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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (236483)	3/11/2002 9:58:52 PM
From: Dan B.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Re: "Marginal workers need import controls to keep from being displaced in an efficient economy. Everyone suffers." Right. "Efficieny," is the operative word missing from the protectionist argument, and the extent of its loss due to tariffs is inversely proportional to the suffering tariffs bring us all, in the long run. Dan B

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (236483)	3/11/2002 10:41:34 PM
From: George Coyne	Respond to of 769670

Well said.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (236483)	3/11/2002 10:43:09 PM
From: rich4eagle	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

You are correct we should go back to a system whereby there are vast number of poor low paid workers and a few overpaid fat cats.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (236483)	3/12/2002 12:45:41 AM
From: craig crawford	Respond to of 769670

>> The US economy is evolving into a knowledge economy. Manufacturing is more efficiently done by people who value their labor less than Americans seems to. << do you realize how stupid that sounds? you suggest we should leave basic necessities of our existence to the hands of foreigners? it is utopian fantasies like yours that will be the downfall of our country. >> Let us export things like Intel chips and Microsoft software. Lets import textiles. << talk about a specious argument! it's pretty apparent to me that you are a utopian dreamer, an intellectual of the type robert bork describes in his book slouching towards gomorrah. intellectuals don't understand how the real world works; they sit atop their academic perches and scribble & babble all day. they never have to answer for their wacky off-the-wall ideas, because they don't operate in the real world. they operate on a higher plane, in america's finest academic institutions. did it ever occur to you that a great majority of americans don't share the same intellectual capacity that you do? did it ever occur to you that some people just aren't capable of writing software or designing computer chips? not all of us are talented enough to be rock stars, politicians, and pundits. most americans are capable of working hard in an auto, steel, or textile factory, however. >> Your arguments against free trade demean and devalue Americans. << your arguments simply confirm that intellectuals are too ignorant to realize that not everyone thinks like they do. just because you are intelligent and can get a job writing software for microsoft doesn't mean the rest of america is capable.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (236483)	4/6/2002 4:29:48 AM
From: craig crawford	Respond to of 769670

>> The US economy is evolving into a knowledge economy. Manufacturing is more efficiently done by people who value their labor less than Americans seems to. Let us export things like Intel chips and Microsoft software. Lets import textiles. Your arguments against free trade demean and devalue Americans. << Alan Keyes: On GATT and WTO sandh.com This whole issue of so-called "free trade" has now, I think, become more clearly the issue of whether we're going to defend the sovereignty of the American people. In the GATT/World Trade Organization fiasco, our leaders in Washington signed on to an approach that for the first time agreed to subject the vital interests of the United States to a decision that will be taken by majority vote, in a body we do not elect, that is not responsive to our interests or will, and which will have the ability to choose panels of judges with the authority to overturn laws passed in the United States. So what we as a people can sometimes begrudge even the Supreme Court, the authority to overturn our laws, made by our duly elected legislators, we've handed that power away to a bunch of unelected foreigners in the World Trade Organization. That cannot be construed as anything but a direct betrayal of the sovereignty of the American people. It should not have been done. And anyone who voted for those agreements and for the World Trade Organization is disqualified by that fact alone from occupying the office of President of the United States. When they voted for that agreement, who was pulling their strings? Because it wasn't in your interest. And it wasn't in mine. And since we don't know who pulled their strings then, how do we know who'll be pulling their strings in the White House? Do you want to take that risk? Because I sure don't. I also think that a lot of the reasoning, so called, that has gone into the NAFTA/GATT mentality if proving to be very bad. You have folks who stand up on the floor of Congress and they say: "Look, we made this bargain with you that we're going to let all the 'low-tech' jobs go overseas, and we're just going to have the 'high-tech' jobs." It makes me wonder sometimes: Do you think a politicians job is low-tech or high-tech? Because I don't see them suggesting that we ought to export them overseas, but they're pretty low-tech. So you see, what I'm pointing out is that this so-called distinction -- low-tech/high-tech -- is really nonsense. In our society we're always going to have a diversity of people and interests and aptitudes. Why are we restructuring the economy so that only one kind of job will be here, when we're always going to have many different kinds of people? It doesn't make any sense. We are in fact preparing ourselves for an economy that is going to cut out the jobs that are needed by the mass of our people, and it's wrong! We're not going to be able to send people to Korea and Taiwan and South America in order to follow the jobs we're exporting. When jobs started to move from the Northeast part of the United States to the South and the Southwest, what happened? After a few years, people followed the jobs! And it wasn't so hard, you know, because in spite of this and that and the other thing we do speak the same language in New York and Texas and California. The accent sometimes gets in the way, but it's the same language. You can also eat McDonald hamburgers in all three places and know what you're getting. And so the cultural adjustment, moving from one part of the country to another, is not so bad. After we've exported our jobs to Korea and Taiwan, how many of you think you're gonna be able to go and make that same adjustment. It's not gonna happen! We're being fooled into believing something that is not true. A bunch of abstract arguments about "free trade" that don't take account of the reality that we are always going to have people with different aptitudes, and we are always going to need jobs to suit all our people. We can't afford to restructure this economy so that it is monotone, instead of having the ability to satisfy the needs and aptitudes and requirements of all our people. In that sense, the whole free trade argument is just wrong. And I think we have to revise it so that we'll respect the need to keep this economy going for everyone, not just for those who our politicians judge to be the privileged "high-tech" literati and intellectuals. Won't work.