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Global Backlash Against Globalism

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Anonymous

Guest
Yep-- folks are waking up to the fact that globalization and all these FTA's were just a scheme of the worlds elite to make themselves much richer and to create a world of serfs out of the rest of the population.....Sad thing is that in doing so by bowing down to the elitists, Clinton/Bush sold out much of our Constitution and our National Sovereignty-- and are still trying to Fast Track sell out more.....

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Global backlash against globalization?



Patrick Wood*

Renew America**

July 26, 2007



For decades, global elitists have claimed special knowledge that they alone could solve the world's problems if only we (the ignorant masses) would leave them alone to get on with it. It would create jobs and economic prosperity, they said. They promised peace and security. Truly, what's not to like about their New World Order?



Imagine how shocked they were when Financial Times published the results of an FT/Harris poll (July 22, 2007) which showed almost universal disdain for the very policies that were supposed to save us. According to the FT article,


The depth of anti-globalization feeling in the FT/Harris poll, which surveyed more than 1,000 people online in each of the six countries, will dismay policy-makers and corporate executives. Their view that opening economies to freer trade is beneficial to poor and rich countries alike is not shared by the citizens of rich countries, regardless of how liberal their economic traditions.



Yet, their clever defense is already built into the FT title: "Globalization backlash in rich nations."



That's right, it's only the selfish rich nations who are resisting globalization. And, we should slap more taxes on ourselves to teach ourselves a lesson.



But wait, does this mean that poor nations are embracing globalization?



Apparently, anti-globalization riots and protests in 3rd world countries aren't taken into account. Nor does it seem to matter that communist and other brutal dictatorships don't even allow dissent; remember that there are plenty of dictatorships involved with the global elite, including countries like communist China.



In the FT/Harris poll, the question was posed: "Do you think globalization is having a positive or negative effect in your country?"



Less than 20 percent of citizen respondents in the UK, France, Spain and the U.S. viewed it as having a positive effect. Germany and Italy were a bit higher.



Still, well over 50 percent of all respondents voted "No" to globalization.



Another shock to the pro-globalization elite is the overwhelming passage (362-63 on July 24, 2007) of the Duncan Hunter Amendment (H.R. 3074) to the Transportation Appropriations Act, "prohibiting the use of federal funds for participation in working groups under the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), including the creation of the NAFTA Super Highway."


"The proposed NAFTA Super Highway presents significant challenges to our nation's security, the safety of vehicle motorists, and will likely drive down wages for American workers," said Congressman Hunter. "Much like NAFTA, the super highway is designed to serve the interests of our trading partners and will lead to neither security nor prosperity."


Congressman Duncan Hunter, also a presidential candidate, told his fellow congressional colleagues,



"This 12 lane highway, which is already under construction in Texas, will fast-track thousands of cargo containers across the U.S. without adequate security. These containers will move from Mexico, a country with a record of corruption and involvement in the drug trade, across a border that is already porous and insufficiently protected.



"Unfortunately, very little is known about the NAFTA Super Highway. This amendment will provide Congress the opportunity to exercise oversight of the highway, which remains a subject of question and uncertainty, and ensure that our safety and security will not be comprised in order to promote the business interests of our neighbors."






Obviously, criticism of globalization in the U.S. is certainly not limited to citizens only.



What end-run will the global elite devise to counter these negative sentiments? Will they simply stiffen their necks even more and barge ahead in defiance of citizens and Congress alike?



If history is a guide, they will most likely dismiss all such criticisms as coming from ignorant people who don't know any better in the first place.



Related video:



Backlash vs. 'globalization'

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/business/2007/07/24/romans.globalization.backlash.cnn



Call for more tax on rich

http://video.ft.com/ukdailyvideo/?clipid=1359_FT0339



Note: For further information on globalization, see The August Review

http://www.augustreview.com/



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*Patrick M. Wood is editor of The August Review, which builds on his original research with the late Antony C. Sutton, who was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Peace and Revolution at Stanford University. Their 1977-1982 newsletter, Trilateral Observer, was the original authoritative critique on the New International Economic Order spearheaded by members of the Trilateral Commission. Wood is also executive director of World Research Library, publisher of The August Review.



**Mission statement

The mission of RenewAmerica is to expand the influence of America's grassroots--both among individual citizens and among principled groups--in the cause of preserving our nation upon its founding ideals, specifically those in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, as written.

RenewAmerica is not just cooperative, however, in that shared effort. It is truly inclusive: We seek to bring together all Americans who believe in our country's founding vision.



renewamerica.us/columns
 

MoGal

Well-known member
Yes, but read this 6 page document and see how they plan on appeasing the american people.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86403-p50/kenneth-f-scheve-matthew-j-slaughter/a-new-deal-for-globalization.html
 

MoGal

Well-known member
A New Deal for Globalization
By Kenneth F. Scheve and Matthew J. Slaughter
From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007



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Summary: Globalization has brought huge overall benefits, but earnings for most U.S. workers -- even those with college degrees -- have been falling recently; inequality is greater now than at any other time in the last 70 years. Whatever the cause, the result has been a surge in protectionism. To save globalization, policymakers must spread its gains more widely. The best way to do that is by redistributing income.
Kenneth F. Scheve is Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Matthew J. Slaughter is Professor of Economics at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and Adjunct Senior Fellow for Business and Globalization at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served on the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2005 to 2007.


WAGES FALLING, PROTECTIONISM RISING

Over the last several years, a striking new feature of the U.S. economy has emerged: real income growth has been extremely skewed, with relatively few high earners doing well while incomes for most workers have stagnated or, in many cases, fallen. Just what mix of forces is behind this trend is not yet clear, but regardless, the numbers are stark. Less than four percent of workers were in educational groups that enjoyed increases in mean real money earnings from 2000 to 2005; mean real money earnings rose for workers with doctorates and professional graduate degrees and fell for all others. In contrast to in earlier decades, today it is not just those at the bottom of the skill ladder who are hurting. Even college graduates and workers with nonprofessional master's degrees saw their mean real money earnings decline. By some measures, inequality in the United States is greater today than at any time since the 1920s.

Advocates of engagement with the world economy are now warning of a protectionist drift in public policy. This drift is commonly blamed on narrow industry concerns or a failure to explain globalization's benefits or the war on terrorism. These explanations miss a more basic point: U.S. policy is becoming more protectionist because the American public is becoming more protectionist, and this shift in attitudes is a result of stagnant or falling incomes. Public support for engagement with the world economy is strongly linked to labor-market performance, and for most workers labor-market performance has been poor.

Given that globalization delivers tremendous benefits to the U.S. economy as a whole, the rise in protectionism brings many economic dangers. To avert them, U.S. policymakers must recognize and then address the fundamental cause of opposition to freer trade and investment. They must also recognize that the two most commonly proposed responses -- more investment in education and more trade adjustment assistance for dislocated workers -- are nowhere near adequate. Significant payoffs from educational investment will take decades to be realized, and trade adjustment assistance is too small and too narrowly targeted on specific industries to have much effect.

The best way to avert the rise in protectionism is by instituting a New Deal for globalization -- one that links engagement with the world economy to a substantial redistribution of income. In the United States, that would mean adopting a fundamentally more progressive federal tax system. The notion of more aggressively redistributing income may sound radical, but ensuring that most American workers are benefiting is the best way of saving globalization from a protectionist backlash.

RISING PROTECTIONISM

U.S. economic policy is becoming more protectionist. First, consider trade. The prospects for congressional renewal of President George W. Bush's trade promotion authority, which is set to expire this summer, are grim. The 109th Congress introduced 27 pieces of anti-China trade legislation; the 110th introduced over a dozen in just its first three months. In late March, the Bush administration levied new tariffs on Chinese exports of high-gloss paper -- reversing a 20-year precedent of not accusing nonmarket economies of illegal export subsidies.

Barriers to inward foreign direct investment (FDI) are also rising. In 2005, the Chinese energy company CNOOC tried to purchase U.S.-headquartered Unocal. The subsequent political storm was so intense that CNOOC withdrew its bid. A similar controversy erupted in 2006 over the purchase of operations at six U.S. ports by Dubai-based Dubai Ports World, eventually causing the company to sell the assets. The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, which is legally required to review and approve certain foreign acquisitions of U.S. businesses, has raised the duration and complexity of many reviews. Both chambers of the 109th Congress passed bills to tighten CFIUS scrutiny even further; similar legislation has already passed in the current House.

