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Are we be better off with the thousands of factories shut down and millions of jobs lost?
Ted Cruz was on with Jeff Kuhner re: free trade ^

Posted on 03/12/2016 6:33:12 PM PST by Jim Robinson

Are we be better off today with the thousands of U.S. factories that have shut down and millions of American jobs lost and the trillions in accumulated debt that we've run up in the last couple decades of free trade?

And, of course, this is due to many factors including such things as:

Big government

Regulations

High taxes

Unions driving up costs

Cheap labor overseas

Fewer regulations overseas

Lower taxes overseas

Trade deficits

etc.,

And doubly exasperated by poor trade deals?

Or is this all a myth?

Are we better off with cheaper foreign (cheap) goods, fewer U.S. factories, fewer U.S. jobs, higher unemployment and welfare, higher taxes and higher national debt?

Will this spiral out of control until we lose our country?

Is ushering in free trade before (or without) reducing our own costs the equivalent of national suicide?


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: 2016issues; badtradedeals; cheaplabor; cruz; economics; fasttrack; freetrade; gop; gope; jeffsessions; jobs; layoffs; manufacturing; ryan; sessions; tpa; tpp; trade; treaty; trends; votetrump
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To: RginTN

Trump’s primary business is real estate, not sewing factories . Apparel requires a lot of specialized knowledge like any other industry. Most brands are subcontracted now and I doubt Trump clothing is of a volume to support dedicated factories.


161 posted on 03/13/2016 3:10:35 AM PDT by Will88
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To: central_va; Jim Robinson; Alberta's Child

This fails to account for suppliers, transportation, logistics, wholesalers, and support jobs that are necessary for one factory to operate.

We lose all of those, too, when we lose manufacturing jobs.

All we have are the service jobs, some of the transportation jobs, and some of the support jobs...as the goods go from the dock to the walmart shelves.


162 posted on 03/13/2016 3:13:59 AM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It! Prayer for Victory is the ONLY way to support the troops!)
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To: Will88

I don’t think you need reliable data to support that claim. It’s kind of self-evident. Just go to any large-scale U.S. manufacturing operation and see how few people it takes to work there compared to a generation ago. You used to have entire company towns where thousands of men would work at the local plant. Today, these plants produce just as many units of whatever they produce, with a much smaller work force.


163 posted on 03/13/2016 3:35:54 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (Bye bye, William Frawley!)
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To: Alberta's Child

Hardly. Read the rest of it. Exclusive of the high taxes and inordinate regulatory costs the American worker produces more output per dollar of input than any other in the world. If you think otherwise then you have no explanation for American economic dominance of the last century and you can have no hope for any resurgence.


164 posted on 03/13/2016 3:49:32 AM PDT by arthurus (Het is waar. Tutti i liberaliI won't vote for Rubio of sono feccia.)
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To: Jim Robinson
Add that to the only person willing to say what needs to be said about Islam, in clear and un-nuanced words, and we have a reason to rally around a single candidate. Hopefully the rest will start thinking instead of just feeling - we really cold become a great Nation again (Loved by her People and respected by the world - even those that hate us).

Glad you posted like you did - too many are not asking themselves actual questions and engaging their brains with the seeking of the answers - they have become low-information voters even as they deride the Left for being such.

165 posted on 03/13/2016 4:51:30 AM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: Mollypitcher1

Along with his wife
Never mind I guess you covered her when you mentioned handlers.


166 posted on 03/13/2016 5:55:18 AM PDT by hans56 (WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH)
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To: Alberta's Child

Yes, we manufacture about as much today as we ever have; we just don’t use nearly as much labor to do so.


167 posted on 03/13/2016 6:12:23 AM PDT by riverdawg
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To: mosesdapoet
About Mr Trump. The conduct of this election as evidenced by those so called debates which were reduced to cage matches. Where discourse on the direction of where and how these candidates would lead US is completely absent .In fact if one asks Trump supporters exactly what Trump will do ? They could not tell you . Because he has not done so in any specific way .

My experience as a longtime businessperson has been fleshing out and explaining many of his concepts on FR, only to be dismissed, told I'm a hater, or ridiculed about stuff I know like the back of my hand. There is no perfect candidate. Republicans stood by and watched when Palin was trashed over what were basically personality issues, and all her talent for "calling it" and reforming government went by the wayside. I'd hate to see another situation where one of the most talented men on offer for this job was sidelined due to personality issues. The skills he has that are very much needed are too important to our survival to let that happen again.

168 posted on 03/13/2016 6:21:03 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (Who can actually defeat the Democrats in 2016? -- the most important thing about all candidates.)
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To: xzins
This fails to account for suppliers, transportation, logistics, wholesalers, and support jobs that are necessary for one factory to operate.

We lose all of those, too, when we lose manufacturing jobs.

Your first and second points don't correlate at all. The warehousing and transportation sectors in this country have been booming for years even as the manufacturing sector has moved much of its activity offshore.

How do you think a Wal-Mart store in the Midwest gets all of the products on its shelves?

169 posted on 03/13/2016 7:56:33 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (Bye bye, William Frawley!)
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To: Alberta's Child

Dingbat, he is talking about transportation of raw materials and handling of sub assemblies.


170 posted on 03/13/2016 7:57:59 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: lewislynn
Those are all factors, but the biggest one is that for more and more industries, Asia has more customers than anywhere else in the world.

If I'm in the business of manufacturing iPhones and selling them all over the world, would I better off locating my plant close to 400 million customers in North American or 3-4 billion customers in Asia?

171 posted on 03/13/2016 7:58:37 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (Bye bye, William Frawley!)
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To: Jim Robinson

Jim Robinson wrote:
You might want to peruse his website for some specifics.

2006 desktop Browser problems plus very limited sosh only income prevents getting new stuff.
Sir;
Why must I go into his site when he could bring them up during the debates and have a discourse on his and other approaches ? Instead hear him drag debates into the mud and turns these so called debates into WWF wrestling matches.
. What I am fearfull of is if he does succeed in getting the nomination the media will be going after him in all sorts of venues. Comedy shows, which they are already doing. Work anti Trump copy into popular shows hinting at certain aspects of his foibles or business practices. Plus run a bunch of exclusives on their so called news hours. We really do not need this.


172 posted on 03/13/2016 8:04:00 AM PDT by mosesdapoet (My best insights get lost in FR's becaus e of meaningless venting no one reads.)
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To: Albion Wilde

My experience as a longtime businessperson has been fleshing out and explaining many of his concepts on FR, only to be dismissed, told I’m a hater, or ridiculed about stuff I know like the back of my hand.

I know what you mean. Actually they have been using this venue to evaluate their talking points and now dominate it. Many Cruz supporters no longer use this venue because of those nattering nabobs of negativity tactics.

It is too bad this used to be the place to go to find out what the heck is going on. Right now there us a whole bunch of congressional races going on and nobody us posting them or discussions about supporting government shut downs or the overreaching of some of these agencies like the EPA or IRS besides what the INS is doing. It has become a Trump Dump. Conservatism is out. It is now, you have heard the expression soup de jour, well this is; mode de jour politique (populist) politics.


173 posted on 03/13/2016 9:06:09 AM PDT by mosesdapoet (My best insights get lost in FR's becaus e of meaningless venting no one reads.)
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To: mosesdapoet

I like to say that history is a process, not an event

a process of nominating primaries is underway and is dominating the FR argument. my experience teaches me that that will be largely over by Thursday or so.

At some point any way, the process will revert back to the normal discussion and argument on conservative ideas and issues not directly related to the Presidential race.

However, we will likely be subject to the self righteous pontificating of those that declare they won’t vote because the stick in the icecream was a little off center. These cop outs will begin in two or three weeks. that is part of the process

We can only hope there will be cool heads able to provide wise counsel to sooth the worried minds and develop a consensus that will allow us to prevail aginst the wicked withc from Arkansas


174 posted on 03/13/2016 9:18:43 AM PDT by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc;+12, 73, ....carson is the kinder gentler trump.)
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To: Alberta's Child
I don’t think you need reliable data to support that claim.

