Kerry will destroy the world's economy?

Bush said today that Kerry would build walls around the country, destroy trade, and tax us into oblivion. I did a Google, and you wouldn’t believe the number of articles popping up denouncing anyone that would even question the job losses due to trade, outsourcing, insourcing, downsizing, or other tricks by the corporate whores. From the Washington Times to The Cato Institute to various economists, it’s as if they’ve just been caught with their hand in the cookie jar and mommy is going to cut off their allowance. Here are a few of their ideas and excuses. I’m paraphrasing of course, since there are just too many to furnish links or copy and paste. I threw in my 2-cents on a few.

Changing our current policies on trade and outsourcing will destroy the world economy.

We could ruin the economies of India and China.

It will put millions of Americans out of work.... For some reason, they keep insisting free trade and outsourcing create more jobs than they destroy.

Here’s a classic. You can blame outsourcing on the teachers union - The NEA. These companies are sending jobs offshore because the foreign workers are better educated..... I wonder if the guy that said this (Washington Times) took a look at the differences in pay?

Here’s another classic. We cannot afford to alienate foreigners with changes to our trade and outsourcing policies. Foreigners are financing our trade deficit..... Duh, would we need them if there WASN’T a trade deficit?

These workers can be retrained for the jobs of the future.... As Lou Dobbs asked Glassman, “What jobs"? Glassman replied, “We don’t know yet”. How do you retrain someone for the unknown?

Outsourcing and free trading away our jobs allows American companies to be more competitive in the Global Economy..... Did these clowns ever think that one day we might just reach a point where we would outsource our own economy???

The number of jobs lost to outsourcing is minuscule. The protectionists and isolationists in the Democratic Party are using scare tactics.

American’s prefer foreign made products..... Well, when you go shopping and every damn thing in the store is made in China or Mexico, you don’t have much choice.

We should import more foreign workers because there is a severe shortage of high tech workers in our country.

We should allow more illegal immigrants because Americans refuse to work at menial, low-paying jobs.

Outsourcing and free trade allow Americans to buy products at a much lower price...... That’s true with some products but not all products. Earthlink outsourced thousands of jobs to India. Has my monthly bill been reduced? NO!!!!! Did the Dodge trucks go down in price when they started making them in Mexico? NO!!!!

Without illegal immigrants or foreign imports, the cost of food in this country would be prohibitive....That’s nonsense. The actual labor cost in a head of lettuce or bag of beans is only a few cents. Would you pay an extra few cents for a head of lettuce if you knew it was grown in the USA and gathered by Americans making $10.00 an hour? Or, would you rather save that few cents on one gathered by slave labor? How about one from Mexico that was irrigated with sewage water, coated in DDT, and then shipped by a NAFTA truck into our country? Buying safe, healthy, American grown and gathered food products would actually benefit the economy.

Federal/State regulatory policies and taxes are causing most companies to take advantage of free trade and outsourcing...... This might be true in some cases, but these companies are making money “In America” and should therefore pay their fair share to maintain America’s health and prosperity.

Losing jobs due to a changing economy is nothing new here. We went from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing economy to a high tech, information economy and lost/created jobs at every stage..... That’s true until now. The farmers who lost work moved to urban areas and found manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing workers who lost jobs found service or high tech jobs. Here is the problem; The current workers who lost manufacturing jobs are finding service jobs with less pay and fewer benefits. Many have yet to even find a job. The high tech workers being outsourced are finding low-level, low-pay service jobs or no job at all. It appears we have hit the “wall” many of us predicted when the last round of free trade madness swallowed up Washington in the 90s. Ross Perot’s “Giant Sucking Sound” is upon us.

It appears almost all of the free trade and outsourcing apologists are on the take, since they rarely, if ever, give you the other side of the story. They never mention the hundreds of billions of dollars in federal and state taxpayer funds being drained to provide displaced workers unemployment, food stamp, or Medicaid benefits. They never mention the domino effect when additional service, support, and local government jobs are lost in states and communities that have recently lost factories, call centers, or high tech industries. They never mention the miraculous and sudden increase in earnings every time one of these CEOs moves large amounts of jobs overseas. The average CEO of a large American corporation use to make almost 50 times the earnings of his company’s average worker. Today, it’s exploded to 500 times and rising.

Whether it’s the Washington Times, your local university, Fox News, your US Senator, or The Cato Institute, there is money to be made if you can perpetuate the “free trade and outsourcing lifts all boats” myth. Big Business now controls so much in this country. Anyone who tries to fight it is labeled with one of those “ist” words and summarily ostracized by the media. Even the religious groups have jumped on the bandwagon. During the NAFTA fight, Pat Robertson spent more time praying for free trade than he did praying to God, which brings me to one final point; The real God to these people is not the one in heaven. The God they worship most is spelled MONEY!

