Hi, my name is NAFTA and I've spent the past 16 years bending America over..

[Union Yes]

I, NAFTA have no shame. I support sweat shop labor. I support 12-16 workdays with few or no breaks. 30 cents an hour IS a living wage in my opinion. If it were up to me, I'd pay you no wage at all. But, by paying a low wage for your blood and sweat, I don't have to "legally" consider it slavery. Even though I am your serfmaster, serfdom doesn't apply here. So don't call me Pro-serf or you'll hurt my feelings. And you'll get hurt.


Ok enough of that bullshit..

First, I'd like to thank fellow DU'er Time For Change for writing a great thread on the exploding wealth divide. The gap between rich and poor. Thanks for raising awareness to the problem TFC!
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/526

I "borrowed" the timeline graph from TFC's thread to prove a point.

That point..

NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT/WTO ARE THE LEADING FORCES DRIVING THE EXPLOSIVE GROWTH OF THE GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR.

Using my mad photoshop skillz, I added color coded diamonds to the timeline that correspond with enactment of each trade agreement.

Red Diamond- NAFTA. Opened the Mexican labor market to US corporations. Eviscerated the manufacturing sector in America. Factories shut down and moved to Mexico for cheap labor. Taking millions of American jobs with them. Good paying/good benefit jobs too. Gone!

Yellow Diamond- GATT/WTO and Bushco's contribution to "Free Trade". Negotiated under Fast-Track Trade Authority. Bush didn't need the approval of that pesky Congress. Renegotiated by Bush in 2001, the leaner, meaner GATT opened up China's and India's labor markets to American corporations. Manufacturing, tech, and customer service sectors fled America en masse for cheap labor markets in China and India.

W Bush's contribution to "Free Trade" pounded the final nails into the middle class' coffin.

Blue Diamond- CAFTA. The new epi-center of the "Free Trade" war - Colombia. At the behest of American corporations, our Government is supporting a brutally Fascist government in Colombia.

American corporations want access to Colombia's cheap labor market. And they want that labor market to be free of any pro labor activism. NO unions, No labor unrest, No union activism. Labor leaders and union activists have been assassinated in Colombia and labor uprisings have been brutally quelled.

American corps know that Colombia is the path to "Free Trade" throughout all of South America.


View it with your own eyes, the explosive growth of the gap between rich and poor in America.
Bush was correct when he said "Mission Accomplished".


I now know why they call it "Free Trade". Nearly free labor is the objective.

Can it become any clearer? The goal of "Free Trade" is to drive the entire planet's working class into a state of Serfdom/Slavery.

I've said it before and I'll say it again..

NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT/WTO ARE THE FUCKING ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.

[dflprincess]

1. Wasn't that going to be "renegotiated"?

I hope those who think Congress can always "go back" and fix what's wrong with whatever insurance scam they pass remember NAFTA... still waiting for that to get fixed.

[FormerDittoHead]

7. +1 n/t

[Union Yes]

8. Only during campaign season! nt

[GreenPartyVoter]

18. +1000

[notesdev]

2. K&R

Free trade doesn't discriminate against the slave trade.

Free people don't traffick in slavery.

[intheflow]

3. Amen, Brother!

K&R :kick:

[Union Yes]

11. ..

:fistbump:

[Luciferous]

4. K&R

[upi402]

5. NAFTA = the apetizer

The main course is wage slavery with a dash of and martial law.

[Union Yes]

6. Too true. nt

[Greyhound]

9. K&R.

[AllentownJake]

10. I remember the run to Canada to assure them he had no such intent on doing anything

I wasn't sure what was going on than, I should have walked during the primary than.

[Union Yes]

12. I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying...

:shrug:

Sometimes it's hard to understand what a person means in a written forum like this.

[shadowknows69]

45. I remember it too Allentown

Not enough coffee in me to go story searching, but Jake is correct. After news broke that Obama had talked about renegotiating it, there was a hurried trip/PR job, to calm down the suddenly freaking Canadian Gov.

[pampango]

13. Of course it's possible that massive tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of the financial industry

with lax or no oversight, continuous efforts to weaken unions, resist minimum wage increases and weaken worker rights in general, all these MIGHT have had SOMETHING to do with rapid growth in the income gap between rich and poor.

Europe manages free trade quite well among 27 neighboring countries (not just 3) and a few others. They HAVE progressive societies without the wide gulfs between rich and poor that we have AND the have more free trade than the US does. What Europe DOES NOT HAVE is huge tax cuts for the wealthy leading to a regressive taxation system, weak or nonexistent market regulation, governments that weaken unions and undermine workers' rights, and health care systems that benefit the wealthy while leaving the rest of us to be uninsured or bankrupted by a medical emergency.

