“Follow the Fundamentals,” Brooks writes in today’s New York Times.
So it’s worth pointing out now more than ever that Dobbsianism is fundamentally wrong. It plays on legitimate anxieties, but it rests at heart on a more existential fear — the fear that America is under assault and is fundamentally fragile. It rests on fears that the America we once knew is bleeding away.And that’s just not true.
Brooks cites the World Economic Forum’s recent report that ranked the United States as the most globally competitive country in the world, saying the foundation’s of U.S. prosperity are strong.
P.S. Good thing the Times dropped its subscription wall putting Brooks and his editorial page colleagues off-limits to general readers. Hurry up, Wall Street Journal!
November 30th, 2007 on 2:47 pm
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.
November 29th, 2007 on 2:03 am
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
November 27th, 2007 on 7:41 pm
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.