This protectionist drift extends to much of the world. The Doha Development Round of trade negotiations, the centerpiece of global trade liberalization, is years behind schedule and now on the brink of collapse. Key U.S. trading partners are becoming increasingly averse to foreign investment, as expressed both in their rhetoric (recent public pronouncements by the governments of France and Germany) and in their actions (new restrictions in China on foreign retailers).

At first glance, this rise in protectionism may seem puzzling. The economic gains from globalization are immense. In the United States, according to estimates from the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics and others, trade and investment liberalization over the past decades has added between $500 billion and $1 trillion in annual income -- between $1,650 and $3,300 a year for every American. A Doha agreement on global free trade in goods and services would generate, according to similar studies, $500 billion a year in additional income in the United States.

International trade and investment have spurred productivity growth, the foundation of rising average living standards. The rate of increase in output per worker hour in the U.S. nonfarm business sector has doubled in the past decade, from an annual average of 1.35 percent between 1973 and 1995 to an annual average of 2.7 percent since 1995. Much of the initial acceleration was related to information technology (IT) -- one of the United States' most globally engaged industries, at the forefront of establishing and expanding production networks linked by trade and investment around the globe.

Gains from globalization have been similarly large in the rest of the world. China and India have achieved stupendous rates of productivity growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Central to this success has been the introduction of market forces, in particular international market forces related to trade and FDI. In Chinese manufacturing, foreign multinational companies account for over half of all exports. And in the Indian IT sector, Indian and foreign multinational firms account for two-thirds of sales.

Freer trade and investment can also enhance other foreign policy goals. The Doha Round was launched shortly after 9/11 because of the view that global poverty is intimately linked to international insecurity and instability. The Doha Round was also intended to remedy the widespread perception that previous rounds of trade negotiations had treated poor nations unfairly by failing to open the very sectors -- such as agriculture -- whose openness would most likely help the world's poor. Accordingly, it is believed that a successful Doha agreement would enhance the United States' image and promote its interests around the world.

There are three common explanations for why protectionism is on the rise in the United States even though globalization is good for both the U.S. economy and U.S. security interests. None, however, is convincing. The first is that a narrow set of industries, such as agriculture and apparel manufacturing, have been harmed by freer trade and, in response, have lobbied hard to turn lawmakers against liberalization. But the incentives for these industries to oppose globalization have not changed in recent years, and there are also many industries that have benefited from, and thus lobbied for, further liberalization. What is new today is that special-interest protectionists are facing a more receptive audience.

The second explanation is that policymakers and the business community have failed to adequately explain the benefits of freer trade and investment to the public. But in fact, public-opinion data show the opposite: large majorities of Americans acknowledge these broad benefits. If anything, the public seems to understand certain benefits better than ever -- for example, that its enjoyment of relatively affordable toys, DVD players, and other products depends on globalization.

Finally, there is the security explanation: that the need to balance economic interests with national security concerns has resulted in a more protectionist stance. This may help explain policy debates on certain issues, such as immigration. But generally, security concerns strengthen rather than weaken the case for further trade and investment liberalization, as long as such liberalization is viewed as fair to the developing world.

THE ROOTS OF PROTECTIONISM

The fundamental explanation is much simpler: policy is becoming more protectionist because the public is becoming more protectionist, and the public is becoming more protectionist because incomes are stagnating or falling. The integration of the world economy has boosted productivity and wealth creation in the United States and much of the rest of the world. But within many countries, and certainly within the United States, the benefits of this integration have been unevenly distributed -- and this fact is increasingly being recognized. Individuals are asking themselves, "Is globalization good for me?" and, in a growing number of cases, arriving at the conclusion that it is not.

This account of rising protectionism depends on two key facts. First, there is a strong link between individuals' labor-market interests and their policy opinions about globalization. Second, in the past several years labor-market outcomes have become worse for many more Americans -- and globalization is plausibly part of the reason for this poor performance.

Research on polling data shows that opinions about trade, FDI, and immigration are closely correlated to skill and educational levels. Less skilled Americans -- who make up the majority of the U.S. labor force -- have long led opposition to open borders. Workers with only high school educations are almost twice as likely to support protectionist policies as workers with college educations are.

This divide in opinion according to skill level reflects the impact that less skilled Americans expect market liberalization to have on their earnings. It also reflects their actual poor real and relative earnings performance in recent decades. It is now well established that income inequality across skill levels has been rising since (depending on the measure) the mid- to late 1970s and that the benefits of productivity gains over this time accrued mainly to higher-skilled workers. For example, from 1966 to 2001, the median pretax inflation-adjusted wage and salary income grew just 11 percent -- versus 58 percent for incomes in the 90th percentile and 121 percent for those in the 99th percentile. Forces including skill-biased technological change played a major role in these income trends; the related forces of globalization seem to have played a smaller role -- but a role nonetheless.

There are two important points about this link between policy opinions and labor-market skills and performance. One is that it does not simply reflect different understandings of the benefits of globalization. Polling data are very clear here: large majorities of Americans acknowledge the many benefits of open borders -- lower prices, greater product diversity, a competitive spur to firms -- which are also highlighted by academics, policymakers, and the business community. At the same time, they perceive that along with these benefits, open borders have put pressures on worker earnings.

Second, a worker's specific industry does not appear to drive his view of globalization. This is because competition in the domestic labor market extends the pressures of globalization beyond trade- and foreign-investment-exposed industries to the entire economy. If workers in a sector such as automobile manufacturing lose their jobs, they compete for new positions across sectors -- and thereby put pressure on pay in the entire economy. What seems to matter most is what kind of worker you are in terms of skill level, rather than what industry you work in.

The protectionist drift also depends on worsening labor-market outcomes over the past several years. By traditional measures, such as employment growth and unemployment rates, the U.S. labor market has been strong of late. Today, with unemployment at 4.5 percent, the United States is at or near full employment. But looking at the number of jobs misses the key change: for several years running, wage and salary growth for all but the very highest earners has been poor, such that U.S. income gains have become extremely skewed.

Of workers in seven educational categories -- high school dropout, high school graduate, some college, college graduate, nonprofessional master's, Ph.D., and M.B.A./J.D./M.D. -- only those in the last two categories, with doctorates or professional graduate degrees, experienced any growth in mean real money earnings between 2000 and 2005. Workers in these two categories comprised only 3.4 percent of the labor force in 2005, meaning that more than 96 percent of U.S. workers are in educational groups for which average money earnings have fallen. In contrast to in earlier decades, since 2000 even college graduates and those with nonprofessional master's degrees -- 29 percent of workers in 2005 -- suffered declines in mean real money earnings.

The astonishing skewness of U.S. income growth is evident in the analysis of other measures as well. The growth in total income reported on tax returns has been extremely concentrated in recent years: the share of national income accounted for by the top one percent of earners reached 21.8 percent in 2005 -- a level not seen since 1928. In addition to high labor earnings, income growth at the top is being driven by corporate profits, which are at nearly 50-year highs as a share of national income and which accrue mainly to those with high labor earnings. The basic fact is clear: the benefits of strong productivity growth in the past several years have gone largely to a small set of highly skilled, highly compensated workers.

Economists do not yet understand exactly what has caused this skewed pattern of income growth and to what extent globalization itself is implicated, nor do they know how long it will persist. Still, it is plausible that there is a connection. Poor income growth has coincided with the integration into the world economy of China, India, and central and eastern Europe. The IT revolution has meant that certain workers are now facing competition from the overseas outsourcing of jobs in areas such as business services and computer programming. Even if production does not move abroad, increased trade and multinational production can put pressure on incomes by making it easier for firms to substitute foreign workers for domestic ones.

These twin facts -- the link between labor-market performance and opinions on globalization and the recent absence of real income growth for so many Americans -- explain the recent rise in protectionism. Several polls of U.S. public opinion show an alarming rise in protectionist sentiment over the past several years. For example, an ongoing NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that from December 1999 to March 2007, the share of respondents stating that trade agreements have hurt the United States increased by 16 percentage points (to 46 percent) while the "helped" share fell by 11 points (to just 28 percent). A 2000 Gallup poll found that 56 percent of respondents saw trade as an opportunity and 36 percent saw it as a threat; by 2005, the percentages had shifted to 44 percent and 49 percent, respectively. The March 2007 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found negative assessments of open borders even among the highly skilled: only 35 percent of respondents with a college or higher degree said they directly benefited from the global economy.

Given the lack of recent real income growth for most Americans, newfound skepticism about globalization is not without cause. Nor is it without effect: the change in public opinion is the impetus for the protectionist drift in policy. Politicians have an incentive to propose and implement protectionist policies because more citizens want them, and protectionist special interests face an audience of policymakers more receptive to their lobbying efforts than at any time in the last two decades.

INADEQUATE ADJUSTMENTS

Because the protectionist drift reflects the legitimate concerns of a now very large majority of Americans, the policy debate needs fresh thinking. There is reason to worry even if one does not care about social equity. When most workers do not see themselves as benefiting from the related forces of globalization and technology, the resulting protectionist drift may end up eliminating the gains from globalization for everybody. Current ignorance about the exact causes of the skewed income growth is not reason for inaction. Policymakers may not be able to attack the exact source (or sources) and likely would not want to even if they could identify them, because doing so could reduce or even eliminate the aggregate gains from globalization.

Supporters of globalization face a stark choice: shore up support for an open global system by ensuring that a majority of workers benefit from it or accept that further liberalization is no longer sustainable. Given the aggregate benefits of open borders, the preferable option is clear.

Current policy discussions addressing the distributional consequences of globalization typically focus on the main U.S. government program for addressing the labor-market pressures of globalization -- Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) -- and on investing more in education. These ideas will help but are inadequate for the problem at hand.

The problem with TAA is that it incorrectly presumes that the key issue is transitions across jobs for workers in trade-exposed industries. Established in the Trade Act of 1974 (with a related component connected to the North American Free Trade Agreement), the program aids groups of workers in certain industries who can credibly claim that increased imports have destroyed their jobs or have reduced their work hours and wages. TAA-certified workers can access supports including training, extended unemployment benefits while in full-time training, and job-search and relocation allowances.

In short, TAA is inappropriately designed to address the protectionist drift. The labor-market concern driving this drift is not confined to the problem of how to reemploy particular workers in particular sectors facing import competition. Because the pressures of globalization are spread economy-wide via domestic labor-market competition, there is concern about income and job security among workers employed in all sectors.

Today many are calling for reform and expansion of TAA. For example, President Bush has proposed streamlining the processes of eligibility determination and assistance implementation to facilitate reemployment. This year, TAA is due to be reauthorized by Congress, and many legislators have proposed broadening the number of industries that are TAA-eligible. TAA improvements like these are surely welcome. But they alone cannot arrest the protectionist drift.

The idea behind investing in education is that higher-skilled workers generally earn more and are more likely to directly benefit from economic openness. The problem with this approach, however, is that upgrading skills is a process that takes generations -- its effects will come far too late to address today's opposition to globalization. It took 60 years for the United States to boost the share of college graduates in the labor force from six percent (where it was at the end of World War II) to about 33 percent (where it is today). And that required major government programs, such as the GI Bill, and profound socioeconomic changes, such as increased female labor-force participation.

If the United States today undertook the goal of boosting its college-graduate share of the work force to 50 percent, the graduation of that median American worker would, if the rate of past efforts are any indication, not come until about 2047. And even this far-off date might be too optimistic. In the past generation, the rate of increase in the educational attainment of U.S. natives has slowed from its 1960s and 1970s pace, in part because college-completion rates have stalled. Rising income inequality may itself be playing a role here. Since 1988, 74 percent of American students at the 146 top U.S. colleges have come from the highest socioeconomic quartile, compared with just 3 percent from the lowest quartile. Moreover, even college graduates and holders of nonprofessional master's degrees have experienced falling mean real money earnings since 2000. If this trend continues, even completing college will not assuage the concerns behind rising protectionism.

GLOBALIZATION AND REDISTRIBUTION

Given the limitations of these two reforms and the need to provide a political foundation for engagement with the world economy, the time has come for a New Deal for globalization -- one that links trade and investment liberalization to a significant income redistribution that serves to share globalization's gains more widely. Recall that $500 billion is a common estimate of the annual income gain the United States enjoys today from earlier decades of trade and investment liberalization and also of the additional annual income it would enjoy as a result global free trade in goods and services. These aggregate gains, past and prospective, are immense and therefore immensely important to secure. But the imbalance in recent income growth suggests that the number of Americans not directly sharing in these aggregate gains may now be very large.

Truly expanding the political support for open borders requires a radical change in fiscal policy. This does not, however, mean making the personal income tax more progressive, as is often suggested. U.S. taxation of personal income is already quite progressive. Instead, policymakers should remember that workers do not pay only income taxes; they also pay the FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) payroll tax for social insurance. This tax offers the best way to redistribute income.

The payroll tax contains a Social Security portion and a Medicare portion, each of which is paid half by the worker and half by the employer. The overall payroll tax is a flat tax of 15.3 percent on the first $94,200 of gross income for every worker, with an ongoing 2.9 percent flat tax for the Medicare portion beyond that. Because it is a flat-rate tax on a (largely) capped base, it is a regressive tax -- that is, it tends to reinforce rather than offset pretax inequality. At $760 billion in 2005, the regressive payroll tax was nearly as big as the progressive income tax ($1.1 trillion). Because it is large and regressive, the payroll tax is an obvious candidate for meaningful income redistribution linked to globalization.

A New Deal for globalization would combine further trade and investment liberalization with eliminating the full payroll tax for all workers earning below the national median. In 2005, the median total money earnings of all workers was $32,140, and there were about 67 million workers at or below this level. Assuming a mean labor income for this group of about $25,000, these 67 million workers would receive a tax cut of about $3,800 each. Because the economic burden of this tax falls largely on workers, this tax cut would be a direct gain in after-tax real income for them. With a total price tag of about $256 billion, the proposal could be paid for by raising the cap of $94,200, raising payroll tax rates (for progressivity, rates could escalate as they do with the income tax), or some combination of the two. This is, of course, only an outline of the needed policy reform, and there would be many implementation details to address. For example, rather than a single on-off point for this tax cut, a phase-in of it (like with the earned-income tax credit) would avoid incentive-distorting jumps in effective tax rates.

This may sound like a radical proposal. But keep in mind the figure of $500 billion: the annual U.S. income gain from trade and investment liberalization to date and the additional U.S. gain a successful Doha Round could deliver. Redistribution on this scale may be required to overcome the labor-market concerns driving the protectionist drift. Determining the right scale and structure of redistribution requires a thoughtful national discussion among all stakeholders. Policymakers must also consider how exactly to link such redistribution to further liberalization. But this should not obscure the essential idea: to be politically viable, efforts for further trade and investment liberalization will need to be explicitly linked to fundamental fiscal reform aimed at distributing globalization's aggregate gains more broadly.

SAVING GLOBALIZATION

Averting a protectionist backlash is in the economic and security interests of the United States. Globalization has generated -- and can continue to generate -- substantial benefits for the United States and the rest of the world. But realizing those broad benefits will require addressing the legitimate concerns of U.S. voters by instituting a New Deal for globalization.

In many ways, today's protectionist drift is similar to the challenges faced by the architect of the original New Deal. In August 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt declared:


"Those who would measure confidence in this country in the future must look first to the average citizen. . . .

"This Government intends no injury to honest business. The processes we follow in seeking social justice do not, in adding to general prosperity, take from one and give to another. In this modern world, the spreading out of opportunity ought not to consist of robbing Peter to pay Paul. In other words, we are concerned with more than mere subtraction and addition. We are concerned with multiplication also -- multiplication of wealth through cooperative action, wealth in which all can share."

Today, such multiplication will depend on striking a delicate balance -- between allowing globally engaged companies to continue to generate large overall gains for the United States and using well-targeted fiscal mechanisms to spread the gains more widely.

Would addressing concerns about income distribution make voters more likely to support open borders? The public-opinion data suggest that the answer is yes. Americans consistently say that they would be more inclined to back trade and investment liberalization if it were linked to more support for those hurt in the process. The policy experience of other countries confirms this point: there is greater support for engagement with the world economy in countries that spend more on programs for dislocated workers.

U.S. policymakers face a clear choice. They can lead the nation down the dangerous path of creeping protectionism. Or they can build a stable foundation for U.S. engagement with the world economy by sharing the gains widely. A New Deal for globalization can ensure that globalization survives.
 

MoGal

Well-known member
While I totally disagree with their "solution" to globalization. I don't want to see an open border, illegals should be escorted out by force if necessary and we should start impeaching Congress one by one for not upholding and enforcing the laws we have (starting with border security).

I also believe a good checks and balances system is to disallow a congressional person (no matter how many years they've been in Congress) any portion of their retirement system that they have never contributed to ........ if they are prosecuted and found guilty of any federal crime. They start losing that multimillion dollar retirement program and they will straighten up and serve their constituents.
 

Cal

Well-known member
Oldtimer wrote
Yep-- folks are waking up to the fact that globalization and all these FTA's were just a scheme of the worlds elite to make themselves much richer and to create a world of serfs out of the rest of the population.....Sad thing is that in doing so by bowing down to the elitists, Clinton/Bush sold out much of our Constitution and our National Sovereignty-- and are still trying to Fast Track sell out more.....
Okay, I've heard the evidence about how living standards all around the world are advancing. So if we've created a "world of serfs", how can this be so?
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Cal said:
Oldtimer wrote
Yep-- folks are waking up to the fact that globalization and all these FTA's were just a scheme of the worlds elite to make themselves much richer and to create a world of serfs out of the rest of the population.....Sad thing is that in doing so by bowing down to the elitists, Clinton/Bush sold out much of our Constitution and our National Sovereignty-- and are still trying to Fast Track sell out more.....
Okay, I've heard the evidence about how living standards all around the world are advancing. So if we've created a "world of serfs", how can this be so?

While more of the absolute poverty has disappeared in the world--many of these workers of the world that took the US jobs still live in poverty-- Much of the worlds rise in living standard came on the backs of the working man of the industrialized countries and the lowering of their standards of living...The US, Canada, Australia, Britain etc. all had a widening gap between the rising amount earned by the excessively rich, the shrinking middle class and the poor-- and the big problem has arisen is that much more of the middle class is now on the lower side of middle- has moved down into the poverty class- or is borderline poverty.....The global economics of the past 20 years has created a much larger borderline poverty/low middle class....In other words while part of the worlds standard of living raised- it was at the cost to many US citizens standards of living....

Much of this has come about because of the much cheaper paying US jobs that replaced the old ones that were lost to poverty wages in India, Mexico, China, S.E. Asia, Central America, etal--leaving the Administrative and CEO wages at a difference of 200-400% of the working wage earner in the US-- and up to numbers in the 1000's% on their foreign employees.....
When the CEO makes 400% more than his employees I'd call that a King/Serf relationship...... 1000% is almost pure slave labor...


The integration of the world economy has boosted productivity and wealth creation in the United States and much of the rest of the world. But within many countries, and certainly within the United States, the benefits of this integration have been unevenly distributed -- and this fact is increasingly being recognized.

The portion of national income earned by the top 20 percent of households grew to 50.4 percent last year, up from 45.6 percent 20 years ago; the bottom 60 percent of U.S. households received 26.6 percent, down from 29.9 percent in 1985, according to the Census Bureau. Meanwhile, average pay for corporate chief executive officers rose to 369 times that of the average worker last year, according to finance professor Kevin Murphy of the University of Southern California; that compares with 131 times in 1993 and 36 times in 1976.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&refer=politics&sid=atGy4g3gcN4I


Income Gap Of Poor, Rich, Widens
U.S. Census Data Shows Gulf Between Rich And Poor Growing Larger


WASHINGTON, Aug. 16, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS)


Quote

"For those working in the bottom half of the pay scale, they're under an enormous amount of pressure."
Mark Zandi, chief economist, Economy.com
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(AP) Over two decades, the income gap has steadily increased between the richest Americans, who own homes and stocks and got big tax breaks, and those at the middle and bottom of the pay scale, whose paychecks buy less.

The growing disparity is even more pronounced in this recovering economy. Wages are stagnant and the middle class is shouldering a larger tax burden. Prices for health care, housing, tuition, gas and food have soared.

The wealthiest 20 percent of households in 1973 accounted for 44 percent of total U.S. income, according to the Census Bureau. Their share jumped to 50 percent in 2002, while everyone else's fell. For the bottom fifth, the share dropped from 4.2 percent to 3.5 percent.

Jobs and the economy top the list of voter concerns this election year. President Bush touts a strong economy that is growing, but polls find that Americans have doubts and think jobs are scarce. John Kerry is trusted more on the economy, with Democrats talking regularly of "two Americas," divided between the rich and everyone else.

That argument has merit, some private economists say.

"For those working in the bottom half of the pay scale, they're under an enormous amount of pressure," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.

New government data also shows that President Bush's tax cuts have shifted the overall tax burden to the middle class from the wealthiest Americans.

"We're just trying to get ahead." said Debbie Reames, 49, of Raytown, Mo., whose bank job of 24 years was sent overseas in February. "But it seems like we climb a few rungs and then we fall back again."

Reames has a new secretarial job, which pays $7,000 a year less than her bank job, and she works catering jobs for extra money. Her husband, Russ, can no longer work after an injury. One son is finishing college and another will start in the fall.

So the family budget tightened. That meant fewer cable channels, more meals at home, postponed doctor appointments, missed vacations, delayed credit card payments, all to "keep the wolf away from the door," she said.

The U.S. jobs market is soft, sending wages down. Hiring came to a near standstill last month, with companies adding just 32,000 new jobs overall, stunning economists who had expected seven times as many.

More than a million jobs have been added back to the 2.6 million lost since Mr. Bush took office, but they pay less and offer fewer benefits, such as health insurance. The new jobs are concentrated in health care, food services, and temporary employment firms, all lower-paying industries. Temp agencies alone account for about a fifth of all new jobs.

Three in five pay below the national median hourly wage — $13.53, said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist for Wells Fargo.

On a weekly basis, the average wage of $525.84 is at the lowest level since October 2001.

The income gap is showing up in booming sales of luxury items. Porsche Cars North America Inc. says sales are up 17 percent for the year. Strong sales at Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue overshadow lackluster sales at stores such as Wal-Mart, Sears and Payless Shoes.

Real estate agent Lance Anderson, 38, of Overland Park, Kan., expects a record sales year, as homeowners upgrade to more expensive homes and commercial clients expand. He recently took his family to Disney World for a two-week Florida vacation.

"My clientele, it seems as a whole, has seen positive growth," he said. So his family, including three children, now eat out more often and spend more on clothes. They recently bought two new cars and anticipate buying a larger house in the next few years.

Economists say wages should rise as companies boost hiring. But the growing gap between the haves and have-nots will remain.

Technology has eliminated many U.S. jobs, as has global competition, particularly from low-wage countries such as China. Highly skilled, educated workers in America will thrive as demand rises, Sohn said, while low-skilled jobs remain vulnerable to outsourcing.

"This really has nothing to do with Bush or Kerry, but more to do with the longer-term shift in the structure of the economy," Sohn said.


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/13/national/main635936.shtml
 

Cal

Well-known member
Hey, if some of you long for more protectionism, like from the Carter Administration, or the depression of the dirty thirties, and think our economy would somehow boom if we bought most everything at union prices and more uncompetitive quality....dream on. Might want to check a few figures from those eras.
 

Cal

Well-known member
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/LawrenceKudlow/2007/05/18/if_you_really_want_to_make_us_companies_more_competitive?page=full&comments=true

If You Really Want To Make U.S. Companies More Competitive...
By Lawrence Kudlow
Friday, May 18, 2007

There’s a big hullabaloo in Washington about making America more “competitive.” Much of the hubbub centers around President Bush’s powerful Treasury man, Henry Paulson, who has been busy holding conferences and writing op-eds on the subject.

Competitiveness is a noble venture. But the problem I have with the current campaign is that it’s limited to accounting.


Undoubtedly, more transparent auditing, better financial reporting, and streamlined accounting standards to encourage international companies to list on U.S. exchanges are all good things. And of course, Sarbanes-Oxley is an onerous piece of regulatory overreach -- it throws red tape and huge costs at a problem that could have been easily remedied with the stronger enforcement of existing laws. Sarbox reform is in order.

But there’s plenty missing from this competitiveness calculation. To begin, the U.S. is actually doing quite a lot right.

Ever since Ronald Reagan rejuvenated the American free-market system in the 1980s with lower tax rates, deregulation, and disinflation, the U.S. economy has vastly outperformed its industrial trading partners in Europe and Japan. Amazingly, we’ve slogged through only five negative-GDP quarters over the past twenty-five years, for an unbelievable prosperity rate of 95 percent. Our stock market has increased twelve-fold in this period.

Then, in 2003, President Bush’s large-scale tax cuts on capital lit the booster rockets that launched today’s tremendous bull-market economy.

The Dow Jones is setting new highs almost daily. U.S. employment stands at a record 150 million. Household wealth is $56 trillion, another record. And contrary to what the bubbleheads keep telling us, the market value of assets is growing roughly three-times faster than the value of debt liabilities.

None of this would be happening if we weren’t already competitive.

The alleged demise of U.S. manufacturing is a key example of how uncompetitive perception often trumps competitive reality. U.S. manufacturers produced $1.5 trillion worth of goods in 2005, up 70 percent from $900 billion in 1992, according to Edward Gresser of the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute. Manufacturing now accounts for a higher share of the U.S. economy than it did fifteen years ago, and for the same share of world production it enjoyed in the early 1990s. Yes, there have been manufacturing job losses, but virtually all of them have come from productivity-enhancing automation.
Another mistaken criticism alleges that the vast majority of new jobs are low wage. Not true. Last year, the two biggest job-creating sectors -- education/health services and professional/business services -- paid their non-management workers significantly more than the average wage for all workers.

Then we have the liberal commentators who rail on about “income inequality.” Democrats in Congress would solve this by taxing the rich. But such fossilized, populist thinking will only take the capital out of capitalism.

Inside the historically low 4.5 percent unemployment rate, there’s a 7.5 percent unemployment rate for those with less than a high-school diploma, a 4.5 percent rate for high-school grads, and a mere 1.8 percent rate for those with college degrees or better. Or look at these figures: Americans who don’t finish high school earn roughly $429 a week. Those finishing high school pocket $602 a week. And Americans with a bachelor’s degree or higher take home $1,030 a week.

So it pays in this country to stay in school.

But if the Treasury Department and Congress really want to improve American competitiveness, they must continue the Reagan tradition by bolstering our corporate tax competitiveness.

Right now, the U.S. suffers from one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. While the European Union has been cutting business taxes -- the average for EU countries is now only 27 percent -- the U.S. is stuck with a 40 percent corporate income-tax rate. Booming Ireland boasts a corporate rate of only 10 percent. Even France’s rate comes in lower than the U.S. rate.

What’s more, our companies are double-taxed on the profits they make in the U.S. and abroad. Not so in Europe. Across the Atlantic, companies are spared this burden through tax rebates. This disparity not only reduces our competitiveness, it forces our companies to leave profits sitting idly overseas.

Here’s a good idea, courtesy of Loews CEO James Tisch: Reduce the corporate capital-gains tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. Mr. Tisch correctly believes that this would unlock hundreds of billions of languishing corporate asset dollars, injecting new oxygen into the corporate bloodstream. It’s a move that would pay for itself by unleashing a flood of new businesses and jobs, along with a tidal wave of new tax receipts. France and Germany have virtually no capital-gains taxes.

So, while accounting reforms are all well and good, new tax incentives will have a far greater impact on economic competitiveness than mere bookkeeping. No “competitiveness action plan” can be complete without full-scale corporate tax reform.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Cal said:
Hey, if some of you long for more protectionism, like from the Carter Administration, or the depression of the dirty thirties, and think our economy would somehow boom if we bought most everything at union prices and more uncompetitive quality....dream on. Might want to check a few figures from those eras.

Cal its my feeling that if we continue this one way trade with countries like China- and put all our reliance on foreign markets/foreign service centers for the majority of our purchases- both necessities and luxuries- then that is what will lead us to our next major depression....Many of the experts believe that the US economy is much shakier than what the government has put out-- with cooked figures from both the Clinton and Bush Administrations....Much of our debt is tied to the Chinese Stock Market and Industry which is pretty well accepted by all to be about as stable as a fart in a whirlwind....

I'm a great believer in history repeating itself-- and the greatest strength we had thru 2 World Wars and the Great Depression was our industrialized might and our ability to produce our own food products... While times were tough during all those situtions- their was always food for people to eat, even if it was at soup kitchens-people did not starve... That was not true in major portions of Europe and Asia....
 

MoGal

Well-known member
Of workers in seven educational categories -- high school dropout, high school graduate, some college, college graduate, nonprofessional master's, Ph.D., and M.B.A./J.D./M.D. -- only those in the last two categories, with doctorates or professional graduate degrees, experienced any growth in mean real money earnings between 2000 and 2005. Workers in these two categories comprised only 3.4 percent of the labor force in 2005, meaning that more than 96 percent of U.S. workers are in educational groups for which average money earnings have fallen. In contrast to in earlier decades, since 2000 even college graduates and those with nonprofessional master's degrees -- 29 percent of workers in 2005 -- suffered declines in mean real money earnings.

The astonishing skewness of U.S. income growth is evident in the analysis of other measures as well. The growth in total income reported on tax returns has been extremely concentrated in recent years: the share of national income accounted for by the top one percent of earners reached 21.8 percent in 2005 -- a level not seen since 1928. In addition to high labor earnings, income growth at the top is being driven by corporate profits, which are at nearly 50-year highs as a share of national income and which accrue mainly to those with high labor earnings. The basic fact is clear: the benefits of strong productivity growth in the past several years have gone largely to a small set of highly skilled, highly compensated workers.

I think that answers your post Cal.... and NO, I do not think greedy corporate America needs further tax reductions.
 

Cal

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
Cal said:
Hey, if some of you long for more protectionism, like from the Carter Administration, or the depression of the dirty thirties, and think our economy would somehow boom if we bought most everything at union prices and more uncompetitive quality....dream on. Might want to check a few figures from those eras.

Cal its my feeling that if we continue this one way trade with countries like China- and put all our reliance on foreign markets/foreign service centers for the majority of our purchases- both necessities and luxuries- then that is what will lead us to our next major depression....Many of the experts believe that the US economy is much shakier than what the government has put out-- with cooked figures from both the Clinton and Bush Administrations....Much of our debt is tied to the Chinese Stock Market and Industry which is pretty well accepted by all to be about as stable as a fart in a whirlwind....

I'm a great believer in history repeating itself-- and the greatest strength we had thru 2 World Wars and the Great Depression was our industrialized might and our ability to produce our own food products... While times were tough during all those situtions- their was always food for people to eat, even if it was at soup kitchens-people did not starve... That was not true in major portions of Europe and Asia....
Wasn't Europe and Asia engaged in major combat during these periods? And during our own "Soup Kitchen" days, be reminded that international trade was nearly suspended.
 

Cal

Well-known member
MoGal said:
Of workers in seven educational categories -- high school dropout, high school graduate, some college, college graduate, nonprofessional master's, Ph.D., and M.B.A./J.D./M.D. -- only those in the last two categories, with doctorates or professional graduate degrees, experienced any growth in mean real money earnings between 2000 and 2005. Workers in these two categories comprised only 3.4 percent of the labor force in 2005, meaning that more than 96 percent of U.S. workers are in educational groups for which average money earnings have fallen. In contrast to in earlier decades, since 2000 even college graduates and those with nonprofessional master's degrees -- 29 percent of workers in 2005 -- suffered declines in mean real money earnings.

The astonishing skewness of U.S. income growth is evident in the analysis of other measures as well. The growth in total income reported on tax returns has been extremely concentrated in recent years: the share of national income accounted for by the top one percent of earners reached 21.8 percent in 2005 -- a level not seen since 1928. In addition to high labor earnings, income growth at the top is being driven by corporate profits, which are at nearly 50-year highs as a share of national income and which accrue mainly to those with high labor earnings. The basic fact is clear: the benefits of strong productivity growth in the past several years have gone largely to a small set of highly skilled, highly compensated workers.

I think that answers your post Cal.... and NO, I do not think greedy corporate America needs further tax reductions.
Can't you come up with something current, and provide a link?
 

Cal

Well-known member
Hmmm, I wonder if trade with other countries has helped this wheat market? Does anyone think that those container ships are going back across the ocean empty?

http://www.agweb.com/get_article.aspx?src=gennews&pageid=137182

Net sales of 2,077,500 metric tons--the highest since the marketing year began June 1--were two and seven-tenths times the previous week and the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for unknown destinations (602,500 MT), Egypt (428,200 MT), Italy (135,800 MT), Brazil (118,000 MT), Bangladesh (106,000 MT, the first hard red winter sales since 1999/00), the United Arab Emirates (105,500 MT), and Japan (88,000 MT).
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Cal said:
MoGal said:
Of workers in seven educational categories -- high school dropout, high school graduate, some college, college graduate, nonprofessional master's, Ph.D., and M.B.A./J.D./M.D. -- only those in the last two categories, with doctorates or professional graduate degrees, experienced any growth in mean real money earnings between 2000 and 2005. Workers in these two categories comprised only 3.4 percent of the labor force in 2005, meaning that more than 96 percent of U.S. workers are in educational groups for which average money earnings have fallen. In contrast to in earlier decades, since 2000 even college graduates and those with nonprofessional master's degrees -- 29 percent of workers in 2005 -- suffered declines in mean real money earnings.

The astonishing skewness of U.S. income growth is evident in the analysis of other measures as well. The growth in total income reported on tax returns has been extremely concentrated in recent years: the share of national income accounted for by the top one percent of earners reached 21.8 percent in 2005 -- a level not seen since 1928. In addition to high labor earnings, income growth at the top is being driven by corporate profits, which are at nearly 50-year highs as a share of national income and which accrue mainly to those with high labor earnings. The basic fact is clear: the benefits of strong productivity growth in the past several years have gone largely to a small set of highly skilled, highly compensated workers.

I think that answers your post Cal.... and NO, I do not think greedy corporate America needs further tax reductions.
Can't you come up with something current, and provide a link?

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/growth/census/story/501203.html

"But through September, the growth in hourly wages was flat or negative for 27 of the previous 29 months, according to Labor Department data. Wages for blue-collar and nonmanagerial workers -- 80 percent of workers -- are growing at a 3.9 percent annual rate, the Labor Department said in September. Consumer-price inflation, however, is rising at the same rate. That means prices are rising as quickly as wages."

And it's no better for the middle class in 2007.
 

MoGal

Well-known member
Can't you come up with something current, and provide a link?

Evidently you have selective comprehension..... my response to you was from the article I posted above your post and I have the link for it and the article is dated 07/07/07 from the July/August edition.... that is current enough for me.
 

MoGal

Well-known member
Here's an article dated 02/07 - Phyllis Schlafly Report link: http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2007/feb07/psrfeb07.html


Globalism: Enemy of the Middle Class




The majority of countries in the world (e.g., Mexico) have two classes: the rulers who are very, very rich and the rest of the people who are very, very poor. The United States is different; we built a prosperous society with a well-to-do middle class and the chance for anyone, based on merit and hard work, to better himself and live the American dream.

Globalism is the enemy of the middle class. Globalism preaches that the world is flat; that nations should have no borders; that labor, capital, goods and services should flow freely between countries. Globalism's mantras are "free trade" and "abolish protectionism." Globalism forces American workers to compete against people who work in other countries for 30 cents an hour without benefits. Competing with such low wages means the end of the American middle class.

Americans relish competition, as our national fixation on sports contests proves every day. But global trade is not played on a level playing field — our opponents don't play by the rules and the umpire (the World Trade Organization) is biased against us.

Middle-class Americans are waking up to how they have been squeezed out of prosperity by the politicians of both parties who were elected with the political donations and other goodies provided by corporations that reap the rewards of cheap labor through insourcing and outsourcing.


Bush's Plan to Bankrupt Social Security
The Social Security system has been a safety net for the middle class since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now, President George W. Bush is trying to burden it with incredible costs by giving millions of illegal aliens Social Security benefits to which they are not entitled. This so-called "Totalization" plan would bankrupt the system just as our baby-boom generation retires. A 2003 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report warned that the cost to U.S. taxpayers is likely to be vastly higher than official estimates.

Bush made this secret plan with Mexico in June 2004, and we know about it now because of a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by TREA Senior Citizens League, a million-member seniors advocacy group.

Senator John Ensign (R-NV) and Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-WY) have introduced a bill to require Totalization agreements to be treated like bilateral trade agreements, and go into effect only if affirmatively passed by both Houses of Congress. Unless this bill passes, the Totalization agreement will automatically become law without congressional action.

Totalization is part and parcel of the Council on Foreign Relations five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter." The 59-page CFR document (which can claim Bush Administration approval because it is posted on a U.S. State Department website) demands that we "implement the Social Security Totalization Agreement negotiated between the United States and Mexico."

Totalization would allow millions of illegal Mexican workers to collect U.S. benefits based on their U.S earnings under false or stolen Social Security numbers plus virtual earnings in Mexico. American citizens must work ten years to be eligible for Social Security benefits, but the Totalization agreement would allow Mexicans to qualify with only 18 months of work in the United States, and pretend to make up the difference by assuming work and tax payments in Mexico.

The United States has totalization agreements with 21 other countries in order to assure a pension to those few individuals who work in two countries (legally, of course) by "totalizing" their payments into the pension systems of both countries. All existing totalization agreements are with industrialized nations whose retirement systems are on a parity with ours.

Mexican retirement benefits are not remotely equal to U.S. benefits. Americans receive benefits after working for 10 years, but Mexicans have to work 24 years before receiving any benefits. Mexican workers receive back in retirement only what they actually paid in plus interest, whereas the U.S. Social Security system is skewed to give lower-wage earners benefits greatly in excess of what they and their employers contributed.

Mexico has two different retirement programs, one for public-sector employees, which is draining the national treasury, and one for private-sector workers, which covers only 40% of the workforce. Most of the Mexicans who illegally entered the United States previously lived in poverty, where they were unemployed, or worked in the off-the-record economy, or worked for employers who did not pay taxes into a retirement system.

The Bush totalization plan would lure even more Mexicans into the United States illegally in the hope of amnesty and eligibility for Social Security benefits for themselves, as well as for their spouses and dependents who may never have lived in the United States.




The Problem with Globalism
In the Franklin D. Roosevelt era of the 1930s, conventional wisdom was that socialism, based on government spending to deal with all problems, was the wave of the future. That folly persisted into the 1970s, when Richard Nixon famously said, "We are all Keynesians now." Fortunately, such nonsense died with Watergate and was replaced by Reaganomics and its assumption that government is the problem, not the solution.

Now, the fashion is to promote globalism as inevitable. Economists, professors, financial consultants and CEOs for years have been preaching that globalism is the wave of the future and that anyone who wants to survive in business must ride its surfboard or drown.

All of a sudden the voice of business, Business Week, has admitted that the United States is no longer the captain of our fate because "globalization has overwhelmed Washington's ability to control the economy." No longer can the United States set its course for economic growth by tax and spending decisions made by our elected representatives.

The problem is that a common market requires a government to regulate and enforce its rules and contracts. Europe found that out when it progressed from a Common Market to a European Union (EU) run by bureaucrats in Brussels and judges in Luxembourg.

Globalism is world socialism run by a global regulatory body. Business Week concedes this when it reports "the creation of global institutions for governing the world economy." We have already joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and kowtowed to its rulings.

The effects of globalization are not equal. Some get rich, the stock market goes up, and consumer goods get cheaper. But real wages for many U.S. workers are down over the past five years and have stagnated for others. Even Business Week admits that our weak wage growth is driven by competition from cheap labor in Asia, and that Congress is virtually powerless to make any significant difference.

Janet Yellen, president of San Francisco's Federal Reserve Bank, warned in a recent speech: "Globalization and skill-based technological change may have been working in combination to particularly depress the wage gains of those in the middle of the U.S. wage distribution."

What about the area we brag about: research and development? Business Week admits that it's no longer a given that U.S. workers benefit directly from U.S.-funded research because India and China are increasingly attractive places for U.S. companies to do R&D, and education is no answer because globalization depresses wages for the better educated as well as the poorly educated.

The middle class is not placated by feel-good talk that the stock market has climbed to a record high, or that unemployment is at a record low, or that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is growing. Unemployment statistics do not count the fact that thousands of guys lost $50,000 jobs in manufacturing or computers and are now working $25,000 jobs in retail, and job-growth figures happily do count the wives who have been involuntarily forced into the labor force just to keep groceries on the table.

The middle class is not placated by glib slogans that free trade is good for the economy and that protectionism is a nasty word. Common sense tells them that there is no such thing as a free lunch and yes, indeed, we do expect friends in government and industry to protect American jobs against unfair competition from foreigners who work for 30 cents an hour.




Who Will Win the Middle Class?
The biggest moveable bloc of voters who will swing the 2008 election are the middle class, which includes people variously labeled blue-collar workers, skilled workers, or Reagan Democrats. President Ronald Reagan's victories absolutely depended on their support. But Presidents Bush I and II kicked them away from the Republican Party, particularly on the issue of jobs.

The 2006 election showed that the middle class understands that globalization is the enemy of well-paid American jobs. The United States has lost over three million manufacturing jobs since Bush became President. Even if U.S. workers give up pensions, health care, overtime, and all the employment benefits that have become the norm in America, there is no way they can be competitive with the very cheap labor in Asia.

Almost every one of the Republican Members of Congress who bit the dust in the 2006 election had been an enthusiastic booster of the globalists' agenda: NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO (World Trade Organization), Fast Track, PNTR (Permanent Normal Trading Relations), and Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with countries many Americans never heard of. Republicans were badly on the defensive in the face of Democrat ads touting the loss of jobs.

George W. Bush carried Ohio in 2004 because the marriage amendment brought out the values voters. But Democrats can play that game, too: in 2006 the Ohio referendum on increasing the minimum wage raised the jobs issue, passed by 57%, and helped to bury Republican candidates. Ohio has lost its manufacturing base. Some of the good jobs went to plants that were outsourced overseas and some disappeared as a result of competition from cheap Chinese goods.

Republicans who seek to win in 2008 should listen attentively to the campaign messages of the Democrats who won in November 2006.

Incumbent Republican Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) was badly defeated by Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) who led the congressional fight against CAFTA and wrote a book called Myths of Free Trade. Brown's TV ads showed him standing in front of a "plant closed" sign. He promised: "In the U.S. Senate I want to revamp U.S. trade policy to reward corporations that create jobs at home."

Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) was defeated by Bob Casey, whose campaign materials proclaimed that he "opposes unfair trade laws like CAFTA that put U.S. workers at a disadvantage."

Senator George Allen (R-VA) was defeated by Jim Webb, who said, "The middle class is continuing to get squeezed by stagnant wages and rising cost of living. . . . We must reexamine our tax and trade policies . . . so that free trade becomes fair trade."

Ben Cardin, who was elected to the open U.S. Senate seat in Maryland, said, "I will be introducing legislation to restore international tax fairness to prevent further discrimination against American workers."

Globalist policies have encouraged U.S. employers to use near-slave labor in Asia, whose products are then guaranteed duty-free or low-tariff re-entry to the United States. Those products are then sold here for prices that are cheap by U.S. standards but have a high markup of up to 80%.

Globalist policies also allow discrimination against U.S. manufacturers by the Value Added Tax (VAT) racket, whereby foreign governments subsidize their products both coming and going. For example, imported German automobiles cost 16% less in the United States than the same car sold in Germany, and exported U.S. automobiles cost 16% more in Germany than the same car bought in the United States.

All six U.S. Senators thought to be planning a run for the Democratic nomination for president voted against CAFTA. The issue would be dramatically joined if the Democratic nominee were opposed, for example, by Senator John McCain, who supported NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO, and PNTR for China.

Will Republicans continue to follow George W. Bush in his post-election travels to solicit even more Asian products made by cheap labor and subsidized by their governments?

Or will Republicans get smart on the jobs issue and reestablish their friendship with the Reagan Democrats? The candidates who side with the middle class instead of corporate money will be the winners in 2008.


Lies about H-1B Visas
A technology industry coalition called Compete America gathered at Stanford University in November 2006 for a TechNet Innovation Summit, but the goal wasn't innovation. This Coalition, backed by Microsoft, Intel and other computer giants, dispatched its wallet-filled lobbyists to demand that the new Congress vastly increase the number of Indian, Pakistani and Chinese computer software techies and engineers who can be imported on H-1B visas to take U.S. jobs.

H-1Bers cut industry costs but do nothing to improve innovation. Most innovators are Americans; the successful immigrant entrepreneurs the industry brags about did not come here as guest-workers on H-1B visas, but entered as children and were educated in U.S. universities.

The industry's demand for H-1Bs is based on the claim that we suffer a labor shortage in those fields, but that's a bare-faced lie to erect a smokescreen around the real reasons: (a) Cost-cutting: H-1Bers are paid much less than Americans. (b) The influx of H-1Bers depresses the "prevailing wage" for all computer techies and engineers. (c) The hiring of H-1Bers prevents potential competition from Americans who might resign to work for other firms or start companies of their own. H-1B visas are not for entrepreneurs or executives, but are for employees who are tied to the company that imports them (much like indentured servants) and are supposed to depart from the United States after a few years.

The corporate CEOs laid down the gauntlet: if Congress doesn't give them more H-1Bs, they will just outsource the jobs. "Outsourcing is the perfect argument for increasing the numbers" of H-1Bs, said a Compete America spokesman. That's another lie: H-1Bs promote outsourcing. They enable corporations to bring in foreigners, train them in American ways, and then use them effectively in outsourced plants in Asia. Nobel economist Milton Friedman labeled H-1Bs a government "subsidy" to enable employers to get workers at a lower wage.

Current law allows industry to bring in 85,000 H-1B visas a year, but industry lobbyists seek to double or triple the number. They would really like the Cornyn-Shadegg SKIL bill (known to engineers as the KILL bill), which could import 1.5 million underpaid H-1B workers by 2013.

America has more than enough U.S. engineers. After the dot com bust in 2000, Silicon Valley lost about 100,000 engineering jobs, and many of those who lost out are unemployed or underemployed or have taken jobs in other industries.

Research by Professor Norman Matloff of the University of California/Davis confirms that there is no shortage of U.S. engineers or computer techies. If there were a shortage, salaries would be going up, but starting salaries for bachelor's degree graduates in computer science and electrical engineering, adjusted for inflation, are flat or falling.

A major study made by the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University also found that there is no shortage of U.S. engineers. Eighty percent of respondents to a Pratt survey say U.S. engineering jobs are filled within 4 months, and 88% didn't offer signing bonuses.

Many companies hire student engineers from India and China with only 2 or 3 years of college and then train them in their own facilities. U.S. students with 2 or 3 years of college get no job offers.

The Compete America globalists are not interested in preserving America as the greatest nation and economy in the world, or in protecting American industry or jobs or universities or national security. They rejoice in economic redistribution from rich and prosperous nations to other countries around the world.

Bill Gates spoke for the globalists: "The United States has been spoiled by being a global leader for so long that there may be an adjustment. We've got to get used to the fact that our relative share of everything - our ability to exercise unilateral decision making, military power, and economic power - won't be as out of line with our 5 percent share of world population as it is today."

Anyone who rejoices that the United States is losing its preeminence and distributing our wealth around the rest of the world must have lost all patriotism and appreciation for the Yankee ingenuity essential to our prosperity.

If Republicans want to take back Congress in 2008, they will have to find solutions other than the tiresome mantras that we should improve our educational system and be more competitive with cheap labor abroad. The winners will be those who make friends with the middle class, also known as the Reagan Democrats.


Who Is Against Border Guards?
Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were guarding the Mexican border near El Paso, Texas, on February 17, 2005 when they intercepted a van carrying nearly 1,000 pounds of marijuana. They were then convicted and sentenced to 11- and 12-year prison terms for the crime of putting one bullet in the buttocks of the admitted drug smuggler, and failing to report the discharge of their firearms. The non-fatal bullet didn't stop the smuggler from running to escape in a van waiting for him on the Mexican side of the border.

55 Members of Congress have been urging President Bush to pardon the two border guards, and U.S. citizens have sent 200,000 petitions and 15,000 faxes asking for a presidential pardon because they believe these convictions are a great miscarriage of justice. The White House and the U.S. Justice Department have been stonewalling these requests.