FDR and Truman and modern European progressives would not agree with you that trade is the enemy of workers. FDR and Truman set up the GATT to promote trade between countries after WWII. They had seen what Smoot/Hawley and similar laws in other countries had done to the world economy and peace. They believed that trade between countries promotes peace and prosperity and they wanted to make sure that world didn't descend into one battling tariffs again.

European progressives included free trade between the members of the European Union precisely because they believed that it promoted peace and prosperity on the continent which is exactly what has happened.

[Johonny]

17. shh it's easier to blame Canada for all our problems

[Elwood P Dowd]

20. So you're still trying to defend these disasters masquerading as Free Trade.

NAFTA, GATT, WTO, CAFTA, etc. are NOT free trade agreements. They are investment/outsourcing scams that have hijacked Ricardo's term "Free Trade" to make them sound nice and pretty for people like you.

BTW, Smoot-Hawley only had a tiny effect on the Great Depression. International trade was only 4% of GDP when it was passed. Afterwards, it dropped to 2% of GDP, but even that is misleading. All trade was declining because people had no money. Trade would have decreased regardless of Smoot-Hawley. Trade in products not even effected by Smoot-Hawley declined.

[pampango]

23. Check out Europe. What I'm saying is that free trade works IF, maybe only IF,

you have a progressive society. The progressives who created the EU believed that free trade and open immigration within it would be conducive to peace and prosperity. Nothing has happened in Europe to prove them wrong. Only a few right wing parties like the British National Party are in favor of dismantling the EU so that "national sovereignty" (tariffs and immigration restrictions) can be regained.

Of course, those same progressives who were the driving force behind the creation of the EU also forced their countries to provide national health care, progressive taxation, labor union and other worker protections, effective regulation of corporations and financial markets, and strong social safety nets. Meanwhile in the US we have given the rich massive tax cuts, weakened or eliminated market regulation, still haven't done anything effective with national health care; shredded our social safety nets; the list goes on and on.

I agree that Smoot-Hawley had little to do with the Depression. What is true, though, is that FDR thought it made getting out of the Depression more difficult so he worked around it with a series of bilateral trade deals. His antipathy towards such tariffs also led him (and later Truman) after WWII to create GATT to promote international trade and keep countries from having tariff battles in the future, again under the theory that trade helps promote peace and prosperity.

[Union Yes]

26. FT doesn't work for America. I live in the midwest and the entire region has been decimated. nt

[pampango]

29. Why would free trade work in Europe and not America? It could be because progressive

societies and trade go together and, unfortunately, our society has become distinctly unprogressive.

Do we solve the problem of decimation in the MidWest, where I live too, and elsewhere by limiting trade or by making our society as progressive as European countries? Europeans enjoy the peace and prosperity that accompany their free trade and open borders with each other, not because there is something genetically different about Europeans, but because that's what happens in a progressive society.

The same could be true with Americans, but rather than fighting to make our society more progressive, we end up fighting Chinese workers and Mexican immigrants for the scraps that are left over. That's not how it works in Europe. FDR and Truman in their time knew and European progressives today know that limiting trade doesn't solve problems. That's why they all expanded trade while making their societies more progressive.

[Union Yes]

31. Fair Trade with tough protectionist regs is what we need. "Free Trade" is corrupted by greed.

Take a tour of Detroit and see what the result of American FT is.

Blight, poverty, vacant blocks, urban decay that redifines the phrase.

[pampango]

32. The lack of progressive taxation, strict market and financial industry regulation, laws that protect

workers and their unions, and an effective social safety net all contribute to the poverty, blight, and growing income gap that we have here. All those progressive laws and regulations exist in Europe, along with free trade, and they don't have the problems you described to anywhere near the extent that we do.

If free trade was to blame for all the problems you described, Europe would have been decimated worse than the US since they have a 27-country free trade area and some of the countries that have joined recently are poorer than Mexico. Instead, Europe doesn't have the blight, poverty and extreme income disparities that we do precisely because they have the progressive laws and regulations that I listed above.

When you look at the last 30 years of our economic history, it's hard to single out or assess what has caused our decline, because the gutting of our progressive laws and regulation have happened at the same time as trading rules have changed. It's hard to figure whether tax cuts for the rich, market deregulation, union busting, the shredding of the safety net or increased trade have caused the problems that are so apparent.

I don't pretend to know what the ranking should be (and if you want to continue to put free trade at the top of the list, go right ahead), but I do know that a continent of people do quite well with free trade, but they also have all the other progressive laws and regulations I've mentioned, to go with it.

