What's Wrong with free trade, NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO?
Congress cannot get our nation back onto a Constitutional track without also repudiating and rescinding the recent passage of NAFTA and the GATT/WTO agreements. To attempt to do so will be like rolling a big snowball uphill. It will get bigger until it comes back over all of us like a steam roller.
Americans must realize that the only real goal of the so-called free trade agenda is the establishment of the New World Order. NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO are draconian steps in that direction. The international economic interdependence sought through free trade, requires the demise of American economic independence. The process is already well advanced, and the toll that it has taken is becoming increasingly apparent.
It is even more important to realize that the New World Order won't be a United States of the World cast in the image of the America constitutional republic, but rather a form of international fascism in which the primary power is vested in predatory international corporate capital. The world will be the playground of international super-capitalists. The sole function of the political state in this new scheme of things will be to protect the interests of stateless transnational corporate rulers through formidable military and police power.
The New World Order, though ultimately doomed to failure in the tradition of the Biblical the Tower of Babel, in my humble opinion, nonetheless will rearrange the political and economic world, and destroy the United States of America as we have known it. Unless our mis-representatives in Washington can be made to represent us, and support the Constitution they are sworn to uphold before it's too late, the process will be irreversible. Congressmen and Senators who voted to pass these illegal treaties, and the Presidents who urged them, have acted in brazen violation of their solemn oaths of office and their sacred public trust.
The term free trade, since it implies freedom of action, has a warm and friendly ring to it. Combine the words free trade with a pervasive and concerted national and international propaganda campaign directed at making the concept not only appear attractive, but imperative and inevitable at this particular juncture in history, and it isn't surprising that so many have been fooled into thinking free trade is good for America and Americans. What is surprising, however, is that so many of our illustrious representatives in Washington have also apparently been fooled.
Let's take a quick look at what free trade really is, or rather what it isn't. First of all, Free Trade isn't free trade. The term itself is a misnomer, except when the trade occurs voluntarily between economically equal trading partners, or at the very least between mutually consenting parties for their mutual benefit. Truly free trade would also mean fair trade, and the freedom for all nations to trade or not to trade in accordance with their own unique national interests. The so-called free trade concept presently being promoted will deprive nations of their sovereign right to regulate their trade according to their needs and in the best interests of their own people.
Free Trade, as promoted by the international elite, is merely a euphemism for international predatory capital unleashed. The New World Order, which is the goal of free trade, is a euphemism for one world government. International laissez faire will rein regardless of its negative impact on any nation or people concerned. The interests of super-capital will supersede national and regional interests. The unhampered global marketplace will be controlled by the world's most powerful and predatory capital interests. This kind of a marriage between capital and the coercive police power of the state constitutes the classic definition of fascism. This is a winning situation for greed capitalism and mercenary, "stateless mercantilism," but not for the people involved.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against capitalism. Capitalism works. It is a natural, big business, extension of individual free enterprise. It can and has worked wonders, and has been the key to the success and prosperity of all modern industrialized nations. But one of the most legitimate functions of the state is to keep a rein on big corporate capital, and put a check on its predatory tendencies. Big capital is by nature cannibalistic. Its natural goal is to literally kill and devour the competition, and it can and does squash individual and small business free enterprise initiative, whenever given rein to do so. Capitalism tends toward monopoly, and pure greed capitalism, without regulatory shackles, would exploit and enslave labor, as it now does in underdeveloped countries, just as certainly as the communist state would the communist state being the purest form of capital monopoly.
The alleged goals of the New World Order are international peace and an equitable distribution of wealth. That's why it enjoys the support of so many somewhat strange bedfellows, with much of the international intellectual elite climbing into bed with their erstwhile nemesis, the champions of international greed capitalism. The internationalism expressed in the free trade agenda, intentionally undermines national sovereignty.
According to the conventional wisdom promoted by champions of the New World Order, the day of the sovereign, independent, self-contained nation-state is over. The bugaboos of narrow nationalism and destructive patriotism are to be abolished from the face of the earth in the interests of world peace. At the same time, so the reasoning goes, while eliminating the alleged traditional causes of war, free trade, a global free market, managed by a world governing body, will make the world's goods and services equally available to all at the lowest costs possible. (Of course, the term world government is played down and only the alleged benefits of international free trade is currently being publicly pushed in the full light of day.)
The grand scheme sounds so good, so sensible, and so reasonable that it has been an easy sell to the university trained economists, humanists, and political scientists who man the various international policy think tanks and make up the elite cadre that pull the strings of international affairs and governments from behind the scenes.
The idea of a New World Order has been around for a long time, of course. The kings and emperors of every great empire all had visions of grandeur which placed them at the head of their own version of a New World Order world government under their rule. The blueprint for our own American government was itself the result of a New World Order vision. It was an enlightened vision, unusual and unsurpassed in its abundant wisdom and common sense. For the first time in the history of organized governments, it acknowledged that men derive their natural rights, not from a ruler or a government, but from their Creator and that these rights are "unalienable rights" that cannot be legally abridged or taken away by government. Sovereignty was vested in the people themselves, and their government made subservient and strictly answerable to the governed. Those revolutionary principles of government paved the way for the United States to become spectacularly successful. Those principles should have been adhered to. If they had been, they would have eventually been emulated around the world. But we have gotten off the track our founding fathers charted and now find ourselves lost, disoriented, and adrift, listening to new drummers who are in fact Sirens of our national doom.
The present New World Order idea essentially came about as the result of the failures and frustrations of the most powerful nineteenth and early twentieth century European nations in their efforts to consolidate and maintain control of global colonial empires. For centuries European nations had vied with one another for colonial aggrandizement and global dominance.
