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Tokhtamish wrote:

"...The fascinating thing about free traitor types is their obliviousness to anything but libertarian doctrine. The collapse of America's ability to maintain superpower status, a widening gulf between haves and have nots, net downward social mobility, a huge and growing underclass, hey that's AOK so long as free trade reigns supreme. Sacrificing the lives and well being of the living to an ideal of a pure society in pure indifference to real world consequences is a very European thing to do. Americans judge a policy by results."

America is an undisputed superpower in all respects - military, economically, and culturally.

US military power is unmatched.

In the last 20 years US economy has far surpasses both Western Europe and Japan. We averaged 3%-4% growth every year; Europe has been doing about 2% and Japan about 1%. Both Europe and Japan are examples of what happens if excessive trade restrictions are allowed to smother the economy - presumably we do not wish to imitate them. Let's look at a couple of examples:

1. Prices in Europe are (best case) 2X prices in US. Salaries in Europe are comparable to US salaries. In some cases, in fact, they are far lower - my boss in a Western European Bank had to get a special permission from senior manager to be able to higher me at a competitive US salary.
2. Our IT industry has no significant competition either in Europe or Japan. (India is providing some competition in the narrow field of IT consulting.)
3. The majority of biotech/pharmaceutical industry is now in the US - this was not the case 20 years ago.
4. Japanese economy has gone completely anemic with no recovery in sight. (A poster child on protectionism!)

In general, looking over the past 20 years, US prospered tremendously by having fewer trade regulations then our competitors. The "giant sucking sound" has resulted in huge number of high quality new jobs and tremendous boost to US economy both in absolute size and relative to our nearest competitors.

US military power is unmatched.

Given the technological base China is creating, that will not be true 10-20 years from now. Even now we are militarily overextended.

1. Prices in Europe are (best case) 2X prices in US. Salaries in Europe are comparable to US salaries. In some cases, in fact, they are far lower - my boss in a Western European Bank had to get a special permission from senior manager to be able to higher me at a competitive US salary.

Then you also know that they get something like two months vacation and generally work 9-5. It is true that their prices are higher but they have a much easier quality of life than we do. So it's a cultural choice.

2. Our IT industry has no significant competition either in Europe or Japan. (India is providing some competition in the narrow field of IT consulting.)

Our IT industry ? Again, our technological base is being transferred to Asia. IT consulting is hardly a narrow field when senior American analysts and engineers cannot find work. It is a wholesale decimation of our technological intelligentsia. Who these days would go into computer science or electrical engineering as a field ? Extrapolate that 10-20 years into the future and what does that tell you about our ability to remain the preeminent technological superpower ?

The "giant sucking sound" has resulted in huge number of high quality new jobs

Free trade briefly resulted in benefits for college educated workers at the direct expense of the jobs of non college educated American workers. Now, obviously, college educated workers are seeing that their "high quality new jobs" can be exported to Asia to be done at a fraction of their salaries. They are in precisely the same boat manufacturing workers are.

Blue is correct. Our economy is the strongest it's eer been. we dominate the world in every sphere except maybe Sumo wrestling (no sorry, there was a Hawaiin champ right?). Europe and Japan are no competition. Remember the Japanese also started out as manufacturers of cheap products before upgrading, improving their lifestyle and making the world safer. Do we fear a threat from the ppl of germany or Japan now? No! That's as they have a good lifestyle. China nd India provide cheap products now, thy're improbving their ppls lifestyle. The commies in china would be out soon and India is democratic. These won't be threats to teh US, they won't be attacking us. The loonies will be in the dead end countries like in the mid east (with the exception of the UAE and Bahrain which have made the effort to diversifty their economies).