On edit: Good night. Got to get up early tomorrow.

[Djinn]

40. problem

Europe doesn't have the blight, poverty and extreme income disparities that we do precisely because they have the progressive laws and regulations that I listed above.

the thing is since the "FT" agreements have been in place the disparity between rich and poor in Europe is getting exponentially worse, it is now at it's widest point for 40 years

[pampango]

44. The FT agreements have always been a part of the EU. What do you mean by "since they've been

in place"?

Since the EU has been joined by poorer countries in eastern and central Europe in the last few years, I wouldn't be surprised if the gap between rich and poor in the EU has grown. If a group of rich countries is joined by a group of poorer ones (even if it is in the long term best interests of both), for a while it will look like the disparity has gotten suddenly much worse.

What information are you using to conclude that "the disparity between rich and poor in Europe is getting exponentially worse"?

[Hello_Kitty]

48. Those things need to be put in place BEFORE you ship the jobs out

But the architects of our so-called "free trade" were never interested in that. It was, is, and always has been a race to the bottom.

[Djinn]

38. not sure where you're getting this

The same could be true with Americans, but rather than fighting to make our society more progressive, we end up fighting Chinese workers and Mexican immigrants for the scraps that are left over. That's not how it works in Europe

Certain (poorer) EU nations' citizens are allowed to be paid less than others & there is a huge problem with slavery (AKA illegal immigration, personally when it's highly organised by very wealthy people I simply call it slavery). People in the more developed Europe most certainly DO fight with 'immigrants' for the scraps left over.

[pampango]

46. Wages in the poorer EU countries have historically risen rapidly after joining the Union.

Does it take a while for their wages to catch up to the richer European countries? Yes.

"People in the more developed Europe most certainly DO fight with 'immigrants' for the scraps left over."

Not sure which "immigrants" you're referring to, the illegal ones you were referencing or the legal ones from Poland or other eastern and central European countries. A British plumber may have to compete with a Polish plumber now, but I have to compete with people from Alabama, Washington and Maine, so I don't see the inherent unfairness. It is a price that all pay to be able to travel, live and work anywhere on the continent.

It is the right wingers and their political parties like the British National Party that want to dismantle the EU, end open immigration and free trade within Europe, and bring back intra-Europe tariffs and immigration restrictions, not the progressives and their political parties.

[Vinnie From Indy]

14. Good Post!

Cheers!

[Union Yes]

15. ..

:toast: :hi:

[Union Yes]

16. Is it time for nationwide strikes?

[progressoid]

19. Sure. Just as soon as Dancing with the Stars is done.

[Freddie Stubbs]

21. No. It is not

[Raster]

24. Yes. It. Is.

And time to put the blue dogs to sleep. And the dlc too.

[Union Yes]

33. +1

[OhioChick]

22. K&R n/t

[Mari333]

25. knr

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

27. Kick.

I rec'd this morn.

[Hello_Kitty]

28. PROTECTIONIST!1!! XENOPHOBE!!!!!!!!!!1

Why do you hate brown people??*



*(because American workers are all white dontchaknow)

[pampango]

30. Thanks for that uplifting commentary. Nothing like a little name calling to spice

things up a little. ;)

If someone has injected race into this discussion, I would understand your reaction, but I didn't see it. Are you being a little too defensive? Was this a preemptive strike or just reaching for the lowest common denominator?

[Hello_Kitty]

43. Did I really need to include a sarcasm smiley?

I didn't think I did. :shrug:

[nomaco-10]

34. I think I love you. n/t

[Union Yes]

36. Ahh shux..

:loveya: :pals: :hug: :hi:

[nomaco-10]

37. I love that people are speaking up and speaking out around here....

it's about damn time.

[Zynx]

35. Tariffs were very heavily reduced after WWII. It's not trade among developed countries that's

the problem. It's engaging in free trade with developing countries that cheat like hell on subsidies, labor, and environmental standards. Free trade among peers is a fantastic mechanism for economic growth. I would point out that tariffs in the 1920s were extremely high. Industrialists used those tariffs to create artificially high prices and they pocketed the change.

[amborin]

39. already rec'd this; it's NAFTA, but also so much more!

[bridgit]

41. Hi NAFTA! I hear you've made the environment ripe for the Bush family to buy Paraguay's water...

Now that's fresh water, mind you, so at least someone will be clean & bathed

^

^

^

^

^

^

[shadowknows69]

47. If it came down to drinking Bush Brand Bottled Water and my own urine to survive.

Well, hold the cup steady lads, we've got to get every drop.

[Laelth]

42. k&r for the truth, however depressing. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth