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To: GraceZ who wrote (16862)	2/6/2004 4:12:50 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

I think most americans understand this about free trade. Nobody wants another US auto industry to evolve as completely uncompetitive with the ROW. But this is a different situation and we need to treat it differently. The USA in terms of price of labor cannot compete on the world stage, for a variety of reasons. From a quality perspective the US is competitive, this is only an issue of price. One huge reason it costs more to hire US is because the US labor force subsidizes innovation for US companies through taxes. Also as a consumer driven society the US market exists due to expensive US labor. This also subsidizes various corps. To me I think the problem here is that people are looking at this as if it is another USA Inc. vs. Japan Inc. proposition. In that case, other than the trade violations committed by Japan, you had a somewhat fair fight. In this case, US labor vs. third world labor, the fight is not fair. US CEOs who transfer labor to India are in a sense cheating the US taxpayer for the benefit of only themselves. They are taking from the US market and giving back nothing. My understanding is that as of now, there is almost no foreign government willing to accept microsoft software as a standard anymore. Everyone wants to adopt linux, and build up their own software industry around Linux. In other words other governments do not want high value add products dumped on their markets which take their currency away and transfer it to microsoft. Our government in the US does not protect our economy in the same way. US taxpayers are forced to buy microsoft products which is essentially a wealth transfer from the US to india (and a few executives in the US). Anybody who really understands what is going on here won't like it, I am certain of that. The people that advocate this system as some sort of "tough love" for the US economy don't really understand the manifestations of what is happening imho. Fortunately the democratic economists like Laura Tyson that I have seen interviewed recently do seem to understand the damage. My sense is that with a new administration in the WH, some proactive measures will be taken to stem this tide before the US becomes another Argentina.