RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA?

RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (Full Version)

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defiantbadgirl -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 2:47:09 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: meatcleaver The problem isn't NAFTA, its capitalism and since America believes in capitalism, I'm wondering what the problem is. America is a country for the people by the people. Majority rules, isn't that right? Isn't that why we have elections? I have a hard time believing the majority of Americans are pro capitalism. Are there more CEOs than blue collar workers? Sounds more like a dictatorship to me.

celticlord2112 -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 3:48:58 AM)
quote: I have a hard time believing the majority of Americans are pro capitalism. Believe. For all the bluster about big bad corporations, small business is still the engine that drives the American economy. Small businesses (as defined by the Small Business Administration) employ half of non-farm workers in this country, make up 99% of non-farm employers, produce more patents, and create 75% of net new jobs in this country. http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/businessfinance/a/sbatopten.htm And small businesses are the essence of capitalism.

meatcleaver -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 4:43:26 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: defiantbadgirl quote: ORIGINAL: meatcleaver The problem isn't NAFTA, its capitalism and since America believes in capitalism, I'm wondering what the problem is. America is a country for the people by the people. Majority rules, isn't that right? Isn't that why we have elections? I have a hard time believing the majority of Americans are pro capitalism. Are there more CEOs than blue collar workers? Sounds more like a dictatorship to me. It is naive to think that western democracy is about a government for the people, by the people. The American constitution is a conservative document and is more about protecting the affluent minority from the majority. This is no secret and the founding fathers were not secretive in wanting to consoldate their colonial positions in the post colonial state. Democracy has never been about majority rules but about beingf a safety valve for discontent. You can vote for anyone, including a revolutionary party as long as it doesn't threaten to overthrow the monied establishment. America is not unique, the same is throughout just about all western democracies. Just as Churchill said paying out unemployment benefit was cheap at the price when the alternative is revolution so is the vote. As long as you keep voting for the narrow interest groups you are asked to back when you vote. You have an election coming up and there is a lot of argument about who will be the best President, Barack Obama or John McCain. On the whole it won't matter because little will change, you don't actually vote for the people with power, the rich and powerful who own both of them.

SilverMark -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 4:51:10 AM)
I think NAFTA is a lesser concern due to the fact that the general public doesn't see it's effects. NAFTA is not to blame for the trade deficit, neither Canada or Mexico are great producers of things consumers buy in the USA. I do a lot of importing but, have little choice in the matter because there is, for the most case almost no production in the USA of the products My company sells. I do buy American made products when I can and try hard to seek out vendors that will build here but there are but a few. Of the millions of dollars I spend, none of the products come from the NAFTA party countries.I think if it touched people's wallets in a meaningful way they'd move to abolish it.

Irishknight -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 5:03:57 AM)
NAFTA is the tool by which the politicians raped our manufacturing base in order to make us more dependent on the government. It wasn't a mistake. It was a deliberate attack upon the middle class and our ability to live. The only thing we have recieved from it is a deficit of jobs (more went out than came in) and cheap foreign made garbage that breaks 3 times as fast as the stuff we used to buy. The sad part is that people can't see that when you buy 5 clock radios in three years for 10 bucks its more expensive than buying one over the same period for 30 bucks.

celticlord2112 -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 5:20:24 AM)
quote: On the whole it won't matter because little will change, you don't actually vote for the people with power, the rich and powerful who own both of them. Who are these "rich and powerful"? What are their names? Where are they?

SilverMark -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 5:36:08 AM)
NAFTA is an agreement only between the USA, Canada and Mexico, this accounts for little of the job loss in the USA or for the massive amount of imports we now receive. There have been some manufacturing job losses to Mexico but, according to most economists(and you can find many to say whatever you wish to have said) the loss to Mexico has been small and Mexico itself lost more by importing American food then any other signer to the agreement. I have yet to hear of massive migration of jobs to Canada and the perceived villain in our trade deficit is China, and they are not part of NAFTA. Strictly clarification of the agreement.

Hippiekinkster -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 5:38:11 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: blacksword404 quote: ORIGINAL: SilverWulf quote: ORIGINAL: Alumbrado Unions were a significant part of the problem but only a part.... greed resides other places as well.... Of course, and not all greed is bad. Greed helps create companies, which provide the jobs in the first place. It's in a companies interest to make as much as possible. In the case of a corporation the CEO is bound by law to increase profits. So they use any loophole they can to do that. Problem is government is lax on enforcement of the law and looking out for the public interest. The FDA takes money from the drug companies they are supposed to regulate. Bound by law, huh? Can you find that law for me? Good luck.