Before W.W.I, to the eternal embarrassment of the great European powers, (especially The British Empire's) the United States had already surpassed the great nations of Europe to become the most successful and prosperous nation in the history of the world. There were many reasons for America's spectacular success. Not the least of these were our native national aversion to entangling ourselves in Europe's eternal and unending squabbles.
We were both a protectionist and an isolationist nation, and because of these sensible policies, the United States was literally unassailable.
We were a proud nation, jealously protective of our sovereignty, both state and national. In spite of this fierce nationalism and patriotism, and despite several ill advised minor imperialist transgressions, we were not a warring nation in the European sense of the word and we were the envy of the world.
It is important to note that the United States became great before it ever involved itself in a European war or became a recognized world military power. Only after these things occurred, did our fortunes begin a radical change. By joining in W.W.I, a European conflict that was nothing if not poison to us, we took a position smack in the middle of Europe's never-ending squabbles. Additionally, our great wealth and power lent considerably to the carnage and destruction of the war. But because of that incredible carnage, and the horrors of modern warfare, the futility and dangers of continued struggle on a huge scale finally dawned on those who had always before promoted war.
When the war ended, we not only found ourselves a major player in the middle of Europe's eternal problems, but right in the middle of a New World Order plan. That plan, supported by President Woodrow Wilson, would require the United States to sacrifice some of its national sovereignty to a world body. The League of Nations came into being with the aim of preventing a repeat of such catastrophic wars as had just occurred. The League was billed as the salvation of mankind, and was to be the embryo of a "Great Powers" dominated world government. To the great credit of the Republican Congress at the time, The United States remained aloof from the League of Nations, and insisted on maintaining its national sovereignty intact. We resumed our isolationist policy and the League of Nations was stillborn.
The failure of the League of Nations did not cause World War Two, as many would have us believe. World War One itself caused World War Two because it left the British Empire intact and Germany, its primary competitor, and the only European power capable of seriously challenging it, utterly humiliated. Only after World War Two, with the fall of the British Empire, could such as thing as the League of Nations hope to succeed, whether the U.S.A. joined or not. Reborn as the United Nations, it become an international imperative.
Our participation in W.W.II, whether justified or not, vastly increased the scope and carnage of that conflict also. Ironically, though we joined the conflict on behalf of the British, W.W.II resulted in the demise of the great British Empire. It also resulted in the vast expansion of Soviet Russia's Empire into a global super-power and made the Cold War not only possible, but inevitable. Supposedly, neither of these great accomplishments were intentional.
England's goal, of course, had been to preserve its empire and global hegemony against German expansionism. The war against Japanese expansionism in the Pacific was to prevent Japan from establishing itself in the East in the image of the great Western Empires. The British didn't want that kind of competition in the Far East any more than it wanted German competition in the west. (We too had interests in the Far East, of course, as the result of our first big imperialist folly the Spanish American War which saddled us with the Philippines.) In any case, both world wars were essentially European affairs. Neither were American wars until we insisted on making them American wars. The United States jumped into both only after Europeans got them going not by the will of the American people, but through the manipulations of their government which wanted to save, if not the British Empire, at least the Bank of England.
The United States emerged from W.W.II at the very apex of economic and military power, and prosperous beyond anything ever before imagined. America literally had it all. It was Europe and much of the rest of the world that had serious problems. Europe and the rest of the world had always had serious problems. But by then we had come to think of Europe's and the world's problems as our own personal problem. Indeed, we had added to them magnificently. The United Nations didn't seem such a bad idea.
Clearly something had to be done to keep Europe from wiping itself out, along with innumerable innocent bystanders, not to mention ourselves, in their successive and increasing viciously destructive wars. Europe really needed a United Nations, (sort of a Big Brother) to ride herd over it, but the United States didn't. America was at that time a kind of paradise on earth as political states go, and perfectly capable of not only going on as such indefinitely, but of defending itself against the rest of the world. Our membership in the United Nations was required to make it work, however, so, in the interests of world peace, we joined, with reservations, and full veto power in the Security Council.
At the very heart of the United Nations, however, was a real gremlin which has now come to haunt us. It was always there. That gremlin was in the form of the aspirations of the elite international power brokers to create one world government. This scheme, if carried out, would subvert the sovereignty and economic independence of all nations into a one world political and economic entity. This meant that the sovereignty and economic independence of the greatest, most successful, and freest nation on earth, must also be subverted and pared down to meld in with the ailing world around it. The plan calls for America to literally commit national suicide sacrificing itself on behalf of the dual demons of European folly and international capital greed. Many of our representatives knew that, of course, and in fact a majority resisted endorsement of the sovereignty robbing aspects of various UN Covenants, treaties, and agreements, until recent years. Now, as our representatives are caving in to internationalism wholesale, (outdoing even European folly) the American public is about to be awakened to the dangers of the New World Order agenda.
The way to accomplish one world government, without alarming the public, of course, was to work, ever so subtly, toward a more attractive and limited goal the goal of world-wide free trade a concept very easily packaged and sold to an unwary public. That is why free trade is being so relentlessly promoted as being good for Americans in spite of ample and increasing evidence to the contrary. None of the much acclaimed advantages of free trade apply to a nation as well endowed as the United States. Free trade will only bring our great nation down, to the great satisfaction of an envious world.
To illustrate this, we need only revert to basic economic common horse sense. Nations are large markets owned by their citizens. In a well endowed market such as ours, citizens can both produce everything they need, and more, and consume the products of their production. Consumption necessitates production, and production provides employment. Production in excess of immediate requirements is income. This income can be used to better the standard of living of the producer-consumer, or it can be saved. Production, beyond the needs of the people can also be traded to other markets for goods not otherwise available or easily produced. Common sense dictates that if a market isn't managed by and for the benefit of its owners, then the benefits accrue to somebody else who isn't an owner. Eventually ownership itself will be forfeited.
Protectionism is where markets are protected by government for the benefit of the owners. If we do not protect our ourselves, and our own markets, then nobody else will. Others will simply take advantage of our lack of interest and turn it to their own profit. The United States has already totally lost some of its markets, (watches, clocks, radios, tape recorders, TVs, VCR's, etc.) and large segments of others, (automobiles, computers, appliances, steel, shipbuilding, tool and die industries, apparel and textiles, etc.). Contrary to conventional one-world preaching, losing those markets and market shares, (our own markets in our own country!) along with the industries and jobs, to foreign competition, hasn't done America any good. Industries, jobs, and control have been lost.
The free trade answer, of course, is that we have to become more competitive and increase exports. We didn't have to depend on exports when we produced and bought our own goods, and we were well off! Of course, this process of economic suicide helped many corporate giants to emerged and cash in as middlemen, in the trading process. But production of real wealth and local control is lost.
Millions of small, locally owned, proprietor- ship businesses, have been lost to the corporate discount giants like K-Mart, WalMart, and the large supermarket chains. If you do not think this has anything to do with free trade, try to buy something made in U.S.A.
If you think groceries are an exception, start looking a little closer. You'll be surprised at how much of our food produce is imported, and the percentage is steadily increasing. (While our farmers are still the most productive in the world, they are forced, by free trade and international markets, to sell their products at Third World prices below the true costs of production thus a thousand acres that could at one time support ten farm families without federal help, can now hardly support one, and that only with the assistance of various direct and indirect government subsidies. Where did all the farmers go? To the cities for the industrial jobs that are now disappearing.)
To add insult to injury, and to further confound the public, a Made in U.S.A. label may no longer mean that a product is produced in the United States. It may be an APPA, an American Product Produced Abroad! In other words, a product produced by an American owned company in a Third World country can legally masquerade as being an American made product. This is another wonder of free trade.
The boon to consumers of inexpensive imports is cited as a major advantage of free trade and New World Order movement. But American products are only undersold by imports until domestic production has ceased and been driven offshore. But the real goal of free trade is to maximize the power and profits of the trans-national super-capitalists.
Under free trade, every nation must open its markets to international predatory capital trading or else! Markets are forced open, and that isn't freedom. It destroys local economies, local initiative, and local jobs in high wage countries.
Production inevitably moves from high wage countries to the low wage countries, depriving workers in high wage countries of their industries and jobs. This in turn undermines their ability to maintain their standard of living and their ability to be consumers. Products of low wage production inevitably move toward the high markets of the First World. This redistributes wealth away from countries with a high standard of living toward not to the Third World, as you might imagine but into the hands and accounts of the elite few. The bulk the profits, (much enhanced since production costs are based on low wage standards in the producing countries, and retail prices are based on high wage consumers' ability to pay) are skimmed off by the multi-nationals giants in charge of production, transportation, distribution, wholesale and retail sales, their executives, and stockholders, and the big international investment banking houses. Wealth, including capital and land ownership, thus becomes more and more concentrated into the hands of the few. This, of course, has been the classic formula for popular revolution throughout history. Have we not learned that lesson?
This process of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, is occurring today in both the Third and First World. The workers who make up the middle class in the high wage countries are sacrificed on the altar of free trade. While the workers of the First World get poorer, the poor workers in the Third World remain abysmally poor by government edict, which limits their wages and ability to organize to better their lot. Any improvement that might otherwise accrue to them is usually more than offset by deteriorating economic conditions in the countryside and the environment around them. Of course Third World governments skim off a considerable amount of the cream, and what those officials don't pocket must be used to service their inevitably large and growing international debt obligations.
The goal is not to bring Third World living standards up to ours, but to bring First World standards down, and to insure continued world-wide debt service the life blood of the international bankers. The redistribution of income is not from the high wage workers to the poor workers of the Third World, but from all producers to the international corporate elite and their servants.
The reasoning behind bringing the living standards down in the advanced nations is to reach a sustainable world-wide living standard that can be shared equally by all the people in the world. That is the noble goal of the New World Order plan. The few haves, the reasoning goes, have too much, and the poor masses of the Third World have too little. But the few haves targeted are not the wealthy elite, but the working middle-class of the industrially advanced nations.
How can this square with the requirements of corporate greed if the middle class make up the best consumers of corporate production? The shear vastness of what is referred to as emerging markets. Even if the poor masses of the Third World can only be made into the most marginal of consumers, these markets will easily make up for the loses due to declining consumption in advanced nations. The billions of people that make up the Third World, if they can only afford to purchase a radio or a toaster, or even if one in a hundred can buy a TV, car, or refrigerator, or similar item, (or even a Big Mac once a month) there is ample incentive to enthusiastically develop the markets.
More importantly, if all local economies and regional self-reliance can be destroyed throughout the world, billions of people will be reduced to purchasing their most basic necessities through the corporate trade and marketing channels. ADM (Archer Daniel Midland Corporation, "Super-market to the world"), and other corporate giants, would get a cut on every mouth full of life-sustaining nourishment that passed the lips of those teaming billions.
Farm organizations in this country duped farmers into supporting NAFTA and GATT using the prospects of increased agricultural exports as a carrot. What will eventually be exported will be the few remaining farmers from their own landa process that has been under way since the advent of the USDA. Vast areas of Russian, Asia, Africa, and South America are slated for development of corporate agricultural production. World grain prices will decline steadily as new corporate owned mega-farms come on line, making the American farmer less and less competitive. American farmers will suffer the same fate as that in store for Third World agricultural workers. If all goes according to plan, they'll end up as peasant labor on corporate owned mega-farms.
GATT isn't new. It was conceived with the UN Charter and officially launched in 1948. Since the goal of free trade adopted at that time, this country has lost whole industries, thousands of factories, and millions of jobs. Japan and Asia benefited most initially. For a long time we hardly missed those lost industries and jobs because our economy was so vibrant and vigorous that they were being replaced by comparable new industries and jobs. Some of the impact of job loss was softened by the advent of unemployment insurance. The slack at the bottom was taken up by the Great Society and War on Poverty programs of the early 60's, which formed a new and ever-expanding welfare class.
Our profound losses weren't really felt until the early 70's, when other factors, such as monetary crises, oil crises, and rampant inflation began exacerbating the situation. Those were the straws that really began braking the camel's back. Since then, real wages and living standards have leveled off and begun to decline. Since then, the Fortune 500 companies have scarcely produced a single net new job. Since then, the number of people on the public payrolls (State and Federal government civil service workers, military, government and military retirees, Social Security and welfare recipients) have exceeded the numbers of people engaged in the manufacture of real goods. Since then, two incomes have become necessary to support a family where only one was sufficient before. The service sector, driven by the large corporate discount, grocery, and fast food chains, has grown to accommodate many of the displaced workers, usually at considerably lower wages than they had before. These service industries, in turn, under-cut and displaced locally owned and controlled businesses and their employees.
Enter the North American Free Trade Agreement. Because of NAFTA, the process of industry and job loss is much enhanced and much more visible than before. Its easier and more convenient to move a plant to Mexico than to Asia, and it's a breeze to sell back into a newly border-less U.S. marketplace. The negative effects of free trade become much more obvious with so many industries moving to Mexico right under own noses.
Successful Free trade between nations having widely disparate economies, such as between the United States and Mexico, is impossible and inherently unfair to the peoples of both nations. It is only truly workable when the poorer nation is small enough to be totally absorbed, economically and politically, by the richer nation without bringing down standards in the richer nation. Mexico, of course, is far too large for us to absorb.
The establishment made fun of Ross Perot when he predicted a great "sucking sound" if NAFTA should be approved. Where Ross made his mistake was in exaggerating the sound of factories, jobs, and money moving south. The process is almost silent! The process is so silent because the news media declines to mention it, much less dwell on it. The establishment media is an agent international capital. It prefers to focus such things as O.J. Simpson and distant hot spots that distract us from vitally important matters effecting our future.
Mexico is a huge economic vacuum to the United States, and jobs and capital will continually move silently south until American wages have declined to the Mexican standard. Jobs will return to America as soon as we are willing to accept Third World wages. In the mean time, this country will continue to hemorrhage both whole industries and jobs. Until there is parity between our economy and the Third World, the U.S. will also remain a magnet for both legal and illegal immigrants eager to cash in on the benefits still available only here. This is still a land of opportunity for them. They'll take welfare and food stamps if they can get them, and go to work too. But whether or not they can get welfare, they'll go to work anyhow, and gladly underbid Americans for the available jobs.
Under NAFTA the United States must prop up the Mexican economy in various ways. (Third World nations are accorded special status under free trade agreements to protect them but not to protect us.) One such special consideration was to extended some sixteen billion dollars in loan credits to Mexico to stabilize its economy. Much more than that will be required before long, and they won't be loans, but emergency gifts. You can be certain of that. Another advantage given Mexico is that it has ten years to adjust to the new arrangement before laying its markets completely bare to the United States, but the U.S. market has been made immediately open and vulnerable to Mexico. This advantage is also given to other Third World nations under GATT.
The Mexican economy is even now in a state of near meltdown, and the American taxpayer has been elected by his mis-representatives to shore it up. We purchased almost a billion dollars worth of Mexican pesos in order to prop up the peso. Only a few months later, the Mexican peso was devalued by a whopping 40%. When that happened, almost half a billion American taxpayers' dollars silently evaporated over night. (Don't worry, somebody got the money, but it wasn't the peasants on either side of the border.) Every failure of NAFTA will be made good by the U.S. taxpayer. The Mexican peso has lost about 60% of its value in the last year or so, and is still in a tail-spin. Obviously NAFTA hasn't prevented Mexican workers from being hit with a drastic real pay cut in terms of American dollars. That means if they made a dollar an hour before, they may make fifty cents an hour now. This does tremendous damage to many private investors who were duped into believing the Mexican economy and peso were safe and stable. It costs American taxpayers huge amounts, and at the same time it paves the way for more factories and jobs to move south of the border for even cheaper labor. The big banks profit, however, at American taxpayer expense. Mexicans will be buying less, not more, American products, and we'll of course be buying more, more cheaply, from Mexico. So much for the prospects for balanced, fair trade under NAFTA. NAFTA is a one way deal that points downward for Americans, financed by Americans.
If I were going to open a factory to produce better wingdings, I'd be crazy to contemplate locating it in the United States where the workers might demand $7.00 to $15.00 and hour. I'd put my factory in Mexico where I can hire 50’ or $1.00 an hour labor. NAFTA not only makes it possible for me to do so, but down right crazy to do otherwise. By locating my factory in Mexico, neither I nor my financial backers need to take any financial risks. The U.S. consumer will not only buy my production, but the U.S. taxpayer will generously help finance my factory in Mexico, (or elsewhere overseas) and guarantee my investment through the Agency for International Development (AID), or the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).
I can hardly lose by opening shop in Mexico, or elsewhere offshore, if I do my homework. None of these advantages would be available to me if I were to attempt to open a factory in the U.S.A. Chances are the project would never get past the loan officer at my local bank. So forget it. Besides, high corporate taxes, red tape, stringent environmental and safety regulations, and American workers' high wage and benefit expectations, make doing business in the U.S. an expensive, burdensome affair anyway. It just wouldn't be worth the trouble. The message is clear: Go south!
