Reply #124: Free trade is only fair trade in equal economies.....

[Liberal Veteran]

No matter how you look at it we do not live in a single world economy.

It is assinine and facetious to even claim that the American worker can compete in a global market with third world labor that work for pennies on the dollar and have roughly the same standard of living as an American worker for that pay.

If I could live off 500 dollars a month in the country where I work, then it would be fair to ask me to compete with workers who's buying power at 500 dollars a month would be the same.

Unless and until that happens I will support the big boogeyman of "proctectionism" that seems to have so many otherwise intelligent people acting like it's some horrible blashphemy. I am so very tired of watching myself, friends, and family having their livelyhood ripped out from underneath them under the guise that free market is always the best and something we should just put up with even when it acts against the interests of the citizens of this country. I have watched the manufacturing sector decimated by free trade, the mining and timber industries decimated by free trade, the IT and service sector is being decimated by free trade. It's time for us to stop cowtowing to corporate greed and start looking out for ourselves.