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In reply to the discussion: Free traders do NOT want to discuss WHY manufacturing is coming back to the USA [View all]James48
(4,436 posts)5. H. Ross Perot was right
In the 1992 debates, H. Ross Perot got that part exactly right.
PEROT:"If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young -- let's assume you've been in business for a long time and you've got a mature work force -- pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care -- that's the most expensive single element in making a car -- have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.
So we -- if the people send me to Washington the first thing I'll do is study that 2,000-page agreement and make sure it's a two-way street.
One last part here -- I decided i was dumb and didn't understand it so I called the Who's Who of the folks who've been around it and I said, "Why won't everybody go South?" They say, "It'd be disruptive." I said, "For how long?" I finally got them up from 12 to 15 years. And I said, "well, how does it stop being disruptive?" And that is when their jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals. We've got to cut it out.
Yep.
Only it isn't when Mexico is up to $6 an hour. Now we have competition with smaller Asian nations, who are at $1 a day. When we reach $1 a day, we'll all be competitive again.
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Free traders do NOT want to discuss WHY manufacturing is coming back to the USA [View all]
Zalatix
May 2012
OP
"In order for free trade to even exist, one populace has to be impoverished."
HiPointDem
May 2012
#1
"Free trade is all about the (labor) arbitrage." Including US trade with Canada or Australia?
pampango
May 2012
#33
Prison labor will solve the repukes problem with increasing global wage increases.
Elwood P Dowd
May 2012
#2
Try Googling "Top 10 Corporate Tax Loopholes" and you learn "The Rest of the Story"
FreakinDJ
May 2012
#4
Africa has horrible infrastructure and some very spotty governments, I guess.
Systematic Chaos
May 2012
#7
Not for the Southern Countries but of course they'll run out of head room too in prices
uponit7771
May 2012
#11
With tariffs, I can move to the midwest, or pass living wage laws to help the midwest
Zalatix
May 2012
#39
Paul Krugman has allegedly repented his Neoliberal ways. You're massively out-of-date. nt
Romulox
May 2012
#15
"...there is a short-run case for protectionism" Paul Krugman, February 1, 2009.
Romulox
May 2012
#27
"Everything I’ve just said applies only when the world is stuck in a liquidity trap..."
Nye Bevan
May 2012
#40
From a Paul Krugman "expert" who isn't up to speed with the man's work from 2009, no less.
Romulox
May 2012
#46
Excellent post, Zalatix. Bookmarked. Love your excerpts and (quite liberal) scenario:
pampango
May 2012
#16
The problem for your theory is that jobs will LEAVE the third world and come back here.
Zalatix
May 2012
#29
True, but they will have built up a domestic market that they did not have before.
pampango
May 2012
#36
China is an export-oriented economy as is Germany (which is much more export-oriented
pampango
May 2012
#49
Right, but the so-called "utopian" scenario in the OP was MOCKING your ideology--
Romulox
May 2012
#35
I don't see "mocking" in the OP nor did many others, but thanks for coming to Zalatix' rescue.
pampango
May 2012
#54
Right above your post Zalatix confirms my interpretation. Is this feigned confusion, or real? nt
Romulox
May 2012
#56
A group of energy analysts did a study that predicted that because of Obama's energy policies,
bluestate10
May 2012
#41
A one world Government? How many did you knock back to come to THAT conclusion?
Zalatix
May 2012
#43
A global government would incite a global civil war instead. Or global fascism.
Zalatix
May 2012
#59
Nice pipe dream. You won't even get that far. We've been trying and it has failed repeatedly.
Zalatix
May 2012
#61
It took World War I to bring about the League of Nations, it took World War II to create
Uncle Joe
May 2012
#65
Then it's almost global in which case humanity will need to learn to walk before it can run.
Uncle Joe
May 2012
#73
Please come back when you actually have a legitimate rebuttal to my argument. nt
Uncle Joe
May 2012
#78