Now NAFTA is going to be enlarged into the pan-hemispheric American Union which will make a free trade zone out of all the nations in the western hemisphere, except Cuba. South and Central America, combined with Mexico and the Caribbean Basin nations simply constitute a much larger vacuum to silently devest the United States and Canada of their wealth and wealth producing capabilities. The idea of a pan-American free trade zone may be new to Americans, but the people of South and Central America knew of it and have been planning accordingly for years. It's news only to the American public.
The American Union is one prong of the three-pronged trilateral, (Trilateral Commission) approach to establishing international free trade. The other two, are the European Union and the Asia Pacific Union. World free trade is more easily approached and organized by the use of these more manageable regional free trade blocks. It is made to appear that these free trade blocks and world free trade are developing separately. The process proceeds in parallel, as is made obvious by the recent advances of both the trilateral approach and the GATT/WTO global agreement. GATT will, as planned, solve the problems of trilateralism once the three blocks are firmly established, by combining them.
One myth used to convince Americans that the ravages free trade on American labor will only be minimal and temporary is the "new opportunities in high technology" myth. Allegedly whole new industries will soon come on line to save American workers and preserve their way of life. All we have to do is spend more tax money on education and retrain the work force for the coming hi-tech revolution. These alleged opportunities will be in the fields of computer technology, multi-media, communications, information management, money and investment manipulation, and other shell games. But no production!
But even the big hi-tech corporations like IBM are downsizing and leaving the country just a little behind other productive industries. Even world-class financial service companies and billing agencies are moving their white collar operations offshore to cheaper, yet highly skilled, labor nations. America no longer has anything like a monopoly on high technology. Americans must wake up to the fact that anything that can be made in America can be made more cheaply elsewhere so don't hold your breath waiting for the high tech revolution jobs to materialize. This applies to literally every type of high technology, from sound equipment to software. There is no new technology coming on line that cannot be immediately exported. Take the VCR as an example. It was invented in America, but where's all our VCR factories? Initially all in Japan, but by now probably also in several other countries but none in the U.S.A. Soon there will undoubtedly be VCR's produced in Mexico.
Our educational system is admittedly turning out functional illiterates, but it makes little difference if we have nowhere to put them to work anyway. If we had a hundred million Ph.D.'s in this country, most would be unemployed, and the employment situation would not be one whit better. Rocket scientists and computer specialists are already flipping burgers or heading up the unemployment lines today. What we need is about twenty or thirty thousand factories to employ an already existing labor pool of people perfectly willing to work even if it means getting their hands a little dirty. Ordinary jobs, high tech or otherwise, for ordinary people.
We are told that the American workers and American industry must become more competitive in order to compete in the global market place. There are only three ways I know of for a worker to become more competitive: (1) Work faster; (2) Work for less, and; (3) Work faster for less. So, to survive, American workers must work ten times faster, or for a tenth as much, or some combination of the two. In fact most people are already working more for less in this country. That husband and wife both have to work to make ends meet these days is ample proof of this. But it still doesn't make them competitive with Mexican or Indonesian labor.
What about working smarter? That's great too, and I highly recommend it. But only a small percentage of any population is equipped or willing to do it. That's why there has always been, and always will be, a working class. Everybody cannot be a doctor, lawyer, bankers, scientist, advertising executive, computer whiz, cult leader, or flim-flam man. We need to realize that the answer lies in getting people back to work on ordinary production jobs not at Third World wages but at American wages.
The much hailed information super-highway won't provide the answer to the problems of the working class of the next century any more than the Encyclopedia Britannica and hundred great books did for the workers of this century. For most, the information super-highway, as wonderful as it may be, will become simply a handy, but seldom used, tool. It certainly won't provide a living for everybody as some people seem to expect. It may revolutionize the means by which we access information, but it won't change the fundamental needs of people. Put a laptop computer in the hands of every first grader, as Newt Gingrich recently suggested, and those children will still grow up to need real jobs. Not a tenth of those jobs will require down-loading information from a database or cracking a book.
There are five ways I know of for an industry to become more competitive. (1) Automate and downsize the work force; (2) cut wages and benefits; (3) buy raw materials and components from low wage nations; (4) move offshore, and; (5) all of the above all of which industries are being forced to do, whether they like it or not. Believe it or not, many companies would prefer to stay home and continue to employ their own people if they could only compete in the global marketplace. But they can't compete. The cards are stacked too heavily against them.
Someday it will be rediscovered that a lot of beneficial work can be accomplished with human labor without the need for expensive machines and electronic gizmos, and that we have a vast storehouse of wasted potential out there wasting away on unemployment and welfare. It's time to start putting people back into the workplace rather than taking them out. Corporate profits should accrue to labor as well as to executives and stockholders. There seems to be a feeling that good business is simply making bottom line profits. Not only is reasonable self interest justified, but raw greed is vindicated and promoted by this kind of thinking. Thus our currently booming economy, based strictly on corporate bottom-line profits, is seen as evidence of economic health, even though it has recently produced the first jobless recovery in the history of civilization. Profit should also be measured by its benefit to society at large. The worker's wage, which is not only his, but also his community's, life-blood, ought to be considered as important as bottom line profits and stockholder dividends. One goal of corporate business, through government incentives, should be to provide jobs that can comfortably support families and full employment at a decent living wage.
We have another myth to sustain our hope. The service economy myth. A service economy is essentially where everybody makes as living by taking in each other's laundry. Some jobs simply cannot flee the country for cheap labor nations. These are captive industries, and comprise most of the service industries in the nation. They are forced to compete domestically by paying lower and lower wages as real wealth producing activities evaporate around them. Surviving farmers, merchants and small business, captive to their own country, are also caught in this downward spiral. The only ones partly immune are the money shufflers and flim-flam men, who, like the government itself, are merely parasites to producers of real goods and services.
