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To: fedhead who wrote (142924)	6/11/2002 5:54:28 PM
From: craig crawford	Respond to of 164687

>> A lot of the software work can be done easily/cheaply in India and other countries like Russia which have a highly trained work force. << and how does that benefit working americans who lose their job overseas? >> That is inevitable << don't be ridiculous. why must it be inevitable? >> In fact it is the US corporation that is benefiting from cheap labour << umm...what do you think i've been railing against? the corporate scalawags have seized power in america. unchecked, corporations will abandon all sense of duty to country and patriotism in the selfish pursuit of wealth. that is why the government must regulate foreign commerce as is prescribed for in the constitution. >> As for the argument that labor is displaced, well didn't the person who worked in manufacturing industry train himself to do something else << oh really? he just automatically retrains himself for free while he is out of a job and magically moves on to bigger and better work? all while trying to feed his family and pay his mortgage at the same time? sounds good on paper for all the dumb economists doesn't it? of course the reality of the situation is much different, and that's why displaced workers end up with low-paying service jobs giving mr daschle more reason to demand more social programs and unemployment benefits for workers, so he can advance his socialist agenda. >> The US is the most dynamic economy in the world and will create other jobs/industries that will absorb the displaced labour. << like i said, sounds so good on paper to dumb economists. except that not all workers who are displaced are as capable as you anindo. they may not be as educated and share the same capabilities that you do, and that is why they work a manufacturing job in the first place. Alan Keyes: On GATT and WTO sandh.com 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.