Posted on 02/15/2006 10:42:45 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Our hollow prosperity
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Posted: February 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
PATRICK BUCHANAN
© 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.
Now that the U.S. trade deficit for 2005 has come in at $726 billion, the fourth straight all-time record, a question arises.
What constitutes failure for a free-trade policy? Or is there no such thing? Is free trade simply right no matter the results?
Last year, the United States ran a $202 billion trade deficit with China, the largest ever between two nations. We ran all-time record trade deficits with OPEC, the European Union, Japan, Canada and Latin America. The $50 billion deficit with Mexico was the largest since NAFTA passed and also the largest in history.
When NAFTA was up for a vote in 1993, the Clintonites and their GOP fellow-travelers said it would grow our trade surplus, raise Mexico's standard of living and reduce illegal immigration.
None of this happened. Indeed, the opposite occurred. Mexico's standard of living is lower than it was in 1993, the U.S. trade surplus has vanished, and America is being invaded. Mexico is now the primary source of narcotics entering the United States.
Again, when can we say a free-trade policy has failed?
The Bushites point proudly to 4.6 million jobs created since May 2003, a 4.7 percent unemployment rate and low inflation.
Unfortunately, conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts and analysts Charles McMillion and Ed Rubenstein have taken a close look at the figures and discovered that the foundation of the Bush prosperity rests on rotten timber.
The entire job increase since 2001 has been in the service sector – credit intermediation, health care, social assistance, waiters, waitresses, bartenders, etc. – and state and local government.
But, from January 2001 to January 2006, the United States lost 2.9 million manufacturing jobs, 17 percent of all we had. Over the past five years, we have suffered a net loss in goods-producing jobs.
"The decline in some manufacturing sectors has more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing than with a super-economy that is 'the envy of the world,'" writes Roberts.
Communications equipment lost 43 percent of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37 percent ... The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30 percent. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25 percent of its workforce.
How did this happen? Imports. The U.S. trade deficit in advanced technology jobs in 2005 hit an all-time high.
As for the "knowledge industry" jobs that were going to replace blue-collar jobs, it's not happening. The information sector lost 17 percent of all its jobs over the last five years.
In the same half-decade, the U.S. economy created only 70,000 net new jobs in architecture and engineering, while hundreds of thousands of American engineers remain unemployed.
If we go back to when Clinton left office, one finds that, in five years, the United States has created a net of only 1,054,000 private-sector jobs, while government added 1.1 million. But as many new private sector jobs are not full-time, McMillion reports, "the country ended 2005 with fewer private sector hours worked than it had in January 2001."
This is an economic triumph?
Had the United States not created the 1.4 million new jobs it did in health care since January 2001, we would have nearly half a million fewer private-sector jobs than when Bush first took the oath.
Ed Rubenstein of ESR Research Economic Consultants looks at the wage and employment figures and discovers why, though the Bushites were touting historic progress, 55 percent of the American people in a January poll rated the Bush economy only "fair" or "poor."
Not only was 2005's growth of 2 million jobs a gain of only 1.5 percent, anemic compared to the average 3.5 percent at this stage of other recoveries, the big jobs gains are going to immigrants.
Non-Hispanic whites, over 70 percent of the labor force, saw only a 1 percent employment increase in 2005. Hispanics, half of whom are foreign born, saw a 4.7 percent increase. As Hispanics will work for less in hospitals and hospices, and as waiters and waitresses, they are getting the new jobs.
But are not wages rising? Nope. When inflation is factored in, the Economic Policy Institute reports, "real wages fell by 0.5 percent over the last 12 months after falling 0.7 percent the previous 12 months."
If one looks at labor force participation – what share of the 227 million potential workers in America have jobs – it has fallen since 2002 for whites, blacks and Hispanics alike. Non-Hispanic whites are down to 63.4 percent, but black Americans have fallen to 57.7 percent.
What is going on? Hispanic immigrants are crowding out black Americans in the unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled job market. And millions of our better jobs are being lost to imports and outsourcing.
The affluent free-traders, whose wealth resides in stocks in global companies, are enriching themselves at the expense of their fellow citizens and sacrificing the American worker on the altar of the Global Economy.
None dare call it economic treason.
That's not the point. Pat's defenders have stated that "he is just isolationist, he doesn't pick on Israel, he just opposes all foreign aid." Well, it seems that when the rubber meets the sand, Pat isn't so very isolationist after all.
the 52% of my workplace collegaues, who are now my former colleagues - they care, the jobs bled out of the US tech industry that Pat lists here - that's them.