The official line of the Bush Administration is that the Border Patrol agents got a fair trial. But that's not true; Border Guards Ramos and Compean didn't get a fair trial. They were convicted because the Justice Department sent investigators into Mexico, tracked down the drug smuggler, and gave him immunity from all prosecution for his drug smuggling crimes if he would please come back and testify against Ramos and Compean. It was massively unfair to give immunity to an illegal alien narcotics trafficker while destroying the lives and families of two Border Patrol agents who risked their lives to stop him. President Bush cannot duck responsibility because both the prosecutor and the judge are Bush appointees.

A major argument used by the prosecution during the trial was that our government has a policy forbidding agents from chasing suspected drug smugglers without first getting permission from supervisors. That exposes the misplaced priorities of the Bush Administration. The case also reminds us that our Border Patrol agents are in daily danger from hardened criminals.

The Department of Homeland Security issued this Officer Safety Alert on December 21, 2005: "Unidentified Mexican alien smugglers . . . have agreed that the best way to deal with U.S. Border Patrol agents is to hire a group of contract killers." The alert cautions that, to perform the killings, the smugglers intend to use the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) street gang, known for its unspeakable atrocities and torture.

T.J. Bonner, chief of the national Border Patrol Council, said "there is a palpable sense of outrage and betrayal" because President Bush pardoned five convicted drug dealers in December 2006, but "two border patrol agents, who were doing their job, fighting the war on drugs on the front lines, are going to prison."

Tony Snow, speaking for President Bush, is trying to convince the public that Ramos and Compean did bad things and deserved to be convicted. Assuming it is true that they violated the rules about fully reporting the incident, that does not deserve a 12-year prison term. They could have been fired, suspended, or had their pay docked.

The bottom line is that the Bush Administration gave total immunity to a proven Mexican drug dealer while two border guards who intercepted his van loaded with illegal drugs have been sent to prison for 12 years, and are not even allowed to remain free pending their appeal.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) called the two agents heroes. "Because of their actions, more than a million dollars in illegal drugs were stopped from being sold to our children. Bringing felony charges against them is a travesty of justice beyond description."
 

MoGal

Well-known member
Here's another website I just located: scroll down to about middle and read the "Goodbye to America's Fabled Economy"


http://www.economyincrisis.org/

I saw on the news last month that the month of May was the highest ever for house foreclosures 175,000 in the USA. Just wait until about Nov/Dec comes out and see what it is, I'm sure it will be higher.
 

Cal

Well-known member
MoGal said:
Here's another website I just located: scroll down to about middle and read the "Goodbye to America's Fabled Economy"


http://www.economyincrisis.org/

I saw on the news last month that the month of May was the highest ever for house foreclosures 175,000 in the USA. Just wait until about Nov/Dec comes out and see what it is, I'm sure it will be higher.
Here, I just found another article to help counterweight your doom and gloom. IMO, we're going to see home foreclosures on alot of idiots who have taken out loans that don't touch the principle, and when housing markets deteriorate they're left severely upside down.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/LawrenceKudlow/2007/07/30/profits_matter?page=full&comments=true

Profits Matter
By Lawrence Kudlow
Monday, July 30, 2007

Stock market bulls like myself were on the losing side of this week's trading, as the Dow gave back roughly 4 percent from its 14,000 peak. The big story was a wave of high-anxiety credit fears over the value of corporate and housing loans. Credit circuits blew a fuse, lending markets temporarily froze, and a number of buyout deals were postponed as analysts and traders worked through their problems.

But this is no time to lose faith. The economy has found its legs with a 3.4 percent GDP growth report for the second quarter, a much-needed surge from only 0.6 percent in Q1. Moreover, core inflation came in at a rock bottom 1.4 percent.
Most importantly, second quarter corporate profits are flowing in two to three times better than expected. Much of this reflects the huge global economic boom that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson describes as the greatest worldwide surge in his professional lifetime. These rising profits inject new value into the stock market.
Doomsday seers on Wall Street take notice: At 15 times forward earnings, the S&P 500 yields about 6.5 percent, a very high equity risk premium compared to a 4.8 percent yield on 10-year Treasury bonds.

Be it loan worries or the stock correction, the key point in all this is the steady stream of rising profits. Profits matter. They are the best guarantee for the credit worthiness of corporate loans and the value of stocks.

As classical economist Benjamin Anderson wrote in the 1920s when he was the top economist at the old Chase National Bank, "Profits are the heart of the business situation." Down through the years, I've paraphrased that as profits are the mother's milk of stocks and the economy. It's time to add creditworthiness to that list.

What we're witnessing is not a true credit crunch, but a temporary credit freezing-up. Banks have a lot of loans from financing buyout deals, and right now the credit freeze has stopped them from selling these loans to institutional customers. Loan markets have been over-leveraged by private equity funds that during the past year or so have completed deals with too little cash equity and too much loan leverage.

Bond vigilantes are disciplining the buyout mavens and forcing a credit risk re-pricing that will incentivize cash equity and discourage debt over leveraging. It's a healthy market-driven correction. The key point is that robust business profitability makes these over-leveraged bank loans good paper, not bad. In due course, the dust will clear and credit markets will resume functioning. Bankers will divide up these loans and resell them in tranches at handsome interest rates to pension funds, insurance companies and money managers around the world.

Congressional Democrats could enhance this healing process if they would quit threatening to raise taxes on buyout firms and hedge funds whose ears are being pinned back by the bond market. This is no time to raise capital costs by repealing Bush's tax cuts or by raising new taxes. Case in point: Former Sen. John Edwards's bad idea to raise the capital gains tax rate to 28 percent from 15 percent, and to drive up the top personal tax rate to at least 40 percent from its current 35 percent.

Treasury man Paulson was right when he told me in a recent CNBC "Kudlow & Company" interview that if you tax something more, you get less of it. That's why he opposes the hedge and buyout fund tax hike. Millions of pensioners, including firefighters, police and teachers, will suffer lower retirement returns if Democrats have their way. Taxing capital more will throw a wet blanket over American families' income and spending power by weakening the jobs picture, which remains one of the brightest spots in our economy.
Paulson has a better idea. He recognizes that our corporate tax system is broken. Business tax reduction is occurring all over the globe. Hence, the United States is becoming less competitive in the global race for capital. Paulson believes the best solution to this is full-fledged, pro-growth corporate tax reform.

His Treasury staff is apparently preparing a plan to reduce the current 35 percent federal tax on business down to 27 percent. It's a very good idea. Paulson also favors Loews CEO James Tisch's idea to reduce the corporate capital gains tax rate. Measures like this would improve business profitability, make the United States more hospitable to global investment, spur new businesses and job creation, and enhance the creditworthiness of all that loan paper gathering dust on bankers' shelves.

The loan credit freeze-up currently plaguing corporate stock and bond markets would improve rapidly if Washington would befriend the markets, instead of waging war against them.

Lawrence Kudlow is host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Millions of pensioners, including firefighters, police and teachers, will suffer lower retirement returns if Democrats have their way. Taxing capital more will throw a wet blanket over American families' income and spending power by weakening the jobs picture, which remains one of the brightest spots in our economy.

But Paulson and the Fed still refuse to put out a "true" inflation rate-- which makes feel warm and fuzzy to hear--but costs many retirees including these firefighters, teachers, police etc and Social Security recipients from getting a true GABA-- meaning they earn less yearly in buying power....Let alone letting employees to argue for true wage increases... Employees getting 2-4% a year wage increases are actually losing money in this 4-8% inflation that is taking place.....That is the reason that 80% of the US wage-earners are stagnated or going backwards while the top 5% (those earning increases of 380% to 1000' % over their employees ) is increasing their wealth at an unprecedented rate...

Or do you actually believe that inflation has only been running at 2-3% for the past 10 years :???:

The US basic needs (food, clothing, housing, transportation, medical) cost for an average family is $31,500- $55,000 depending on where you live (rural or urban)....
The poverty figure for an average family is $20,650 (which hasn't been adjusted this year for the rise in gas/transportation..

The starting salary for a school teacher with a minimum requirement of a bachelors degree in our school system is $21,000...State average is $23,000-- The average wage of a teacher is $37,000....

In the last census- approximately 25% of Montana's 56 counties had a family average income equal to or less than the poverty standard....

Montana was one of the hardest hit states with globalism--especially NAFTA..... :(
 
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