If NAFTA was repealed, do you think we might have enough jobs for everyone, including immigrants?

[BigBearJohn]

I can only wonder.

If manufacturing jobs were returned to America,
I believe there would be more than enough jobs
for anyone who wanted one in America.

Opinions?

[Recursion]

1. We would have fewer immigrants

Our cousins from south of our border are fleeing north largely because of the economic devastation NAFTA has caused in their home countries (and remember, Mexico is having an even harder time with immigrants from their south than we are from ours). Stop the exploitative triangle trade we've set up, and the immigration rate goes down, which solves a lot of domestic problems for everyone concerned.

[madokie]

2. I would bet so

damn sure be better than what we got going now

splchk

[Deja Q]

3. Quite possibly.

Legal folk first...

In WW2, during wartime, there was plenty for everyone to do.

[lumpy]

4. It would be nice if US Manufacturers invested their money

in the US for the benefit of US citizens instead of letting this country go to rot.

[Robbien]

5. So much damage has been done by NAFTA

that it will take decades to repair the economics of the countries involved. NAFTA being undone will leave this country in a huge hole now because we cannot compete in a world that has been remade according to NAFTA rules.

[Nederland]

6. No

The loss of manufacturing has little to do with NAFTA. Yes, NAFTA had the effect of speeding up the process, but it would have happened anyway. The US has been losing manufacturing jobs steadily for the last 35 years, a trend that began long before NAFTA. That loss is part of the natural economic cycle, much like the transition from agrarian economy to an industrial economy is a natural progression for countries to take. The bottom line is that manufacturing in this country has undergone a massive transformation that is largely the result of technology. In the last 20 years manufacturing output has doubled while it's workforce has been cut in half--a four fold increase in productivity. Now, just as people in the late 1800's decried the loss of farm jobs across the country as agriculture became much more productive, people today decry the loss of manufacturing jobs. But how many people today think the US should return to an economy where 90% of the population farms? Not many. In the same vein, one hundred years from now very few people will mourn the transformation that the US economy is undertaken right now.

[The2ndWheel]

9. Good post

However, as corporations and governments own more food, actual people lose more power over their own lives. We become dependent on the Monsanto's of the world, protest them, then end up giving them more power because not having to produce our own food allows us the luxury to follow some other path that we wouldn't be able to without Monsanto. Sort of the way kings couldn't have been kings without the peasants working the fields. Cheap energy(how many slaves are in a barrel of oil?) has given more people the ability to not have to do the fundamental things. We just go to the store.

So there is a trade-off. The trade-off of automation will be that more people aren't exactly needed. We'll get more busy work to do(if we're lucky), just so that we have some type of income in order to buy the mass produced products. We'll basically be in the way, and not really contribute to making anything. We can't keep up with the productive capacity of technology. As it sucks up planetary resources in order to simply produce products at an ever increasing rate, we'll end up with a planet not fit for actual life. In a few years though, very few people will mourn the transformation. If the energy required to do it is cheap enough.

[BigBearJohn]

10. Hershey company closed all factories in USA and moved the entire number of plants to Mexico.

This past week the Hershey company closed all factories in USA and moved the entire number of plants to Mexico where labor is cheaper. Thousands put out of work.

[truedelphi]

7. I have heard numerous times on TV news shows and

On independent radio - that many Mexicans lost their jobs in Mexico (or had their wages sink)
and that that is one reason that the migration north has been so overwhelming.

The big American corporations head for Mexico - where there are no pesty OSHA laws. And the workers are happy with 47 cents an hour.

So our auto workers no longer have an auto plant to go to - and the workers in Mexico are getting the shaft.

[SoCalDem]

8. I have a feeling that NAFTA came along because many

Industry Bosses did not want to adhere to regulations about pollution, and their factories were old and creaky..any money spent to update them would be money out of their profits or would have affected the almighty stock price.... so if one has to face the cost of building a new plant, why not do it on the cheap.. in a foreign country.. where they will be so happy to see you, that they will gladly accept cadmium in their water & toxins in their soil and water, in exchange for jobs for their poor. Every bit of American money in the pockets of their poor, is money that country's bosses get to keep for themselves..

Companies have always done this, but they did it internally within the US.. When Rust Belt companies boarded up their ancient factories and headed south where unions were NOT, and cheap land & water WERE, the only people grumbling were the now-unemployed workers left behind up north, and of course they displeasure could be turned around on them:

Greedy union workers
Rigid regulations of cities
Uppity townspeople, tired of polluted rivers

aaah..such is progress and the south IS still America, right?? If northerners complainers, they were just being "regionalists, and were still punishing the south"..

Fastforward decades, and the southerners are no longer happy with the pollution brought along with the factories, and THEY started to get uppity, and also wondered where all that prosperity they though was coming their way, actually was? It never occured to many of them that the prosperity of workers had been the UNION...

But of course, NAFTA came along just at the right time.. Unfettered industry's southern adventure was going to start costing them money, so Mexico beckoned, and would be even cheaper..

but now even Mexico is too costly, so China is the place to be..


China is not part of NAFTA, so we cannot even really blame NAFTA anymore, except for being the catalyst that made it "okay" to dump American workers if the wanted more than $5 an hour..

It's all about Wall Street now and "beating the street" with your numbers.. They would go to Neptune if it meant a penny more on their stock..:grr: