- Now that at least 6% of you are unemployed in the United
States and have more free time to read, perhaps you'd like to know why
you no longer have a job, why your job-finding prospects are bleak, why
our trade deficit is off the charts and even more importantly, who did
this to you.
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- In order for you to fully grasp what I'm about to write,
we'll need to review what worked to make this nation the most wealthy and
powerful nation ever to grace the face of this earth.
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- First, we need to remember how wealth is created. The
average high school graduate comes out thinking that if they get more of
the money others have, then that's the way to create wealth. They don't
have a clue about wealth creation, because in most cases, the schools don't
teach it, and most of the kid's parents don't know either -- so herewith
is a refresher course.
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- In the most perfect scenario, and one that the United
States of America just happened to follow, this nation was established
on a continent that was blessed with magnificent amounts of raw materials,
like wood and metals, and an agricultural breadbasket that could produce
far more food than the domestic population could possibly eat. Add to
that potent mix a population with a strong work ethic, solid moral integrity
and the freedom to be as personally successful as they want to be, and
the Founding Fathers just let human nature take its course.
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- Those raw materials are mined and harvested, then manufactured
into items of quality and desirability that the entire world wants to purchase.
That is how wealth is created. The same goes for a vigorous agricultural
program: You plant a seed and water it, it grows and produces whatever,
you sell it, and voila! You've created wealth.
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- In the meantime, people need to be employed in order
to manufacture and grow things, and if you employ someone, you have to
pay them for their contribution to your efforts. As time goes by, more
and more of your domestic population becomes employed, which means they
are making money and able to purchase land, homes, cars and other things
themselves.
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- Over time, our growing domestic population became this
nation's largest consumer of U.S. manufactured goods. Because of our Constitution
and our Republican form of government, our people were free to explore
and invent with little or no government intervention. This led to technological
advances that produced goods of such fine quality and craftsmanship that
no other nation could compete with us at the same level. The world could
buy cheaper goods of lower quality made in Japan, for example, but if you
wanted quality that would last, you bought American. As a result, wealth
poured into this nation, creating more millionaires per capita than any
other nation on earth.
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- As our population came to earn more and more money in
salaries and wages, our domestic manufacturers employing those workers
had to charge more and more for their goods at the wholesale level in order
to maintain a profit and stay healthy.
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- The workers employed in other nations earned far less
than our workers, so in theory, they could produce manufactured goods at
a lower cost than our domestic manufacturers could. The problem is that
they generally lacked the raw materials we had in such abundance, and they
also lacked our superior manufacturing technology, making foreign-made
goods generally inferior.
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- Even so, the United States maintained tariffs and trade
restrictions that forced the shelf price of imported manufactured goods
high enough to keep their price comparable to the goods produced by American
manufacturers
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- As a result, the American standard of living kept climbing
and outpacing that of the rest of the world - by leaps and bounds.
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- Later on, foreign manufacturers managed to steal a great
deal of our technology, but the tariffs and trade restrictions still kept
doing their intended duty of protecting American jobs.
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- That is what made America the most wealthy and powerful
nation on the face of this earth, and all that changed with the passage
of NAFTA and GATT in 1994. We are now hemorrhaging jobs and wealth to
other nations, particularly China, at such an astonishing rate that there
is no foreseeable way to stop the carnage. The North American Free Trade
Agreement and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs quite literally
slashed America's economic throat. NAFTA/GATT were pushed through by the
Republicans, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton over the strenuous
objections of his fellow Democrats.
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- NAFTA/GATT removed our last line of defense against unfair
foreign competition by manufacturers who now use cheap labor, equal manufacturing
technology and even our own raw materials to compete with American manufacturers
in a so-called "free" market. NAFTA/GATT were international
treaties requiring a 2/3 Senate approval - votes they didn't have - so
they just passed them as regular legislation. Incredibly, when American
labor unions challenged the passage of NAFTA/GATT as unconstitutional,
the Supreme Court let them stand!
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- So what I want you to understand here is that all legal
means for ridding ourselves of those treasonous acts have been exhausted.
Our elected representatives show no signs of wanting to end our participation
in NAFTA/GATT, therefore nothing short of a bloody and violent revolution
to take this government back will have any chance of stopping our economic
nosedive. This slide will not, and indeed, cannot end until our wages
and our standard of living have equalized with the rest of the world.
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- Ross Perot held the public forum during his presidential
campaign, and screamed from the rooftops that if NAFTA/GATT were passed,
we'd hear this giant sucking sound of American manufacturing jobs going
to other nations, remember that? He was out-shouted by that truth-impaired
radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, who assured us all that NAFTA/GATT
were a good thing for America and would enable American consumers to buy
manufactured and other goods at substantially lower prices.
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- Where it comes to basic math and economics, Rush Limbaugh
is definitely not the guy to ask. You have to have a job to buy manufactured
goods and foodstuffs, no matter what the price, right? And if American
manufacturers close their plants in America and start manufacturing in
China and elsewhere, as they had to do in order to stay competitive and
viable, doesn't that mean those high-paying American manufacturing jobs
are now held by slave-laborers in China? Is this treason starting to sink
in yet? You didn't seem to care when you had a job, right? Well, I'll
bet you do now.
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- Oh, and what about those lowered prices for foreign-made
goods we were promised ala Limbaugh? Seen any lately? No?? And why?
Because the formerly American and foreign manufacturers now in China and
Taiwan didn't 't have to lower them! All they had to do was lower their
price a buck or two under what the American manufacturer had to sell the
same product for here.
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- You see, it doesn't matter that it only costs them pennies
on the dollar to make the same item an American manufacturer does. They
have no obligation whatsoever to pass those savings on to you and me if
they don't have to - and under NAFTA/GATT they don't have to! The whole
idea is to make the highest possible profit while remaining competitive,
right? Well, if that's the case, then prices won't drop until Americans
have lost so many family-wage paying jobs that they simply cannot afford
to pay the higher prices anymore.
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- I wish I could end this article with a ray of hope for
our economy, but I cannot. If we are to have free trade with other nations,
then the inevitable result will have to be our parity in living standards
with the rest of the "global" community, and because we have
a comparatively high standard of living, it naturally follows that our
standard of living will have to decline. This is Math 101, and there's
no way around it.
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- I just read an interesting Associated Press article at
(http://www.msnbc.com/news/937578.asp?0cv=BB10&cp1=1)
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- If you have been paying attention to this mess, you'll
recall that President Bush slapped a 30% tariff of foreign steel imported
to the United States. At the time he did it, I couldn't figure out where
NAFTA/GATT allowed him to do it, but if they did, why don't we just slap
tariffs on all imported foreign goods to protect our remaining domestic
manufacturers who are too stupid to close up and move to China?
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- Well, I just got my answer: The World Trade Organization,
whose rules we agreed to abide by under NAFTA/GATT, just ruled Bush's tariff
violates "global trade rules". If the American appeal fails,
we taxpayers will pay a stiff fine and thousands more American steel manufacturing
jobs will be lost.
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- Would you like to hear some good news? I thought so.
Here goes:
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- I just read somewhere that China was being lauded for
having reduced its poverty level by more than half. I wonder how they
did it, and where they got the money?
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- http://home.flash.net/~rhmjr/
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