Ultimately, an economy that is not based on the production of real goods and real wealth is an economy that is in self destruct mode. Such things as paper shuffling, gambling, tourism, prison building, stock and futures trading, and government, have never produced a penny's worth of wealth. They merely shuffle and consume the wealth created by productive activities, i.e., agriculture, mining, manufacturing. If this real production does not occur, then all real goods have to be imported. Money leaves the country in the exchange, of course, and it seldom returns under the same ownership.
Where does all the money come from if wealth isn't being created? It comes from credit, extended through debt expansion. Our money is an instrument of debt rather than intrinsic value. When credit is substituted for real income with the belief that real income is being earned, there is a serious problem. We have that problem in monumental terms, and an economic reckoning cannot be far off.
Credit, or money, flows to the producing nations with goods to sell and out of non-producing nations. Example: Japan is a producing nation. Though we are still a producing nation, our balance of trade deficit with Japan means we buy a lot more from Japan than we sell to them. (We sell a little cheap and buy a lot dear.) This means a net out-flow of cash from the U.S. to Japan. This situation, among other things, has made Japan an exceedingly wealthy nation and ourselves a dependent nation with a crippling debt. Japanese capital does return to America, as it buys American capital assets and opens Japanese owned factories with profits it makes from selling manufactured goods in the American market. What's more, Japan has become one of Uncle Sam's principle bankers, and holds a huge mortgage upon the assets of the great United States of America, (alleged victor of W.W.II).
Free trade puts American labor into head to head competition with all foreign labor, and underwrites Third World Competition. Though the net cost of Japanese labor has surpassed that of American labor, Japan reaped the benefits of free trade with the U.S. long ago under bi-lateral agreements roughly based on original GATT concepts which favored Japan. I don't mean to pick on Japan, but merely use it as a convenient and clear example to make my point.
The example of Japan is much different than that of Mexico and other Third World nations which, largely due to government corruption and inept management, have never managed to do anything much on their own. Japan is a very special example, simply because it is so inherently capable, and thus been so economically successful. As a vanquished nation after W.W.II, Japan was given free access to American markets with the understanding that we would also have access to Japanese markets when they developed.
Trouble is, Japan conducts its business in Japan's own best national interests. It's huge trade imbalance with the rest of the world in its favor generates excess national income, which it puts to good use on its own behalf. It satisfies it's own markets whenever it is capable of doing so, and Japan is certainly capable. We didn't mind this unfair exchange for awhile because the U.S. economy was so large it could absorb a lot of production from overseas and still remain vibrant. So Japan and the U.S. played the free trade game. But even after Japan became an economic powerhouse, it refused to play fair. We bought everything we wanted from Japan and Japan was pleased to accommodate our consumer markets. But Japan didn't wouldn't buy anything from us that it didn't need. We're supposed to think it strange that Japan doesn't want to buy what it doesn't need or want.
Once Japan got its own industries built, it only needed raw materials, and was happy to buy them from us as long as we sold them cheaply enough. Japan refuses to buy our cars and most other manufactured consumer goods from us simply because Japan makes its own consumer goods that are every bit as good as our own. And in producing those consumer goods, (always first for the export market and secondarily for their own) they kept the Japanese economy expanding and the Japanese people working. That's the duty of the Japanese government to its people.
Now we're supposedly mad because Japan doesn't play fair. They take care of themselves and their people, and don't give two hoots for us except as customers for their products. They don't want our cars and toasters theirs are just fine. In the meantime, we have bought more and more Japanese products because many of our factories have ceased to produce them and we've borrowed more and more money, (which, incidentally, makes it appear that Japan buys more from us than they do. They buy treasury instruments, i.e., our debt, effectively helping to prop up our sick economy by underwriting our government's deficit spending.). Now we literally have to buy from Japan and other nations we've opened our markets to because we have willfully made ourselves dependent on them. Yet we think they should have to buy from us whether they want to or not. Well, maybe they should, but just because we've committed industrial suicide doesn't mean that they're going to follow suit. The same has continued throughout Asia and other parts of the world where we continue to cut our own throat while we act as if we are leading the world.
Our politicians literally wring their hands and fret about Japan's closed markets. It seems to them that our only hope for national salvation lies in penetrating the Japanese market. Few politicians suggest that we should recapture our own domestic markets and economic independence. That is New World Order heresy. But, the way I see it, that is the only sane course. Today little Japan speaks softly and carries a big economic stick, due to our own mismanagement of our markets and economic affairs. Yet we insist on speaking loudly and thrashing about with wet Japanese manufactured noodles.
Time to punch a hole in another myth. There is no profit in free or even fair trade. Unless one or the other trading party is cheating, by taking advantage of the other, no profit is possible. All unnecessary foreign trade is a losing proposition. That isn't to say that trade is not good. Trade is both desirable, and often necessary. But it is only good when it materially, or otherwise, benefits the parties involved without shortchanging one or the other. When the goal of trade is simply the destruction of economic independence in favor of economic dependence and international interdependence for all , as is the case with the current plan, it is patently bad.
International interdependence is the name of the New World Order game, but the United States is the only major player seriously sacrificing its economic independence. The rest of the world is merely playing the game to get ahead.
This is why free international trade, the global village, and the New World Order won't work. The United States is the only nation that is sacrificing its own people on the altar of free trade. Some Western European nations are doing it to a lesser degree, but will stop short of national suicide. We seem committed to going all the way.
All the other nations in both the industrialized and Third World will ultimately act in what they believe is their own best national interests just as Japan has done. While they play at the free trade game, they can all laugh at us. Mexico, our southern NAFTA partner will sponge whatever it can from us, as will every nation in the world. When the chips are down, however, we will awaken to find that we have relinquished or squandered almost every advantage God has given us.
