On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 10:34:22AM -0700, Michael Harney wrote: > Paraphrase of what you asked: Should we give the jobs to rich > Americans or poor foriegners? That question is utter bullshit.
It sure is. WE giving jobs? Who are you to decide? And you got caught in the fallacy again, it isn't an either/or thing. Foreigners AND Americans can both improve by free trade. One job moves out from America in one area, and two more are created in America in another area. > There are *poor* ameicans with college educations that can't do shit > with them because some coprperate fat-cats decided to send the jobs > over seas where they can get the work done cheaper. Good. Cheaper is better. Higher productivity helps us all. > Should we let american jobs be given away just so already rich > americans can get richer. Fuck no! In case you are wondering, yes, > this subject is a very sore spot for me. Maybe you should try thinking rationally about it instead of getting emotional and irrational about it. > Job shifts... Do you see any programs to support and retrain the workers > that were displaced so that they can perform a new job and still make a good > living? I sure as fuck don't. Some, but not enough. So why don't you target that for your political activism? That would be helpful, rather than trying to hurt foreigners and all Americans in the long run, which is what restricting trade would do. Restricting free-trade because jobs are churning is like the old joke about the guy on is hands and knees at night, under a streetlight, looking for his lost contact -- someone comes up to him to offer help and says, "where did you drop it?" and he replies "way over there, but the light is better here". You need to attack the problem(s) directly, not tilt at windmills. In fact, restricting free trade is even worse than looking under the streetlight, because in the long run, restricted trade will REDUCE the number of jobs for everyone. > So the rich in America get richer, the poor in America get poorer, but > that's ok, because we can buy cheap DVD players. Fuck that! If this concerns you, then you need to attack the problem directly. How do you make the poor richer? You do NOT do it by restricting free trade -- the evidence is that you will make everyone poorer that way. > that is going to piss me off. I just cannot beilieve the utter number > of people on this list that think giving away American jobs is a good > thing. When you get more than you give, it is a good thing. You are dangerously focused on the short term. Eating your seed corn may feel good now, but you will be sorry later. Why do you think you know how to manage the world economy better than two hundred years of economists? Why do you think you should be able to tell people how much they should pay for their goods and who they are allowed to hire? Why do you think your decisions would be better than those made by billions of people all individually optimizing their situations? > I bet you wouldn't like off-shoring quite so much if it cost you your > job and job opertunities. I bet you wouldn't like restricted trade so much when the number of jobs created in the US goes negative and we enter the worst, most extended depression in American history. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