You need some hard data to support this statement:

Kudos to the Freeper who pointed out several months ago that U.S. manufacturing employment would have been declining for years even if the U.S. was the only country in the world, and there was no such thing as "foreign trade."

Many facts refute the above, including:

1. There are many more individual manufactured products produced now than in the past.

2. People own more stuff now, more vehicles, more TVs and more gadgets of both old and newer technology.

3. The US population has increased from about 200 million in the 1960s to about 320 million now.

As I said, the only stat that would really tell us anything about this is one that shows how many manufacturing jobs were required to produce all the manufactured products sold in the US in 2015, and say, several different years going back to the 1960s?

175 posted on 03/13/2016 9:24:12 AM PDT by Will88
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To: Will88
Here are a couple of interesting graphs for you. They don't represent a perfect comparison because the time periods they cover are different, but they tell the story pretty well. The top one shows total employment in the U.S. manufacturing sector from 1940 to 2015. The bottom one is a comparative index of U.S. industrial output from 1919 to 2015.

What this tells me is that U.S. manufacturing employment peaked in the late 1970s, while industrial output is higher today than ever before. It looks like the U.S. has doubled its industrial output since 1979, with about 40% fewer people working in manufacturing.

176 posted on 03/13/2016 9:49:45 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (Bye bye, William Frawley!)
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To: mosesdapoet
I'm not sure I understood your post. To me it seems that both of the main camps (Cruz & Trump) have reasonable people in the center of the bell curve with a smaller but louder tail of emotion-driven haters on the one end, and the "voiceless bewildered" on the other. I'm on the "mostly-reason-but-sometimes-sarcasm" part of the curve. I try not to call people idiots, etc. But I'm not above a mild put-down based on wordplay or the like. Mostly I try to counter speculation with links to data or facts.

The haters start out with the assumption that they are superior in wisdom and talk down immediately. The more reasonable people try to discuss issues but soon get flamed by the superior types, who actually are insecure in their information, wisdom or faith -- otherwise they wouldn't find other opinions so threatening.

Personally, I hate to see outright misinformation spread, or hard-and-fast conclusions drawn based on an obviously manipulated media stream. There are many people who truly do not understand that their biases or emotions are not the same as facts or evidence.

The important thing is not to let the nasty loudmouths skew your opinion of the whole group of those who favor or disfavor a candidate. There are people in "my" candidate's camp who consistently embarrass me with their name-calling and trash-talking, and they make me just as uncomfortable as the ones who do it on the other side. That kind of talk doesn't help.

177 posted on 03/13/2016 10:06:41 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (Who can actually defeat the Democrats in 2016? -- the most important thing about all candidates.)
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To: Redmen4ever
You do understand how the unemployment number is calculated, correct? Here's a look at that unemployment number your link references against the number of job postings:

http://www.moneycrashers.com/what-is-national-us-unemployment-rate/

Your source, as with those who believe in other “zero sum” situations which don't exist (take the GOPe’s calculation that the GOP must appeal to illegal immigrants to win any election, as one example), leaves out a huge number of people that are available or swayable. Your source also leaves out anyone who is working in a temp or part-time job outside of their area of expertise to get by until something better shows up.

Do you have better numbers available?

178 posted on 03/13/2016 10:25:26 AM PDT by ConservativeMind ("Humane" = "Don't pen up pets or eat meat, but allow infanticide, abortion, and euthanasia.")
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To: hans56

Yes, I intended to, but you are correct, we must never forget whom he sleeps with and what she works for.


179 posted on 03/13/2016 10:29:49 AM PDT by Mollypitcher1 (I have not yet begun to fight....John Paul Jones)
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To: smokingfrog

It’s worse than that. The we, and the world, get even higher priced good costs from the US, making us lose on price far beyond what we lose due to high wages.


180 posted on 03/13/2016 10:31:26 AM PDT by ConservativeMind ("Humane" = "Don't pen up pets or eat meat, but allow infanticide, abortion, and euthanasia.")
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