There is also another down side to free trade that is seldom mentioned. Protectionism provided the basis for our federal government's few legitimate sources of tax revenue duties and tariffs. Before the advent of the Federal Reserve System and the income tax, tariffs and duties were our government's primary source of income. One of the goals of free trade is to ultimately abolish tariffs on international trade transactions. This will further entrench an already oppressive and unfair income tax system, and require the working middle-class and poor to make up for the loss of tariff revenues out of their declining personal incomes. This compounds the multiple negative impacts of free trade on American citizens.
Even with protective tariffs in place, the United States has always been a robust trading nation. We had an enviable merchant marine which plied the trade routes of the world, and our seaports were always beehives of activity. (Now our national merchant marine is almost extinct, and many of our seaports have become backwaters, yet trade has increased dramatically over recent years. Foreign merchant ships deliver high priced manufactured goods and take away low priced raw materials and give-away cargoes.) There is no reason to believe that tariffs and a moderate amount of protectionism will inhibit beneficial trade. It never has.
Tariffs give national governments valuable and necessary control over their national trade policy, and the ability to protect vital home industries. It gives them the punitive power needed to combat unfair trade practices and dumping by other nations. But there's no reason why tariffs on trade even need be protectionist, if protectionism is so bad. Tariffs could be used as a nondiscriminatory revenue generating, (taxing) activity of governments even within a free trade arrangement. If tariffs were a flat, modest percentage, say five percent of the trade value of all imports (and exports, to be fair), income tax could probably be abolished. Tariffs are merely a very convenient means a government has of taxing the nation through international trade transactions at the border rather than at the personal, and unconstitutionally intrusive, level of the weekly paycheck of increasingly harried and hard-pressed workers.
At the end of W.W.II, the United States of America was the greatest producer and the greatest consumer nation, as well as the most powerful nation in the history of the world. We needed very little from the rest of the world, because we had everything that we needed. Our farmers fed us, our mines and forests provided raw materials, Pittsburgh produced our steel, Detroit produced our cars and Americans enjoyed one of the highest literacy rates and the highest living standards of any nation in on earth. We didn't have to throw any of that away. And what's more, while we were a bastion of independence and strength, we were also a beacon of hope and inspiration to the entire world. Not only that, we were in a real position to share our abundance with the less fortunate. Free trade will dictate that we now share our remaining wealth from a position of disadvantage, heavily burdened by debt, and no longer masters of our own destiny, much less anybody else's.
The United States of America itself was the world's first and most spectacularly successful free trade block. Free trade amongst the several states of the Union was a primary goal of our federal constitutional system. America succeeded because protectionism and isolationism were national policies, imposed to protected domestic industry against not only foreign competition, but foreign economic dominance. Because of this sensible and successful policy, we had everything we needed, and more. What right do own government mis-representatives have to take all this away? None! This is our country.
Henceforth the World Trade Organization, (WTO) will regulate our national trade policy. Under this new global system of trade management, which is an extension of the GATT agreement, our national sovereignty and domestic trade apparatus will take a back seat to policy set by an un-elected, unaccountable, world governing body which will deliberate on international trade affairs in Geneva, Switzerland. If we don't go along with the edicts of these faceless international bureaucrats, it'll cost us dearly. The United States will be represented in this world body by one vote, equal to the vote of each of the 124 other member nations. That one vote will be cast by somebody appointed by somebody in Washington whose loyalties will be with Wall Street and international capital interests rather than the American producer.
Let's look at it another way. My home state of Illinois has a population of something like twelve million people and an area of some 56,345 square miles somewhat larger than Greece. The state of Illinois, a republic in its own right within the Union, has all the attributes requisite to a nation state. It has an unparalleled agricultural base, a still enviable industrial base, and an infrastructure and economy which would be the envy of any nation in the Third World, and many of those in Western Europe. Yet this great State of Illinois is out-voted in the WTO by every tin-horn nation in the world by a 50 to 1 margin!
What's more, to add insult to injury, most of the 124 member nations of the WTO receive varying amounts of U.S. foreign aid and other considerations intended to help make them more competitive against Illinois and the other states of the Union. Israel, for example, the biggest aid recipient of all, with a population of less than five million and land area of 7,847 square miles, gets $3,000,000,000.00 every year from U.S. taxpayers, while Illinois, like every other state, gets zapped with unfunded federal mandates.
Rwanda, Haiti, Belize, and probably even little Naura in the South Pacific (population 8,000-plus, and eight square miles of land), each has one full vote in the WTO. Each and every nation, no matter how small or insignificant, has fifty times more representation than any state in the Union.
Had such a proposal come before the American people, or been subjected to constitutional processes in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment, would two thirds of the states been suicidal enough to ratify it? Of course not. These pacts were and are international treaties in every sense of the word, and by every measure. They supersede and over-ride our national and state constitutions and our laws and regulations. GATT blatantly undermines the very core of our national sovereignty. Treaties require a two thirds majority vote in both houses in order to become law. Yet only simple majorities were required to pass these suicidal trade pacts. In my book, that makes them illegal, and non-binding treaties. But my book doesn't count. But there is one good thing about it. That is that simple majorities can also rescind our self-destructive acceptance of NAFTA, GATT and WTO.
This graphically illustrates to what degree our legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, have sold their constituents down the river with GATT, and the WTO.
