"Mark Browne" wrote in message
news:Ikklb.840215$Ho3.246743@sccrnsc03...

"NOYB" wrote in message
ink.net...

"Mark Browne" wrote in message
. net...

"Calif Bill" wrote in message
ink.net...
snip

Your reply shows how much out of touch with reality you are.
Explain
how
we
are to compete in the world market, given our labor costs.

Tell me again how much we are supposed to make to be competitive with
$2.00/hour labor?

We simply are not going to be able to reduce wages enough to be
competitive
with the third world. Now that the Pandora's box of free-trade is
open,
our
standard of living will be under fire until the standard of living in
the
USA is equal to the standards of living in the poorest country in the
world.

There's your pessimism shining through again, Mark.

Why not rewrite that to say "Now that we have free-trade, the standards
of
living in the poorest countries will continue to rise until the standard
of
living in those countries is closer to the standard of living in the
USA"?

You say "Yeah, right". Well...it happened in Japan.

Hmmm, you seem to be comparing apples and oranges. Japan was a relatively
small country in relation to the United States, and the degree of trade
imbalance was small in relation to the United States GDP. The population
in
China, just to take one trading partner for example, dwarfs the USA. When
you add up India, China, most of Asia, Mexico, and Canada, you are turning
the equation completely around. We can bleed the USA dry and not bring the
rest of the world up the current USA standard of living. On the other
hand,
as skilled jobs leave the country we can see a collapse of the middle
class
resulting in a transformation of the USA into a country resembling Mexico.

The only hope in my mind is to use tools like the IMF and WTO to rapidly
build up the economies of other countries, instead of bleeding them dry.

Mark Browne




Japan had a couple of things working for it. Number one, we rebuilt all
their industries. Modern steel mils, etc. Our mills stayed with the older
Bessemer and could not compete. Plus they were a very homogenous, great
work ethic society. Plus we prevented them from having an army and that
saved at least 6% of their GNP. Lots of growth from that alone. As Mark
says, the rest of the world is too big for us to prop up alone. Europe is
near bankrupt. Their social security system is consuming way to much money
to keep going.
Bill