But I have a question.
When we were an industrial nation, when we did not import every pot, pan, piece of fabric, sock, half of our cars and nearly everything else we use in our lives (as opposed to military junk), we had high employment, unions, more willingness to confront new challenges (compare how we responded to the dust bowl, how we handled the post-WWII housing crisis to our current unwillingness to do much at all to slow climate change) and a more united country.
What changed?
Free trade. That's what changed. (The price of oil went up too, but we could deal with that if we half tried.)
During the election, the Obama campaign pointed to Romney's destruction of American companies and how he shipped good jobs overseas (and brought cheap products back here to sell). But now that the election is over, all we hear is "fiscal cliff." Nothing about the leveraged buyouts and corporate takeovers that lead us to the fiscal cliff.
It feels like we are being scolded and punished for living high on the hog, that we overspent, that we lived beyond our means. (Also feels like we are being scolded for having won the election fair and square.) Well, maybe some did. But they were in the minority. What I see is people who used to have good jobs and businesses having their houses foreclosed, people who learned trades, say carpentry, competing for jobs at Walmart. It feels like we aren't being paid as well as we were back before everything we bought was made in China or Guatemala or Mexico or the Philippines.
Certain economists assured us that it would be OK for us to export our jobs and import our consumer products. They said that the market would correct itself.
But it hasn't. All this talk about the fiscal cliff proves it.
Why do we put up with this?
Why are we negotiating new trade agreements? Free trade has not made the world a better place. It hasn't brought peace. It is just destroying our economy. Let's end it.
Let's go back to import duties or at least impose VAT taxes to even the playing field.
The only reason prices are lower on the junk we get from other countries is because workers in those companies are treated like slaves. They often do not have good sewer systems or electricity in every home or worker's compensation, etc.
Our workers do not live in dormitories. Romney himself described a dormitory in a Chinese factory. We might as well be living on plantations and keeping slaves as to buy products from factories where the workers live in dormitories near or on the premises and work long, long hours.
Why the silence about this topic?
= new reply since forum marked as read