Alumbrado -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 5:44:43 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: meatcleaver The problem isn't NAFTA, its capitalism and since America believes in capitalism, I'm wondering what the problem is. It's just so much cheaper for companies to use cheap labour in countries where people are dirt poor, scratching a living and there are no safety nets for the out of work. Why pay for a so called skilled worker when most manufacturing doesn't require skilled workers, they require skills that at their most complex, can be learnt within a week or two. Hell, companies can even get children to work for them but of course they will never admit to that. It is necessary in capitalism for companies to act in a psychopathic way, playing one set of people off against another set of people. It is just the turn of workers in the developed world to be the losers while the dirt poor in the underdeveloped world are exploited. That's capitalism, you believe in it or you don't but don't complain when a system as ruthless capitalism turns round and bites you, you should know it would in the end, you have to prepare for the bad times in the good tim es. The difference in pay between Chinese capitalist's and Western capitalist's factories is what the media has tried to delude you with as a distraction from the real difference...and you've fallen for it hook line and sinker. And your comment about learning to be a machinist, or other production skilled technical worker (as opposed to an assembler) in a couple of weeks indicates strongly that you've never turned in a days worth of such work in your life.

Alumbrado -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 5:47:59 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Irishknight NAFTA is the tool by which the politicians raped our manufacturing base in order to make us more dependent on the government. It wasn't a mistake. It was a deliberate attack upon the middle class and our ability to live. The only thing we have recieved from it is a deficit of jobs (more went out than came in) and cheap foreign made garbage that breaks 3 times as fast as the stuff we used to buy. The sad part is that people can't see that when you buy 5 clock radios in three years for 10 bucks its more expensive than buying one over the same period for 30 bucks. And how did the NAFTA 1993/4 legislation cause the jobs to start leaving, and manufacturing to begin a downturn in the 1970s?

meatcleaver -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 5:53:35 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Alumbrado quote: ORIGINAL: meatcleaver The problem isn't NAFTA, its capitalism and since America believes in capitalism, I'm wondering what the problem is. It's just so much cheaper for companies to use cheap labour in countries where people are dirt poor, scratching a living and there are no safety nets for the out of work. Why pay for a so called skilled worker when most manufacturing doesn't require skilled workers, they require skills that at their most complex, can be learnt within a week or two. Hell, companies can even get children to work for them but of course they will never admit to that. It is necessary in capitalism for companies to act in a psychopathic way, playing one set of people off against another set of people. It is just the turn of workers in the developed world to be the losers while the dirt poor in the underdeveloped world are exploited. That's capitalism, you believe in it or you don't but don't complain when a system as ruthless capitalism turns round and bites you, you should know it would in the end, you have to prepare for the bad times in the good tim es. The difference in pay between Chinese capitalist's and Western capitalist's factories is what the media has tried to delude you with as a distraction from the real difference...and you've fallen for it hook line and sinker. And your comment about learning to be a machinist, or other production skilled technical worker (as opposed to an assembler) in a couple of weeks indicates strongly that you've never turned in a days worth of such work in your life. All is computer now, you put in the programme and sit back and watch. I learnt to use a CNC within two weeks, I had to, I had no one else paying my wages. I spent five years of my youth learning what now can be learnt in two weeks. The real difference in Chinese factories and western factories is that Chinese factories are years behind the west in conditions for their workers. Western workers had to fight inch by inch for their rights in the same way the Chinese will have to. The idea that western capitalism is benigh is to forget the amount of people that died, were incarcerated and were deported because they foughtt for what we enjoy today. Maybe the road for the Chinese will be just as hard, maybe it won't. No hook line and sinker, just not blind to the shit westerner workers had to eat before they won decent conditions. Oh and western companies are happy to pay shit wages to the poor in underdeveloped countires to produce their products, proof enough they were just as happy to pay western workers shit for wages and it wasn't just the times. Capitalism is exploitative, that is its nature, the fact that western compamnies are laying off western workers to exploit cheap workers in the underdeveloped world is an illustration of that. Capitalism is capitalism, western or Chinese style.

Alumbrado -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 5:59:35 AM)
Again your ability to miss the obvious is impressive. The pay of workers is but a small part of the difference that led to outsourcing manufacturing jobs. People don't generally go to the trouble and expense of opening factories just so they can gloat over the misfortune of their employees. The misfortume comes as an end result of the real reasons for running factories.

meatcleaver -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 6:02:06 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Alumbrado Again your ability to miss the obvious is impressive. The pay of workers is but a small part of the difference that led to outsourcing manufacturing jobs. If you are saying it is tax and government bureacracy then you are missing the point. Germany exports more manufactured products than the US and German tax and social and bureaucratic costs for companies is far higher than the US. If a western company wants to manufacture products in its own country it has to make premium product that people will pay a higher price for.

Archer -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 6:05:43 AM)
Because many of us know at least instinctively that NAFTA is a scapegoat. That there have been multiple reasons for offshoreing that have nothing to do with NAFTA. NAFTA didn't have unions that raised worker pay to the point where some companies have lost competativeness to their overseas competition. (biting the hand that feeds them, see the closure of Eastern Airlines or the plight of the US Auto Industry) NAFTA didn't create the shortage of qualified workers in various sectors. NAFTA didn't make the US a middle of the road country when it comes to educated workers. NAFTA didn't move a single job off shore to India or the Pacific rim. NAFTA didn set up a corporate tax structure that taxes a company for goods who's whole life never has them cross the US boarder. ( Product made in Mexico sold in Equidor but the company headquarters in the US and the US is about the only company that taxes that profit on top of the taxes from both Mexico and Equidor) The list goes on of things that create off shoreing of formerly US based companies that have nothing to do with NAFTA.

Alumbrado -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 6:45:19 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: meatcleaver quote: ORIGINAL: Alumbrado Again your ability to miss the obvious is impressive. The pay of workers is but a small part of the difference that led to outsourcing manufacturing jobs. If you are saying it is tax and government bureacracy then you are missing the point. Germany exports more manufactured products than the US and German tax and social and bureaucratic costs for companies is far higher than the US. If a western company wants to manufacture products in its own country it has to make premium product that people will pay a higher price for. Do you have any idea how dishonest it makes you look when you fabricate an entire position that doesn't resemble anything I siad, and try to pretend I am in favor of it? Do you even care? I and others have repeatedly pointed out well documented facts from history, from current events, from reality... on the slave trade, on religion, on the Holocaust, on political economy, and none of them phase you in the least... you dismisss them all without consideration because they prove you incorrect, and go your merry way thinking you've scored points in some sort of online role playing game... To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. Macaulay: History of England

Alumbrado -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 6:51:15 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Archer Because many of us know at least instinctively that NAFTA is a scapegoat. That there have been multiple reasons for offshoreing that have nothing to do with NAFTA. NAFTA didn't have unions that raised worker pay to the point where some companies have lost competativeness to their overseas competition. (biting the hand that feeds them, see the closure of Eastern Airlines or the plight of the US Auto Industry) NAFTA didn't create the shortage of qualified workers in various sectors. NAFTA didn't make the US a middle of the road country when it comes to educated workers. NAFTA didn't move a single job off shore to India or the Pacific rim. NAFTA didn set up a corporate tax structure that taxes a company for goods who's whole life never has them cross the US boarder. ( Product made in Mexico sold in Equidor but the company headquarters in the US and the US is about the only company that taxes that profit on top of the taxes from both Mexico and Equidor) The list goes on of things that create off shoreing of formerly US based companies that have nothing to do with NAFTA. There wasn't such a shortage of skilled workers after WWII to the 70s. And union leveraged wages were a convenient scapegoat, but also a distraction from what really went up so high that US manufacturing became non-competitive. And clearly, when deciding to outsource, it made sense to look around for countries that offered the best bottom line, re: taxes, wages, lack of unions, lack of safety regulations, etc.

DarkSteven -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 7:04:38 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Alumbrado There wasn't such a shortage of skilled workers after WWII to the 70s. And union leveraged wages were a convenient scapegoat, but also a distraction from what really went up so high that US manufacturing became non-competitive. One of the reasons the US economy was so good prior to the seventies is that nobody else could manufacture. Europe was rebuilding after WWII and Asia was undeveloped. Deming helped Japan build a manufacturing economy (and they're still grateful to us) to give us our first REAL competition.

Alumbrado -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 7:07:46 AM)
Bingo.... ( at last, someone who has studied the matter)....and then?

MercTech -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 7:18:14 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DarkSteven One of the reasons the US economy was so good prior to the seventies is that nobody else could manufacture. Europe was rebuilding after WWII and Asia was undeveloped. Deming helped Japan build a manufacturing economy (and they're still grateful to us) to give us our first REAL competition. Oh yes. But the downturn started in the 50s and 60s. Japan and Europe had their industrial base bombed to bedrock in WWII. The U.S. was still going full speed ahead with 1930s vintage factories. Does anyone else remember the UAW and Steel Workers striking to block retooling factories for modern automation in the 1960s? Some of our major industries were left in the dust by higher quality at lower cost by the 1970s coming out of more modern design factories in Germany and Japan. Stefan

sappatoti -> RE: Why the lack of interest in eliminating NAFTA? (8/28/2008 7:39:47 AM)
Just an observation not backed up by anything else other than my own thoughts... Wouldn't all those countries that were rebuilding also look at the antiquated government/industrial interactions in the US at that time and restructure their governments as well; becoming more proactive to make sure the business foundations were more friendly to both business and labor? I would think that the European and Japanese reconstruction should have at least considered that, looking to not only better how the US was manufacturing but also making the regulatory environment more progressive. Again, just an observation from a historical perspective.

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