But is the FR about how to get rich quick or about the welfare of American Republic? You can get very rich while living in the middle of a ruined country. Is it what would make you satisfied?
Boy did you ever hit the nail on the head with this one!!!
Hedgetrimmer insists she's a conservative, but her answers always involve more government interference.
they don't want to be confused with the facts.
and the thing is, there is no end in sight to this. people think offshoring is a fad and its going to stop, its not.
No, I think it's that when your entire country isn't good at anything (except flippin' burgers) you are unlikely to be rich, in the conventional sense.
We used to clearly lead the world in dozens of industries, automobiles, low cost electronics, high end electronics, motorcycles, bicycles, quality furniture, cotton goods, linnen, steel, small arms (well the Russians were always the volume producers), airplanes, computer hardward, computer software, computer services.
If we lose the lead in all of these (as we already have or are currently) it is hard to see what our export economy will consist of. Gay cowboy movies?
"Where? In what way?"
Well, for starters, by requiring Google to censor themselves.
Less recently, by interfering with our ability to keep a nuclear weapon out of the hands of a certain madman in Southeast Asia...
Does anyone sincerely believe we would have allowed this to happen had we not feared Chinese intervention? They view Korea and Vietnam as provinces of their empire, and would never have allowed us to invade.
Anyone who views China's growth as benevolent needs to crack a history book. China's goal is, and has always been, global domination. As for all of that capital surplus coming back to us some day. It might, but you can bet your keister that there will be some SERIOUS strings attached when and if it does.
They take the LONG view. Time in their world-view has no meaning. Their overall societal goals remain the same as it has for the last 3000 years. Global domination. By treating ourselves to the short-term benifits of cheap goods, we are only assisting them. They have the numbers to get it done. They have for a long time. They just haven't had the capital... We're giving it to them WILLINGLY.
They are already requiring US-based companies to censor themselves. Their methods are much more subtle than the Islamicists, but their aims are no less sinister.
Enjoy those cheap goods, boys. Hope it was worth it.
Are you implying that Americans will have hundreds of casinos too?
Sorry Pat's defenders don't state that. So let's talk about US involvement in trade. Someone else brought up Hamas, not me.
Maybe we can all find common ground with the idea that taxes are bad.
Hedge, is there a chance that you'd favor a plan to save the US import taxpayer billions and billions of dollars?
Boy did you ever hit the nail on the head with this one!!!
LOL But the biggest government failure was the 'government to government' free trade deals. Clinton/Bush [also known as government] made China a permanent favorite trading partner. It's been downhill ever since.
Boy did you ever hit the nail on the head with this one!!!
LOL But the biggest government failure was the 'government to government' free trade deals. Clinton/Bush [also known as government] made China a permanent favorite trading partner. It's been downhill ever since.
Here I am. What's wrong with NAFTA?
LOL! Poor pat sure wasn't that concerned when the only President he successfully served established relations with them.
Here is proof of the happiness concept.
Yes, exactly like that.
Are you even reading a word I write? I want the government to interfere less in our economy and everybody else's. I've said it in almost every post I've made on this thread. Buchananites want the government to interfere more. Differently, but more.
Allow the free citizens of America to engage freely in the exchange of legal goods and services with the citizens of other nations. That's it. That's what the government should be doing. Not funding infrastructure improvements in third world crapholes. Not erecting tariffs to insulate inefficient domestic producers from global competition.
Allow Americans to trade freely in legal goods with the citizens of other nations.
they never answer those questions either - what's left for americans in the endgame. once it plays out, and we de-industrialize, now technology is going too - what's left. the "new industries" come from the technology industry, so once that goes offshore, innovation goes with it.
what's left are service jobs, the "paper economy" of financial services and real estate and banking and insurance, health care, government employment, teachers and education, construction, retail sales, travel and leisure, food services - and of course, lots of lawyers and expanding government payrolls at every level.
the main thing that keeps the US economy moving now - is population growth. its only an increasing population, increasing demand for more services et al, that grows the economy.
the difference between our one state presidential wins in 2000 and 2004, versus Reagan's landslides, is that our party has no economic message on this problem.
and just wait till you see what FTAA does to US agriculture - which is a major exporter. Brazil is going to be the worlds top ag producer.
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