Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but it was already impossible to say which was which. (Orwell, Animal Farm)
President Obama is ready now to sign the Defense Authorization Bill, which gives the executive the power to snatch Americans off the street and send them away indefinitely (CIA secret prisons, torture chambers in Romania, Poland, Iraq anyone?). Apologists are running around saying that the threat is overstated, and anyway, it is only aimed at terrorists. A rational observer might note that “terrorists” barely exist and are not a credible threat to our society, which would imply that our leadership is blind and stupid, or deliberately misleading us. Since there are so many of them, it’s easy to say “all of the above,” but the hard core elite that sits behind “the executive” are neither stupid or blind.
So it is easy to predict the real purpose and use of the snatch provision of the DFA: to attack protesters, quell the emergent rebellion. Since the executive already has to power to willy-nilly designate a “terrorist” (generally speaking, “someone we don’t like,”), we have effectively given the president the power to designate a group as terrorist without oversight, and then disappear its members. OWS can easily be attacked in this manner, likely will be.
What we are looking at is fascism, which in common parlance means extreme right wing authoritarian and intolerant government. Imprisonment and torture of enemies is implicitly part of any fascist regime. These practices have grown up around us since the end of WWII, but were done in secret, or merely overseen by Americans using local goons. Since 9/11 government has found it less necessary to conceal its activities.
Disappearance and torture of dissidents are common and accepted in our backyard prisons in the Americas, and were widely used in the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and junior partner Israel’s local wars. They are now out in the open. The prison compound at Guantanamo had to survive, as it is iconic. It had to be accepted in the American consciousness as a fact of life. So there was never a chance that Obama would shut it down. Americans largely were ignorant of real American abuses overseas and down south over the decades, and so might be surprised to know that the only difference between then and now is that American foreign policy is coming home to roost.
Modern neoclassical economics, and its inbred Austrian cousin, are to a large degree responsible for the onset of fascism. Economists are not secret totalitarians, but wrong-headed ideas about their “equilibrium” have naturally led us to a state of class dominance where a few privileged people control most of the wealth and income in the country. Government interference would fix this problem by means of control of monopoly and and preservation of workers’ organization rights, by progressive taxation and other redistribution policies. Since neoclassical economists have ruled the roost throughout the post-war era, such common-sense remedies to wealth inequality are prohibited.
As a natural consequence, wealth has coagulated in a few hands, and those who control it now turn to government to preserve their privileges. Government in the hands of neoclassical economists is the dagger now aimed at the heart of civil liberty. The key to personal freedom has always been to prevent wealth concentration, a notion of greater good. Where Marxism failed, socialism has had stunning success.
I’ll bet not many people knew (certainly I didn’t) that as we looked from Obama to McCain and McCain to Obama, we were really looking at two faces of the same man.
___________________
Glenn Greenwald has a much better grasp of this than me, and says that the issue that was resolved was that the executive branch was telling congress not to interfere or try to define powers that the executive already possesses. The threat of veto by “Obama” was merely a warning to congress that they were off their turf.
Piece of Mindful 
Are you sure “the same man” was not, in fact, a pig? Was the pig a robotic puppet, or a real pig? I keep thinking I can see strings leading from the pig puppet to the puppet master. I have never seen the puppet master, because the strings disappear before my eyes. Anymore, a fake is hard to spot.
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When most of them are fakes, it’s hard to distinguish.
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What we are looking at is fascism,… fascism…
Bogeyman, bogeyman.
If the thing is so pervasive, maybe we should embrace it and improve it.
Government interference would fix this problem by means of control of monopoly and and preservation of workers’ organization rights, by progressive taxation and other redistribution policies.
Forgive me if I don’t cheerlead “government interference.” The feedback quickly becomes skewed, and the world over the thing becomes bloated and corrupt. You act like there are Angels in the wings, waiting to save us from ourselves. I suspect otherwise.
As for unions, I always considered them killed off by the Left in this country, a Left that went down the road of massive illegal immigration, environmental laws, affirmative action for People of Color and Women; and thus unions got thrown under the bus. The college crowd, media, and government workers saw unions as a reservoir of the wrong kind of ethnic solidarity and dirty industry, and so, sorry ol’ chap, not so much room anymore for you on the boat.
Government in the hands of neoclassical economists [and also co-opted by big business fascists who have figured out power while the rest of us have not] is the dagger now aimed at the heart of civil liberty.
I’m sure neo-classical economists are happy to know they have such power.
I wonder which way runs the arrow of causality: did gov’t get captured by big business, or did big business get captured by gov’t?
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The left did not give us rampant illegal immigration. NAFTA did that, and the Left was opposed to NAFTA from the beginning. It dislocated millions of Mexican farm workers, sending them to the maquiladoras and points further north.
And unions were deliberately undermined by NAM starting in the 1930’s, a deliberate propaganda campaign to convince workers that organization was not in their best interest. Couple that with the refusal to enforce anti-trust laws, 1980 forward, and you have low wages and high unemployment.
And again with government your perspective is skewed by Randian notions that mere bigness in government is in itself evil. Social Security is big, as is the Post Office. Both are efficient and benign. You need to broaden your perspective to realize that “big” government is a pejorative aimed only at those parts of government that benefit everyday people. The military is big beyond big – prior to 9/11 a scandal was brewing because the Pentagon had lost over $2 trillion dollars. Trillion. The scale of death and devastation done to Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan only comes about due to the size of our military, far beyond the pale of need.
So please deal a little bit in nuance. It’s not black/white.
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Yes, the military is big and bloated and makes my point.
It is a fallacy to say Social Security is big and good, therefore other things can be big and good. (Social Security has plenty of problems, by the way.) I look around the world, and big, centralized government seems more and more to be a repository of a societies’ pathologies. The Arab spring targeted their governments for a reason. Maybe a little more decentralization is in order.
As far as immigration-Left-unions, yes, there are other forces at work, but the Left has their share of acts and omissions.
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The military makes my point, that the “right” and moneyed interests who tactically support “free markets” and “free choice” in the marketplace are very much in favor of big government when it serves their interests, and that is why we have a bloated military. It is not because government itself is an inherent evil. It is as those who have power to manipulate it make it to be. If it is ordinary people controlling elected representatives, then government is usually benign, as bad actors are routinely removed. In our system, because our elections are privately financed, even though we switch parties now and then, we merely replace bad actors with other bad actors. Ergo, our representative government is a sham.
Social Security is relatively free of problems. It is efficient, operates on low overhead, does not serve as a pipeline for bloated executive salaries, and is on a solid financial footing.
Your last paragraph merely rewords the statement “Geez, it’s a complicated world,” and is therefore meaningless.
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It is as those who have power to manipulate it make it to be.
Your usual: conveniently vague, untouchable power brokers. But for them, your policy ideas would be immediately enacted, and all would be better. Nice of them to leave SS alone for you.
Your whole take on unions and immigration is so limited, so lacking in depth, like a school kid tossing a few points out on a test. The affect of NAFTA on illegal immigration is maybe 1%, and that is only the immigration from Mexico. We’ve got a whole suite of other countries getting in on the game. Unions declined because a) people of ambition don’t like to join them, because they have to make up for the slackers… b) the elites focused on finance, media, college, etc and distanced themselves from traditional union jobs and were happy enough to let them wither because they despise the lower classes of their own ethnics…c) the insulated elites were happy to import a new class of people that brought them cheap chalupas. If the new people wiped out unions and that job protection, oh well, it doesn’t affect them…d) trade and advances in machinery exposed many union jobs to a relentless competition that was hard to fight sans political help from the elites that had come to despise them.
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Wow, talk about out of reach. NAFTA allowed the US to flood the Mexican market with our surplus crops, and drove 11 million people out of work. Your 1% is comically ill-informed.
Most American workers would like to join a union but cannot because it is almost impossible to form one anymore, to get it past NLRB. Your notion about slackers is your own projection.
I don’t get your “b” above – professionals in general don’t unionize, though they form membership guilds – the AICPA, for instance, is effectively a union, as are most corporations – investor unions. It is only considered naughty for workers to form unions.
“c” – agreed. I’ve been saying that ad nauseum – that the reason why immigration is not stopped at the border is because they drive wages down.
“d” – I just don’t know about that stuff. It’s been going on for centuries, but we have more workers now than ever and many jobs just cannot be mechanized.
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NAFTA allowed the US to flood the Mexican market with our surplus crops, and drove 11 million people out of work.
This is completely false. Farmer numbers have declined in Mexico, by about 2 million, but these would have occurred anyway sans NAFTA as ag there consolidated and mechanized as is the wont in that sector. Mexico maintained its production through the NAFTA years, and even had a drop of food corn imports from the US in most years. Imports were mainly feed for Mexico’s growing cattle and hog feeding.
Consolidation of an industry cuts jobs, but it is the duty of that society to re-employ, which Mexico did to some extent with its farm workers; but somehow it is okay for eternally marginal workers from Mexico to come here and re-created the home country.
I challenge you to find an illegal Mexican immigrant who was a farmer driven from his land by ag imports from the US. This is apocryphal stuff that fits a meme.
b…the rise of office jobs (gov’t, insurance, health care, and finance) corresponded with a decline in respect for traditional jobs in unions: mechanics and people at the end of a shovel became the butt of jokes. The honest union man was a hero in the movie On the Waterfront. Today’s movie hero is George Clooney in a suit. Not helpful to the union cause.
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You have a habit of blithely asserting things to be factual that you cannot know. Your comments are usually rife with such remarks, and addressing each one is tedious. You are right that farmland is still farmland in Mexico. to understand how hat country has changed because of NAFTA requires effort on your part, and my telling you things in its stead is pointless. What coincided with NAFTA was a huge migration, which I say is cause and effect, not because land is not being farmed, but rather the heirarachal structure of land ownership that was brought about as American investors were freed of shackles. NAFTA also gave rise to the maliquadora zone on the border where American companies moved their plants to use cheap labor and free themselves of environmental concerns. They then “import” the products they make.
You challenged me to find one example of a Mexican worker put out of work by NAFTA, this after to admitted to two million of them. Those that are still there are working more for less, as theynare no longer free,farmers, but now cogs in factory farms. Any Mexican prosperity that may appear after NAFTA is an illusion, as the treaty created a great sucking sound, not oly of migration northward, but of wealth being sucked upward from down below. Wealth inequality in Mexico is extreme, even by our standards.
The whole point of “free trade,” whichndoesn’t even exist, is to lock countries like Mexico into effective hegemony, to prevent development.
Enough.
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I challenged you to find one illegal immigrant who was here on account of NAFTA. The challenge still stands.
Trade generally raises the wealth of engaging countries. NAFTA was partly sold as a way to reduce immigration via improving Mexico’s economy. Mexico’s economy improved a little, not as much as advertised, for various reasons, some of which you touched upon, but there is more to it.
There was no big surge of illegal immigration from Mexico corresponding to NAFTA. The anti-trade Left is more anxious to push this point than what evidence supports it.
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Substance, man. Substance! The recent wave of illegal immigration corresponds precisely to NAFTA.
Your comments on trade reflect conventional economics and wisdom, but the truth is we understand very little of the dynamics of trade and conventional economics sheds no light. Korea, for example, locked its doors to trade and now is a burgeoning export-driven economy.
Mexico’s economy is marching lockstep with our own with wealth concentrating in fewer hands and more widespread poverty. (Hint – people generally don’t emigrate when they have jobs.) So the number are misleading in that per capita wealth is an average. I used to work for a woman who, at the time, was worth $35 million. The two of us averaged $17.5 million. Ergo, we were both prospering.
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” The recent wave of illegal immigration corresponds precisely to NAFTA” …not.
You are apparently happy with this as an explanatory narrative, but it is not the case by a long ways, so expect your usual disappointment when you take your assured explanations and fail at effective change.
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WTF? Unless you can offer up more than “…not.” as your counterargument, I’m outta here. Good grief – you don’t eve try!
Pretend you are a horse.
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=simon_serrano
Pretend that is water. Don’t come back here till you have drunk it. It’s 42 pages, but double-spaced, and much of it is ancillary. But it addresses my point – NAFTA has been a disaster for Mexican farmers, who were displaced by subsidized American products. Mexico, self-sufficient in 1994, now imports most of its food.
Oh yeah – and immigration – it’s exactly what I said. 13 million workers in that industry, most displaced in one fashion or another. Immigration doubled in the wake of NAFTA. Like I said.
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I’ll read the paper. I’ll check some of its sources. I’m going to try live blogging as I read in the next comment. Let’s keep a couple questions in mind here: Mexico accounts for 60% of immigrants. Why did the other 40% cohort increase along with Mexico’s numbers? Is there maybe something other than NAFTA involved here? Immigration increases also maps the increase in drug flows across the Mexican border. If we are picking one thing to blame, we could just as well blame drugs. Or just maybe there is a multiplicity of factors working together in linear and non-linear ways that give us our immigration patterns. But what I’ve got here is “one variable Tokarski” who likes to latch on to one thing and then be emotionally done with exploring the subject.
Part of the joke here is that we don’t have good numbers on illegal immigration. Jeffrey Passel has done serious work estimating the numbers. I’ll use his. We had increasing immigration from Mexico from 1965 onwards until in 1986 it was deemed a big problem that needed solving, so the 1986 amnesty bill was crafted. That bill touched on the conventional wisdom solutions, employer verification of workers and such, but the big thing was that it gave amnesty to current illegals, and that opened the floodgates. NAFTA came in 1996, and there was a spike in numbers in 1997 (nothing to cover the numbers your coven claims), but something like NAFTA takes years for its effects to be felt.
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Well, do read the paper, as it addresses the very points you raise including other reasons for immigration. But NAFTA (1994) did not take years to be felt. It hit Mexico immediately with a huge employment crisis in 1995-96. Those who promoted it were simply making shit up about mutual prosperity and all of that, but what happened instantly was thatnthe Mexican market was flooded with a massive influx of subsidized American corn, pork, rice, and the fringe sector, the low-wage agricultural sector was devastated. By 1997 the number of illegals had doubled to around 500,000 annually (yes, they can estimate these things reasonably well as that is what demographers do. They have many tools.)
They either did not know this was going to happen or didn’t give a shit, my guess the latter. Mexico in effect became a colony, with it legal to move anything and everything across the border except people.
Part of the joke here is that among the various selling points they used to get NAFTA through was that it would solve the illegal immigration problem.
Unemployment and displacement have devastated Mexico, and desperate people do desperate things, like go elsewhere in search of income, and turn to e drug business, as it is lucrative. Yes, NAFTA can be blamed for the Mexican drug wars too. the people who pushed this thing through don’t care about shit. They are only after markets and cheap labor. That’s all they ever wanted. They hire ad agencies to craft their talking points.
Canada, by the way, with a skilled labor force and high standard of living, is not threatened as much by NAFTA. Trade among equals is healthy. It has been the US that has been bitching about Canadian timber, gas, coming down, but Canadian workers have no need to go anywhere else, especially since hey would lose their health care.
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Let’s see here…Florida Coastal School of Law. Florida. The unwiped anus. A law school for immigration info? We’ll see. August 2008. Relevant enough. “Simon Serrano 3L Florida Coastal School of Law”. What ethnicity is Serrano? Apparently a law student. WTF?… On to the table of contents, where we find these gems: THE CRUEL REALITY OF NAFTA. Cruel reality? Sounds like your kind of guy. THE CRUEL REALITY OF NAFTA. He writes like you: “Here is reality. Your experiences up to now were not real. I know reality. Let me explain it to you, and then you will know and have no need for further inquiry, unless it reinforces what I already believe.” References…table of authority? Ha Ha….Common Dreams.org., Flood Unleashed by NAFTA’s Disastrous Impact on Mexican Economy. Now there’s an unbiased source…Statesman.com: Plowing Farmers Under. Nice…Douglas S. Massey. Uh oh… People’s Weekly World Newspaper. Finally, an unbiased source (hee hee)…Steven Zahniser, NAFTA at 13: Implementation Nears Completion, (March 2007). You mean we’re not even done implementing the thing, and immigration numbers are falling in recent years?
Intro. “Free” trade with Mexico and Canada. I wonder how devastated is Canada. Says here it was to be implemented in 1994. I thought it was “96. I’ll have to check…Yes, it was ’94…He claims the core issue was agriculture. What about manufacturing?…Discussed NAFTA as a cure for illegal immigration…Money quote: ” In the wake of NAFTA, Mexicans have immigrated to the US at an accelerated rate, and this effect was unforeseen by many other US leaders.” I suspect the rate increase was for other reasons, and it leveled off in the aughts…quotes and mocks a Business Week columnist…quotes Massey who decries US gov’t action, saying we fortified the border, making it harder for labor to flow. WTF?…Quotes a Robert E Scott on how NAFTA has destroyed good jobs and increased bad jobs. Based on what? The link to the cite does not work. Author asserts the only solution was to emigrate. Why not create some jobs in Mexico? Instead of using your drive and ambition to emigrate, why not stay and use that drive and ambition to build something at home? I suspect we’re on to the theme here: Mexico’s economy sucks. It sucks because of the US. Therefore, we have to punish the US by cramming it full of Mexican immigrants who will displace traditional US citizens and re-create Mexico in the North. That will teach them. Bastards…Discussion of US companies buying Mexican companies (So? Look at all the foreign owned companies in the US) instead of starting new ones, thus, apparently, destroying even more jobs. What did they do, burn the places down?…On to my buddies at the People’s Weekly World with the line that subsidized US corn floods Mexican market, shuttering Mexican farms and driving workers to the US. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat the Sounding Joy. Repeat the Sounding Joy. The thing here is that Mexican corn is more heavily subsidized than US corn. Mexico showed no decrease in corn production under NAFTA. The Left has found an emotionally satisfying meme here…Oh man, here is a gem of a section on farmworkers, with a bunch of misleading quotes from a Labor Dept. report. The idea of immigrants coming here to do farm work is flogged endlessly, but what are the raw numbers? We have maybe 200,000 total farm workers, yet we get 500,000 Mexican immigrants a year. What a disconnect….Author tries to discount the Social Benefit angle. Not even a nice try. One argument against low wage workers from Mexico is that when you add up the costs of supplying school, healthcare, infrastructure, and transfer payments, it is a net loss for the US economy, by a long ways. Mr. Serrano tries to dodge that one. No dice…He flashed some numbers here, along with a convoluted discussion about how Mexico’s unemployment is high, but also low because so many people emigrate. The thing to smoke out here is that through the nineties and aughts, legal immigration numbers from Mexico fell, while illegal numbers rose. Serrano quotes just illegal numbers, making the situation look worse. So ten years after NAFTA passed, we had 100,000 more immigrants per year, rather than the 200,000 than is suggested here…. More moaning about the loss of ag jobs in Mexico. Every other economy in the world has seen this, and they employ the people elsewhere, usually to greater production. This doesn’t seem to apply to Mexico, mainly because they have an explicit and encouraged policy of emigration cum colonizing….More moaning and numbers, saying Mexico has lost 3 million jobs to NAFTA. All jobs, not just ag. And you are quoting 13 million. Did Serrano leave off a one? Must have. Hell, why not just make it 113 million. Make it bad. Real bad. Who cares about the numbers. It is just bad….Now he says a million Mexican farmers have been displaced as he moans about low food prices in Mexico. Lower prices are usually a net good for consumers, leaving more money for purchases elsewhere….Section here about Vincente Fox moaning that Mexico used to export its peasants who didn’t have the mojo to earn a living. Now he fears Mexico might be exporting some people who can earn their keep….More numbers, telling us 600 Mexican farmers leave each day. That is around 200,000 a year. We get more than twice that in immigrants. Something else must be going on, but why look when we have a convenient excuse in NAFTA?…Some song and dance about corporate greed and the economic benefits of immigration. Nice of this paper to be written in 2008, at the peak of the housing bubble when the numbers were at their highest. Since then a big fall in numbers. I guess immigrants got mad and quit being productive. Tsk. I’m going off now. I’ll read the rest, but I suspect it is more of the same.