The New World Order promoters paint a rosy picture of a global village of the international free marketplace of goods, services, and ideas, with freedom, prosperity, and peace for all. If the New World Order is such a good deal, let the rest of the world have it. We Americans don't need it. We had a great economy before free trade and Cold War economics began taking their ghastly toll after World War Two. We had an abundance of goods and services, along with freedom and unparalleled prosperity. And we haven't had a war of our own since the Spanish American War. Our more recent wars were either somebody else's, where we went to the aid of an ally, or where we imposed ourselves where we didn't belong for some noble cause.
To paraphrase one prominent American internationalist in reference to the coming world government, "If you don't like it, lump it." That's the internationalist elite's attitude. They brag that world government is coming whether we mere citizens like it or not. The grand conspiracy, they all deny, is almost complete. After all, they claim, who in his right mind would not prefer a peaceful and orderly world, governed by an enlightened and disciplined elite that know how to run a bank, rather than what we've had until now?
No more Declarations of Independence. No more God given, unalienable rights. No covenant with God, only a UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, where every so-called human right is codified and hedged with qualifying clauses that begin with "except...". God does not rein, and men are deemed incapable of self-government and must be ruled, according to those who would rule us.
Most Americans seem to be under the mistaken impression that the United States is the spiritual and ideological leader of the New World Order, and that the U.S. will always set the international agenda that the New World Order is like putting the world under our protective wing and enlightened authority. That impression couldn't be further from the truth. The United States has long ago given up that kind of moral high ground.
The reins of the New World Order have never been in the hands of elected American leaders or anybody remotely loyal to America or its Constitution. American citizens, with much already lost, but still the most to lose, seem to be the only ones in the world that haven't yet got the word.
Solutions are relatively simple to state but will be quite difficult to accomplish against the domestic and international political tide. The government must begin to use its regulatory powers to help the American people rather than work against them. Washington is still on the backs of the peoples, but has gotten off of the backs of big capital. It's time to reverse that. Make American capital work for the benefit of all the American people, not just the bottom line. Carrot and stick regulations and tax incentives, must be used to lure factories back to our shores and prevent others from leaving. Only with a return to a productive, real wealth-producing prosperity, will we be able to avert social chaos.
This means private sector, jobs. None of our pressing domestic problems can be satisfactorily addressed without them. Welfare cannot be seriously reformed without them. The drug and crime problems cannot be effectively addressed without them. Health care cannot be realistically tackled without them. Government cannot be appreciably down-sized without them. Freedom itself cannot be preserved without them. We can no longer afford to delude ourselves with the myths that a hi-tech, service economy revolution, or some government make-work program is about to rescue us. That is fatally dangerous wishful thinking. Only real jobs for the displaced can answer the needs of our society.
Its vitally important to return the nation to truly Constitutional government, but that cannot be done unless we first reverse our current suicidal plunge into the planned New World Order. The two are mutually exclusive. The Global Village must be kept at bay unless we are willing to become peasants on a global plantation. We don't have to derail the good parts of the New World Order, if there are any really good parts to it. There's definitely a useful role for the United Nations. It can continue to provide an invaluable function in matters of international concern, and continue to be an effective global forum for cooperative efforts toward a better, more peaceful world. But forget the one world government angle!
We must re-invoke our Constitution, pre- serve our national sovereignty, and regain our economic and political independence. We must be the masters of our own national destiny, regardless of how small the world may appear. Only after we have once again managed to get our own house in order will we, as a nation, be able to do any good either at home or abroad. I hope the new Republican controlled Congress will realize this.
Camden
ANOTHER GREAT THREAT THE REPUBLICANS POSE
Though I share the pleasure of having seen the Democrats defeated in November, still I cannot say I'm absolutely overjoyed at the prospects of a Republican controlled Congress. Better than Democrats, perhaps, but still dangerous. The Republican platform and the Contract with America notwithstanding, Republicans over the years have been just as guilty as Democrats of piling more government on our backs. When Republicans called for deregulation and getting the government off of our backs in the 80's, the result was deregulation of the biggest corporations, banks, and savings & loan industries the very industries that needed more federal oversight to protect the public's interests. But not a single bit of government was removed from the backs of individuals and small proprietorships. More has been piled on!
If the Republicans were not exactly champions of the welfare and regulatory state, they have been champions of increased federal police powers, and the increased federalization of law enforcement. Their "Get Tough on Crime" positions have contributed to the increasingly police state-like powers of the federal government.
Republicans have advocated, and been responsible for, "putting teeth" in ever-more draconian federal crime bills. The War on Crime, and the War on Drugs, are greater threats to freedom than the War of Poverty ever thought of being, simply because they increase the coercive and corrosive armed police power of the central government and its many enforcement agencies.
The increased power, recklessness, and disregard for citizens' rights and life itself, on the part of federal officials, have been exemplified by the recent rash of deadly raids against innocent American citizens. This continuing trend is more than passingly disturbing. Such an activist role by the federal authorities in the area law enforcement is as patently dangerous as it is unconstitutional. As a direct result, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights are now routinely infringed and violated at all levels of law enforcement due to Washington's perverse lead. Supporting this trend is a blatant expenditure of our national freedom capital. Wake up Republicans. Big Brother Cop is not what America needs either. Most of our social problems, including our very real crime problems, can be traced directly to the ever increasing role of the federal government in our midst.
CC
One result of out of touch, corrupt government, tending towards a police state, and embracing the New World Order betrayal of the American people, is that more and more people are rediscovering what the Second Amendment, and American Constitution is all about.
The vast unorganized Militia is stirring and organizing, to the great alarm and consternation of the Justice Department and the Washington political establishment.. Militia groups are forming and growing throughout the nationoften with local political endorsement. What is doubly frightening to Washington, is the unknown number of loyal patriots within the armed forces and various other federal agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, who will, when push comes to shove, join with militia forces to defend the Constitution and constitutional government.
CC
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Published in U.S.A. by, William R.
Carr, Editor and publisher
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