2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumA reality reminder: so called free trade isn't trade.
It's investment in other places and people with free shipping.
white_wolf
(6,238 posts)It's exploitation of other people and places. They ship these jobs off to people who are forced to work long hours in terrible conditions for little pay. It hurts workers around the world.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)once from Rubio and once from Hillary, is that the US is only 5% of the world's population so of course we need trade.
Yes, but we're a much bigger percentage of the world's consumer market -- which is what counts. It isn't population numbers that matter, it's buying power and we have it.
We are among the few nations who could do just as well or better simply selling to ourselves (which is what we used to do back before the oligarchs took over). If other nations want a piece of our consumer market, it should be on terms beneficial to us or why do it?
Another point, our government -- Federal but also state and local -- spends a huge amount of money. If all tax dollars had to be spent here, we would have no sales or employment problems.
Related point: even some government services, such as call centers for Welfare, use outsourced labor... this is an outrage! It's subcontracted to another company (Citigroup is big into this) and then subbed again to somewhere like India. Americans should have all jobs paid for by tax dollars. It should be an ironclad law with very few narrow exceptions.
We are hemorrhaging money and jobs, and it has to stop, no matter who is elected. Otherwise I think there will be trouble from the public.
TheBlackAdder
(28,163 posts).
It is our job to shift wages across the globe to fight global poverty!
I didn't recognize the guy, but it was on MSNBC.
.
Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)Any nation can, and should, build a consumer economy just as we did... by (companies or government) making products for its own people and employing its own people to do it at wages high enough to buy them. Henry Ford had it right.
Trade should be only for the resources a country lacks, or the products that for some legit reason it cannot make on its own.