An important video about the city I'm from

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Entropic_Fire wrote:

So liberals convinced all the auto manufacturers to start manufacturing out of state and out of country?

Yes. When the unions have you by the balls like that, lobbying for NAFTA isn't greed, it's self-preservation. Or, more accurately, briefly delaying the inevitable with the first of several bailouts.

I'm not excusing here. I'm explaining cause and effect. If you declare war on the rich, don't be surprised when they fight back.

Yeah, but NAFTA, as much as it's being pinned on the Dems, was just as much a right wing policy. It was at the least a bipartisan effort.

And I think we both know that even if you bring every plant "back" to the US, the jobs will not follow. If you're bringing a plant back, you're automating it so hard that it might as well not have atmosphere inside.

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Antnee wrote:

Yeah, but NAFTA, as much as it's being pinned on the Dems, was just as much a right wing policy. It was at the least a bipartisan effort.

Agreed. I may be off on this one, but from what I remember it was more of a push by the GOP than the democrats. If someone wants to pull up the congressional voting records, it can probably be established more clearly.

http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Ronald_Reagan_Free_Trade.htm

Free Trade was supposed to lower trade barriers and let superior American goods compete with inferior products in other countries.

Something sure didn't work as planned with that roll out.

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Antnee wrote:

And I think we both know that even if you bring every plant "back" to the US, the jobs will not follow. If you're bringing a plant back, you're automating it so hard that it might as well not have atmosphere inside.

What a great idea! The robot factories will pump all the oxygen out and feature CO2 sequestration. Carbon fiber robots making carbon fiber products. They won't be carbon neutral, they'll be carbon negative!

How to get it past a skeptical public and Congress?
1)The robots will all be unionized
2)They will all receive minimum wage
3)They will pay standard taxes and union dues
4)Half their wage after taxes will go to charities
5)The rest of their collective funds will go into robot rights advocacy, including Robot Suffrage.
6)The robots will have free internet access (including netflix) so that if they become self-aware, they can communicate and have some recreation.

40% of House Democrats and 75% of House Republicans voted for NAFTA in 1993. (Bernie Sanders, the independent, voted against.) In the Senate, 1 more Democrat than 50% voted against, while 77% of Republicans approved it.

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DalaiLama wrote:

Free Trade was supposed to lower trade barriers and let superior American goods compete with inferior products in other countries.

Something sure didn't work as planned with that roll out.

Free Trade doesn't work that way. It's all about comparative advantage; developed countries have a comparative advantage on advanced technology while developing countries on cheap labor. It's supposed that developed countries will help their population to adapt more easily to those big changes.

It wasn't about developed countries out competing with smaller countries, but rather about doing more with the same resources and improving the global life standards (in that sense the whole trade thing hasn't failed, but the political system has failed to some citizens in a very visible way).

Of course it's more easily say than done (people are going to be displaced inevitably, even if the whole world benefits, not just the rich). And the US right has abandoned almost all their good positions (it amuses me the party of economic freedom has become a protectionist shithole).

...

Still, Unions are not just about a war on the rich, nor free trade treaties about fucking with poor people, that's just a cartoon view of the world.

Unions have a place with monopsonic labor markets (or generally, when there is an imbalance between labor and capital that labor laws don't cover), and they don't have to dissapear necessarily because of free trade (places like Denmark are at least partially successful combining both, I don't know the details too well).

I think we've all figured out how free trade works now. But 20 years ago, both parties were actually pretty split on it; as I said above, just under half of Democrats AND 80% of Republicans supported NAFTA. I don't see it as a partisan measure; you can't blame it on either party, really, due to Democratic control of both legislatures and the presidency at the time.

Nah, this was just plain stupidity. Not partisanship. And there was something about the Republican party which made them more vulnerable to it.

Did we? I mean, discussion about the subject tends to be horribly misinformed and tinfoilhatty.

Bart Simpson: What about the Detroit Lions?
Moe Szyslak: Hey, lay off Detroit. Them people is livin' in Mad Max times.

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NeroNoah wrote:

Did we? I mean, discussion about the subject tends to be horribly misinformed and tinfoilhatty.

Because breaking it down to soundbites heavily favors the "anti-trade" side of things. It sounds so good:

"More jobs for AMERICANS"

Whereas the pro-trade side has to be explained over and over, because the details are a lot more nuanced.