Good night folks and please excuse any grammatical and spelling errors. I’m sure there are a few since it’s been almost 36 years since this ole’ fart
typed his last college term paper.

Elwood P. Dowd
Friend Of Harvey
Vietnam Era Draftee
Hated Clinton’s Trade Policies
Was Once A Conservative (But Not A Republican)

A very solid and useful presentation, Sir!

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

that since the company is saving money they are going to pass those savings on the to the consumer.... ummmm if you think that you are ignorant as hell. They are going to take that extra money and buy themselves a few new yahts.

nm

me passing it on to the Committee of Correspondence, with full atribution of course

I'm a noobee ya' know.

by making the US a third world country in the process.

Who can afford to purchase these "cheaper goods" when you don't even have a job! I know the people who manufactured these goods are not making a decent wage...hmmm...I wonder who is.
Myself, I have stopped shopping at Walmart as of about a year ago.
I have the list of companies who outsource our jobs and will not patronize them. Unfortunately, it means I will be changing my bank since I found them on the list. I will let them know why I am changing, too.
The amount of money the CEO's are making at their employee's expense is outrageous, even obscene. In light of the cuts to jobs, or at the very least wages or benefits, how can we tolerate this?
If I can get my hands on a list of the top paid CEO's, I will most likely stop patronizing their companies as well.
It is just my own way of doing what I think is right and just.

and it becomes a fact. These people believe this crap so how can you debate them other than the back and forth good and bad argument.

IMO the free trade example doesnt mention the slave wages part. It says wages must have purchasing power. With the corporations paying such low wages these folks dont have any power to purchase which brings the free trade train to a grinding halt.

Capitalism models didnt factor in greed.

Capitalism factors greed in heavily, it absolutely depends on it. The failure is in the assumption that encouraging greed would be good for this country.

The other shortcoming of most arguments about "free trade" is the notion that it was ever intended to benefit the working classes. It was only intended to improve the corporate bottom line and has done so.

Nothing about this trend to outsourcing should come as a surprise. It had been going on for years before "free trade" policy was enacted. The removal of barriers has just accelerated it.

Nothng about "tax incentives to business" will stop it either. See Michael Moore's "Roger and Me" if you need more info. The taxes we collect from business are too small to compare with the potential profits of paying foriegn staff at 10 cents on the dollar.

A vastly more radical change will be needed, or bottom line, the vultures will pick this country bare and move operations to the growing economies in China and India. They will be just as happy selling to Indian and Chinese consumers, count on that.

As it is, neither of them have a clue about it.

Sorry.

Dobbs had him on Friday, I believe ...

ONCE again: ... We get an AEI meathead pushing the Neocon BS line, but from the economic angle ...

I swear: .. These AEI types are SO smarmy and cocksure ...

The AEI, in tandem with the GOP, have set the US on the path of despair ... and they do so with a smirk on thier faces: KNOWING they are pocketing the TRILLIONS spent through our collective treasure ...

Perle, Glassman, Feith, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Gaffney, Gingrich, Quayle, Adelman, Shulsky, May, ....

And this group doesnt yet include the names of the BFEE ....

We cannot lose this next election ... It would be our ruin ...

for the early morning crowd. Find some more ridiculous spin from the media whores for me to show my brainwashed repuke friends. Remember when PigBoy tried to weasel his way out of a listener's question about his promise on NAFTA in 1993? Old PigBoy promised he would lead the charge to repeal NAFTA if it cost us job losses and massive trade deficits. His talent on load from God now says lost jobs and massive deficits are good for us. It means we're all rich, don't need manufacturing jobs, and we're rolling in so much cash that he even lights his imported cigars with $100.00 bills.

how long have we been hearing this drivel about Americans being retrained for some yet-unknown jobs?

Face it: EVERY job that U.S. ingenuity can come up with can be outsourced the day after we discover it.

And because of the huge and underemployed stock of human resources available in places like India and China, not only can these jobs be outsourced, but they will be.

Beyond this, all Americans cannot be "retrained" to become rocket scientists. There is only so much that retraining can do. So the notion that we will "innovate" our way out of this is completely foolish. Bottom line, the people in India and China are just as bright on average as Americans, they can be trained cheaper, and will work for far less money. Finally, there are 10 tmes more of them.

This is the essential problem of 'free trade'.