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To: fatty who wrote (18280)	3/8/2004 12:29:38 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

So you guys are done with the big dig? How much did that cost again? LOL! 500 billion? <gg> On economics, another problem with history this time is that history isn't working. Thats why people are so concerned. We've never had a post recovery climate like this. Yes every other time we had a recession, or experienced globalization, we came out of it on the employment front. Not this time. So it is prudent to question the environment now and whether we really have something new in our midst. In my case I have been watching offbase supply side economists for 2 years now. Their predictions have been hopelessly off and some of this bad forecasting (not all) is the reason we have the deficits we have, imo. People that are more practical than economists, those inside the tornado as they say, seem to have a different take on what is likely to happen than Greenspan and Mankiw- for example, (I think Challenger is right personally): And while Greenspan seems to have no doubt that employment could pop any time -- he said in February, "it is conceivable it may be happening now" -- the refusal of employers to fulfill the rosy hiring predictions has some analysts worried. John Challenger, head of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said unprecedented and unrelenting productivity gains may allow employers to do without significant hiring for years to come. "The fact is, we are going to have to get used to slow job creation in this country," Challenger said. "While the politicians war over the number of jobs they expect to be created in the economy by the end of the year, the reality is that we will probably not see a true job market boom until the next economic cycle around 2008." money.cnn.com

To: fatty who wrote (18280)	3/8/2004 12:37:45 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Trade tariffs, import restrictions, import/export taxes and other restrictions on the free market have a much longer history than 100 years, as old as governments themselves. Remember reading about boxes of tea floating around in your harbor? Adam Smith wrote his famous book on markets back in 1727. Counting on catastrophes on the rest of the world to keep US being competitive is probably not a good strategy. Endorsing free trade is not in any way related to counting on catastrophes abroad, but if you mean what I think you mean I agree, that we can't count on being competitive by assuming that others will bungle. We had an inherent advantage with our free market capitalist system for a long time because some very large countries followed ruinous economic paths like communism and socialism (as practiced in India) keeping their people extraordinarily poor and their industries uncompetitive. They learned the hard way what we still seem to want to discover on our own. One endorses free trade because laws passed by governments in the effort to protect US workers from competition abroad is what will ultimately make them unable to compete because it effectively locks those workers into a job where they don't have enough of a productivity advantage to justify the higher wage. It is far more efficient to have them move into work that does have the productivity advantage and use that higher income to buy the output of the lower productivity foreigner. This is nothing new. Workers and industries are always losing their productivity advantage to others who catch up either by employing new technologies or by changing conditions. What one man can do, another can do...given enough time to learn how. BTW the Civil War was a major catastrophe fought on our soil. The number of casualties in just one battle, the battle of Gettysburg, was 80% of the number of US casualties in the entire Viet Nam War. The economic consequences of that conflict were far reaching and long lasting. One of the original conflicts, the conflict between state's rights and Federal control is still very much with us.