Welcome to the 21st century and the race to the bottom. The economists are half right, third world nations have a comparative advantage of "low cost labor" a thinly disguised euphemism for sweat shop labor and CEO slave masters.
How might you ask do traders and investors become billionares by trading away a nations wealth, health, and prosperity ? Corporate welfare and political coruption is how. For example: Feinswein uses her power and position in the Senate to steer government contracts to her billionare husband Richard Bloom. Government contracts are money taken by the force of law, "taxes" from the people of the United States. Through a series of sub contractors, holding companies, and other business gimics all this wealth is then exported to third would nations such as China. In the lexicon of modern business this is refred to as, "win-win." China wins, Bloom wins, Feinswine wins, and the statists in government win having to exert ever greater amounts of control over the population.
Is it any wonder that Feinswein is an ardant supporter of gun control ? Just like the former USSR, a growing portion of domestic economic activiy is devoted to the "black" market or underground economy. By some estimates the black market in the U.S. is 10% of GNP, and this consists mostly of illegal drugs. If the U.S. government had prohibited shoes or tooth brushes instead of mind altering drugs, we would see a blosoming "black" market for these items.
Why is the "black" market called black ? End Of Rant.
Chavez's opponents, who have organized months of violent protests, accuse him of authoritarian, communist-style rule in the world's No. 5 oil exporting nation. One person was killed and 22 hurt on Saturday when shooting erupted at an anti-Chavez rally in Caracas. The Venezuelan leader declined to comment on the violence, which came a day after government and opposition negotiators agreed to a pact that could lead to a referendum on his rule. ***
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Venezuela's Government, Foes Agree Referendum Pact - Disarm civilian population*** In the 19-point accord, both sides agree to shun violence, respect democracy and hold referendums for the president and other elected officials as laid down in the constitution. The accord also endorses plans to disarm the civilian population. At least 50 people have been shot to death and several hundred injured in political violence over the last 18 months.
Both government and opposition negotiators hailed the political pact as a mechanism to reduce tensions. "This clears the path to a referendum as an electoral solution to the political crisis," opposition representative Alejandro Armas told reporters. Venezuela's constitution allows for a recall vote on the president's rule once he has completed half of his six-year mandate. In Chavez's case, this is Aug. 19. To trigger the referendum, the opposition must collect signatures from 20 percent of the electorate.
The government also insists that the National Assembly must first select a new National Electoral Commission. But the assembly, where pro-Chavez deputies hold a slim majority, is still haggling over candidates for the electoral authority which would verify the signatures for a referendum and set a date for the vote.***
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There won't be much of a market left in this region if Latin America continues to turn Left.
The Japanese economy has been in the tank not because of global free trade, but because their banks were in bed with their manufacturers, and their real-estate tycoons. They severely overestimated (on paper) the value of their real estate holdings, to prevent their friends from being embarrassed. When the eal estate market collapsed, so did a large part of their banks paper holdings. That led to the collapse of their economy.
You need to re-read your history a bit more before you go off on such an ill-informed rant.
Most importantly, for the consumer. Understand that while some are laborers, some are managers, some are technicians, some are investors ... EVERYONE is a consumer.
If stereos can be made cheaper in Korea than in California, it makes no sense to get upset about the "loss" of stereo-making jobs in California: What we save on stereos can be saved, or invested, or spent on food. A savings is a savings, and thus the market favors efficiency.
American workers were once the most efficient in the world. If we are no longer so efficient, it is our fault, not the world's fault. But, of course, we are extremely efficient -- in aerospace technology, software development, biotech, and so forth.
The weird thing is, so many Americans are griping about the loss of assembly-line manufacturing jobs, but young Americans don't actually want those jobs anymore. More than half of U.S. high-school grads now enroll in college; they're not pursuing bachelor's degrees so they can run a drill press all day! In the textile and carpet mills of the South, factories are importing Mexican labor for the simple reason that young kids in the mill towns don't want to work in the mill.
American kids want white-college office jobs; they associate blue-collar work with immigrants, ghetto minorities and "losers." I'm just explaining the facts, OK? In the typical American high school today, students recognize the existence of two large social classes -- those who will go on to college, and "losers" whose future is often described as "you want fries with that?" Ask any teacher: kids today don't know the "dignity of labor" from the Treaty of Paris. It's all about the Benjamins, see? Kids today are extremely status-conscious, and the smart kids don't want anything to do with a job in a steel mill or an auto plant. They want "cool" jobs like they see on TV sitcoms, where folks wear cool clothes in cool offices and have cool conversations with their cool buddies.
So don't beat me over the head with your economic nostalgia and tell me how you're going to bring back all those wonderful smokestack industries, where square-jawed laborers carried their lunch-pails to the factory and punched the time clock and voted like the union bosses told 'em to vote. That whole Archie Bunker America is gone, and it ain't coming back for the simple reason that American workers don't want it back.
You can kill the messenger all you want, but the message is still true.