymore. The income for those kind of jobs has collapsed. The rising tide of globalization WOULD lift all American boats -- if the borders weren't such a joke.

[reformist2]

99. You can't employ 200 million adults making movies and designing clothes.

You are right about one thing though - if globalism keeps going the way it is, if you aren't a doctor or a lawyer, or lucky enough to be in the movie or fashion industry, you probably will be begging a rich person to mow their lawn!

[EFerrari]

104. Exactly backwards. NAFTA killed agriculture in southern Mexico

and that's when that wave came up here.

[Elwood P Dowd]

113. You are 180 degrees out of phase with reality.

A country of 300 million people needs to produce value added products that create wealth from top to bottom. What you espouse creates wealth mostly at the top.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, attending college in the 1960s, and working for a living in the 1970s, manufacturing was 25% of our GDP. Now it has fallen to less than 12%. It's not just the manufacturing jobs we're losing either. We're losing spin-off and support jobs related to manufacturing. We're losing engineering jobs related to manufacturing. We're losing customer support jobs related to manufacturing. We're losing design jobs related to manufacturing. We're losing technical support jobs related to manufacturing. It's a HUGE domino effect when you ship millions of manufacturing jobs out of the country.

[reformist2]

120. I actually think he prefers the Feudal model.

Some people really don't like the middle class. I mean they really, really don't like it.

[Elwood P Dowd]

123. Thom Hartmann mentions that all the time.

The filthly rich conservatives who control the republican party behind the scenes absolutely despise the middle class. They want to go back to the Gilded Age for now, but their favorite wet dream is a modern day feudalism.

[HughBeaumont]

138. Hee heee . . . just ASK a robber baron how they felt about the "Middle Class":

[JVS]

144. Feudalism is technically an inaccurate description. Feudal society was marked by a plethora...

of middle classes. Capitalism tends to turn all those classes into two classes without a middle, just like Marx said it would.

[girl gone mad]

229. The film industry has been hit hard by the recession.

I just had dinner with a friend that runs a distribution company last week. Business is still way down and he said it's effecting just about everyone he knows. They've had to pass on tons of great films this year because he doesn't think they can make money.

The truth is, a few people in the entertainment industry have done well, but it's an increasingly competitive environment, and it was even before the recession.

China and India have their own entertainment, fashion and advertising industries, too. Asia is fast catching up to us on finance. We won't dominate these areas for long.

[Mimosa]

106. K&R Both parties are generally funded by the rich...

..who have benefited by selling out working people.

[Canuckistanian]

116. When Americans (or Canadians) go down to Mexico to work in the factories

That's when I'll declare NAFTA to be a success.

These "trade agreements" are one-way only. Labor to the poor and the profits to the rich.

Funny how average Americans aren't benefiting from this "new world order".

[bvar22]

121. Capital will ALWAYS be able to outrun Human Rights.

QED
NAFTA, and all the other treaties that deregulated International Trade.

Six RICH guys sitting in a boardroom can move $BILLIONS in a matter of minutes.
It takes YEARS for Unions, Human Rights Organizations, Environmental Groups to lobby their governments to produce legislation to protect their rights. When, and IF, those protections for Human Rights emerge, the Corporations can pack up and move overnight.

Every single Working Person in the WORLD needs their government to act as their agent by providing restrictions on International Corporations. Deregulation of International Trade was the exact WRONG thing to do, but DID function as designed...immense profits for the already RICH.

BULLETIN:
There is NO such thing as "Free Trade".
There is no such thing as a "Free Market".
There is NO Giant "Invisible Hand" that magically reaches down and corrects markets.
The RICH made that shit up, and used smooth talking politicians to sell it to a gullible America.

If YOU Work for a Living, do NOT trust ANY politician (Democrat or Republican) who professes a belief in "Free Trade", "Free Markets", or the "Giant Invisible Hand".
That politician is NOT your friend.

[spin]

130. I seem to remember that we were supposed to turn into the nation ...

that would provide the world with information. As the INFORMATION SOCIETY we might no longer manufacture items but everyone would work in rewarding and profitable jobs and we would lead the world in data processing.

Well that got outsourced as well.

[reformist2]

164. Information Society? That's so late-20th century.

You have to get with the program. According to Dubya, in the 21st century our new goal is to have an "ownership society", where all we do is own shares of global corporations and rake in the profits off the backs of cheap foreign labor. And by "we", I really mean the Top 5% of the country. The other 95% will earn a living by begging the Top 5% for their supper. See how it all works out?

[spin]

168. I see the results everyday ...

Unfortunately.

[Enthusiast]

132. It's downright ridiculous to

place the blame exclusively on Clinton and Gore.

Anyone that voted for or signed these wrongheaded trade deals is to blame.

A good first start would be to admit 'free trade' has been a huge mistake. Germany and France have not outsourced all their manufacturing. Why do the PTB hate the American worker? We work longer and harder than our European counterparts. You think they would love us.

[Name removed]

135. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JVS]

141. Because doing so will summon Ross Perot who will punch them in the face for not letting him finish.

[DeeDeeNY]

142. Excellent points

Perot might have been a nut, but he was right on this one.

[rasputinkhlyst]

148. BOTH PARTIES

Created this mess for American Citizens and this system of corporate exploitation of American Citizens.

[geckosfeet]

156. Respectfully disagree. The economy is global. The sooner we work

within that framework, and succeed within it the sooner we can all benefit from it.

I do agree companies that pollute should be fined heavily. Slaps on the wrist are not enough. For example, BP should clean up their mess and be run out of the business.

[madrchsod]

157. we started losing our heavy industrial base in the mid 70`s

by the beginning of 1980 it was collapsing like a house of cards.

[pattmarty]

160. Just as NAFTA has been hung around the necks of Dems, so too....

.........will the shitty healthcare & financial "reforms" and rightly fucking so. The Dems are slick in that NAFTA took what, 10 yrs for it to "kick in" and start bleeding jobs. Look at the repeal of Glass-Steagall and welfare "reform". Both of those "reforms" took a while to fuck the country too. Look at the insurance companies ALREADY gaming the system and the shit "reform" won't fully kick in until 2014. The Dems should get the blame for all the crap they passed and maybe the citizens will wake up and see that BOTH parties ARE NOT for working or middle class people. Personally, I think we already are past the "point of no return".

[INdemo]

162. With Clinton more jobs were created since FDR..now read your history.

[moondust]

166. K/R although

Clinton and Gore were not the prime movers. I think much of the impetus behind the massive offshoring in pursuit of windfall profits was "old money" Republicans who wanted their stock prices to keep rising so they could live like kings off their investments rather than having to work for a living like common folk.

[NorthCarolina]

171. Because both Parties are Corporate Owned and Operated. eom

[Name removed]

172. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Romulox]

179. I've come to the opinion that it was planned this way.

Our rulers desire this "leveling" of standards of living. Unfortunately, when you average our standard of living against China and India's, they win big, and we lose. Our leaders are not alarmed in the least though. All according to plan, as far as I can discern.

[peace frog]

199. Absolutely

It is all meant to proceed as it is, and has been. Our fearless leaders to the great unwashed masses: "Sucks to be you, and boy are we glad we're us and not you."

[newspeak]

181. I was against NAFTA-GATT-now if they had put in some strict labor and

environmental language into the treaty in might have been different. What the treaty does is basically give corporations carte blanche with less responsibility, and have the capacity to sue under the treaty. Which they have done numerous times-as one example a canadian oil company who contaminated drinking water in California-they successfully sued under the treaty.

My main concern for those who are cheering globalization, is that with globalization comes the exploitation of these "too big to fail" corporations-exploiting labor, exploiting the environment. A few corporation stooges may control the decisions and fates of nations without any input from the majority of the people in the world. With globalization, we may see less representation for the majority people; also with corporate influence, less democracy. When a corporation becomes a giant, behemoth monster, what government is going to bring them down?

I watched Rachel yesterday, and she was saying that BP was attempting to hire scientists in the gulf region, and that those hired could not release any findings for three years (probably after the lawsuits). The damage that some corporations have done to communities, health, and environment is absolutely mind blowing, and yet, they do not reap the full consequences of their actions.

To me, globalization has not been a good thing, since it has given certain corporations leeway, bypassing regulations, to do business. Today's corporations have no allegiance to country or the people, only to profit and power. Now they may use a country's assets for their own business interests, and they may profit from the misery of others, especially wars; but I do not see some great patriotism for country or any regard if that country is harmed. It's just "business as usual." I think certain huge global corporations are a threat to nations and government (influence over governments).

Maybe that's what the New World Order is supposed to be, corporations above nations and people.

[DeSwiss]

190. Yes. Yes. Yes.

You speak the absolute truth.

K&R

[Billmelater]

195. dollar a day

Once the corporation figured out that half the world's population can "live" on less than a dollar a day, they set out to make the other 49 percent do the same.

[jeremyfive]

200. How about Dubya?

You are forgetting that increased employment wasn't on Dubya's list of "the thang's I'm a-gonna do".

[w8liftinglady]

202. this is an excellent discussion,and I appreciate all points of view...

I am researching my next ltte which will cover just this-you have all been very helpful.

[DailyGrind51]

216. What, and have to repeal NAFTA and GAT? Never happen!

Both GOP and DLC are equally at fault!

[branders seine]

221. the fear of violent revolution

[fascisthunter]

223. because they all work and bribed by the upper class

that's why... and the upper class makes the decisions so they are to blame.

[wildbilln864]

225. kick! nt

[wildbilln864]

233. & kick again! nt

[mdmc]

237. ..