Comments on: David Brooks: Lou Dobbs is Winning http://www.shopfloor.org/2007/11/27/david-brooks-lou-dobbs-is-winning/ The National Association of Manufacturers Premier Manufacturing Blog Fri, 9 Jan 2009 15:19:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: James Murphy http://www.shopfloor.org/2007/11/27/david-brooks-lou-dobbs-is-winning/#comment-2764 James Murphy Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:47:07 +0000 http://72.47.216.94/wordpress/?p=5384#comment-2764 I generally like David Brooks. I see him often on PBS. Here I think he is wrong and Lou Dobbs is correct. Brooks is basically arguing that the US is still great. I do not think Dobbs would disagree. The problem is the direction and that the new jobs are low skilled service jobs. The average weekly earnings of Americans peaked in 1973 and are down since. Down by about $6000 a year per job. Americans have compensated for this by having more than one job per family. Still that is a decline in our standard of living. How long will that meltdown continue? What will stop it? Free trade as it is currently practiced in the US is not fair to Americans. To a large extent it is not even about trade in products at all but about the substitution of foreign labor for American labor. Costa Rica’s largest export is not a product it grows or invented but computer chips from a plant owned by Intel. Examine the chapter titles of the NAFTA or CAFTA agreements and ask yourself what does this have to do with exporting an American made product or importing a foreign product. In general nothing. But it is about protecting the capital investment of an American plant there and exporting the product here. A side condition of the trade theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo was that the trade be conducted in a “moral” way. What they meant was that there be a fair return for land, labor, and capital. NAFTA, CAFTA, are all about undercutting labor. Lou Dobbs is just pointing out the difference between the theory and practice of free trade. I think he is correct. I generally like David Brooks. I see him often on PBS. Here I think he is wrong and Lou Dobbs is correct. Brooks is basically arguing that the US is still great. I do not think Dobbs would disagree. The problem is the direction and that the new jobs are low skilled service jobs. The average weekly earnings of Americans peaked in 1973 and are down since. Down by about $6000 a year per job. Americans have compensated for this by having more than one job per family. Still that is a decline in our standard of living. How long will that meltdown continue? What will stop it? Free trade as it is currently practiced in the US is not fair to Americans. To a large extent it is not even about trade in products at all but about the substitution of foreign labor for American labor. Costa Rica’s largest export is not a product it grows or invented but computer chips from a plant owned by Intel. Examine the chapter titles of the NAFTA or CAFTA agreements and ask yourself what does this have to do with exporting an American made product or importing a foreign product. In general nothing. But it is about protecting the capital investment of an American plant there and exporting the product here. A side condition of the trade theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo was that the trade be conducted in a “moral” way. What they meant was that there be a fair return for land, labor, and capital. NAFTA, CAFTA, are all about undercutting labor. Lou Dobbs is just pointing out the difference between the theory and practice of free trade. I think he is correct.

]]> By: Tn http://www.shopfloor.org/2007/11/27/david-brooks-lou-dobbs-is-winning/#comment-2763 Tn Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:03:05 +0000 http://72.47.216.94/wordpress/?p=5384#comment-2763 I have green card and I love Lou Dobb ,this country need fundamental change, to many politics coorporation lover open border just like liberal better they are move to mexico congress and run in there how they like it. middle class pay for bills not up class or low class I have green card and I love Lou Dobb ,this country need fundamental change, to many politics coorporation lover open border just like liberal better they are move to mexico congress and run in there how they like it.

middle class pay for bills not up class or low class

]]> By: Rob http://www.shopfloor.org/2007/11/27/david-brooks-lou-dobbs-is-winning/#comment-2762 Rob Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:41:18 +0000 http://72.47.216.94/wordpress/?p=5384#comment-2762 I want America to be saved for AMERICANS.. not meicans. I like Lou and hope someone like him runs. I am NOT a racist.. I just like America the way it is.. or was. I want America to be saved for AMERICANS.. not meicans. I like Lou and hope someone like him runs. I am NOT a racist.. I just like America the way it is.. or was.

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