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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (609985)	10/4/2016 12:00:26 PM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 793957

These abominable "free trade" agreements are nothing but a massive bait and switch. We were promised free trade but they delivered scams designed to loot wealth from 3/4 of the population for the benefit if the few. The term Free trade was nothing but a stalking horse to trick us into going along. But IMO the principle is still sound. We have never had anything like free trade between sovereign nations so it is difficult to predict how it would play out. My bias is that it would improve the lives of everyone.

To: LindyBill who wrote (609985)	10/4/2016 7:03:03 PM
From: frankw1900	3 Recommendations Recommended By alanrs kckip LindyBill Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793957

Trade, free trade and tariffs. Historically, tariffs were for the purposes of protecting landowners and holders of government granted franchises from competition and providing government revenue. There was not really such a thing as free trade even internally in most countries. Smuggling was a viable profession providing you were fast on your feet and payed required bribes. (Probably no coincidence Adam Smith was a customs man). With the industrial revolution cities grew, productivity increased, and workers were thrown together in a fashion not seen before. Because workers were no longer growing their food they often had a choice of between starving to death, or freezing to death. There was great unrest. Thus the British corn law, which saved the British worker from freezing to death and saved the establishment from being burned up in their houses or guillotined as happened in France. The world continued to industrialize and we fast forward to the late 20th century. Throughout the industrialized Western world workers had reached a stage of well being never seen in history. There was full employment, business found it difficult to maintain profits because labour demanded such a large part of business revenue. Thus the repudiation of Keynsian economics with its focus on full employment at a time when technological progress made it possible to replace Western labour with that of undeveloped countries such as Japan and also to replace labour with automation. This was done under the rubric of free trade and globalism. Export paper (money) and jobs. Import cheap goods and high profits. This is the new, present regime. Labour and the middle class are not in danger of starving to death as in the early 19th century but are definitely becoming poorer and for the first time in a 100 years are seeing a great likelihood of their children not having a possibility of social mobility (and a certainty of great debt). The bottom 20% of Western populations are approaching a state of degradation possibly unique in its quality of poor culture although that of some 19th century cities such as London or New York may have been worse - certainly they were worse in terms of material being. Many of the poor new immigrants hold attitudes and ideology poisonous to those which make any part of our society possible. The bien pensant establishment of our time think, since they are doing well, and are insulated from the stresses of ordinary folk, that more of the regime of the last 30 years will suffice. But it won't do at all, will it? The bottom 20% of our populations can not live with a further influx of poor folk. The middle tier can not abide the further slide to lower status, lower income and higher debt and nor should they - the situation wasn't caused by them. I don't suppose most of those responsible deliberately aimed at the result and there's no profit in assigning blame and shame in large amounts. There is a lot of profit for everyone in doing something about it providing it's the right thing. Trump seems to have grasped the essentials.