Quote:
Originally posted by Skeks in the city
[i4) You have never provided a credible argument that free trade with a country that has a far lower standard of living than the U.S. and a highly educated workforce helps U.S. workers.
You've said that it helps people as consumers. But you offer no argument that the least wealthy or lowest earning half (or even three quarters) of US workers gain more in purchasing power than they lose in wages. In fact, you and club have retreated to saying US workers have no right to a wage premium over workers in other countries.
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Well the answer is so what. The market moves to efficiency and people move to fill the jobs that exist. That the available jobs change has gone on for ever. The Unions here actually required the Newspapers to keep jobs available for mechanical typesetters when the papers moved to computer. Of course newspapers will be pretty all gone in 15 years so the Union is fighting a dying cause there. People in outsourced jobs need to adjust and find jobs- Ty's discouraged worker is such a terrible image for what someone existing in this country should be. We still have an incredible standard of living for such a large country, even for the poor.
But I wander, I think your original point was that the workers will rise up. I don't think so. I think each worker looks to his own place.
For the steel worker, being able to get shirts .50$ cheaper justifies closing a factory in Maine. "buy American" is long gone. To me the clearest example was the late 70's when all our parent (not mine they lived in Detroit) started buying foreign cars. Steelworkers bought Toyotas thinking fuck the UAW guys- guess what 4 years later it caught up with them. "buy American" is really one of those situations where the "I didn't protest when they came for the Jews" argument would fit.
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