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That was painful for you I take it? Your comments are mostly off-the-mark, as you don’t seem to understand the dynamics of colonialism. Colonizers want three things – cheap labor and cheap resources and new markets. With NAFTA they got all three.
I like the way you say they should “create new businesses,” as it exposes your underlying prejudice. You’re really saying that they are lazy. Imagine that you are an agricultural worker subsisting on your own in Mexico in 1993, and a year later foreign products flood the country, and you no longer have a market for your crops, as people can buy it cheaper from Americans. You lose your land, and it is taken over for the sake of export crops, and in the meantime Mexico becomes a net importer of food. Your choices are to head north and work the Maliquidora factories, which is what NAFTA promoters want, or head north looking for work. Or, you can join the nderground drug economy.
You and I both know you’re not revisiting this paper. The fact that you grew suspicious based on his surname speaks volumes, and your vile racism is on display. Mexicans are no more or less industrious than your white cousins down in Arkansas.
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My white cousins in Arkansas are pretty lazy. Lazier than Mexicans. Why is this important to you? I cracked about the last name to bait you, and so you play the racism trump card. So you win, and to show my proper bona fides with regard to race I must accept big time immigration? Seems to be a flaw in there somewhere.
I like the way you say they should “create new businesses,”
Well, create enterprise of some kind. How should I word it? Every country in the history of the planet has switched workers from one area to another in response to changing technology etc. Why does Mexico get an exemption?
Colonizers want three things – cheap labor and cheap resources and new markets.
Looks to me like Mexico is the colonizer here: they get cheap social programs and job creation for their people courtesy of the USA. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
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Oh, you’re gonna love this, but truth is you have not gone into thsi in enough depth to argue any further. You simply don’t understand how colonies function, why they do not develop, and why countries like the US, Japan and Korea, that shunned colonialism, protected their borders, enacted huge tariffs … developed.
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Yes, Mr. Deep, tell me more about the US, Japan, and Korea. Anything else there that might explain why they prospered above the usual basket cases you cry over? Wasn’t Japan bombed into the stone age circa 1945 and came roaring back and beyond despite few natural resources? Why do Japanese and Korean emigrants excel beyond most natives? Does it maybe have something to do with the inherent characteristics of the people involved?
Colonialism is another of the single notes on the piano of life you monotonically bang and think you are playing a tune.
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There is high correlation between peoples not colonized and internal development, and it makes sense. Korea and Japan were able to close their borders to trade via tariffs, and then made huge investments in infrastructure. (Toyota started out making wash machines, but turned to autos with government support.) The US did not manufacture anything in 1776, as the Brits did not allow it. After that time we closed our borders, instituted heavy tariffs, and developed.
I do not say that anything ever is one thing and one thing only, but when we discuss things, we discuss one thing at a time. I did not mentioned that Mexico has been devastated by weather and a banking crisis, but those played a role. You wanted to discuss NAFTA, so I brought some meat to the table. If there is a johnny-one-note here, it is you and your constant refrain to racial stereotypes as the reason for cultural differences. That may be partly true, as cultures do embrace different values, but when you reduce it to laziness versus industriousness by race, you’re nuts.
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There is little correlation between colonies and wealth on either side of the ledger. It is almost the opposite. Wealth is homegrown. Colonies are expensive. Portugal, Russia, and Turkey had large empires, not so much to their economic benefit. Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and the Nordic countries weren’t especially colonial and prospered. Canada, Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macau were colonies and prospered. Britain’s colonies cost them more than what they contributed. For that matter Korea had as much or more foreign influence from Japan-China-US as any colony. Central African nations with little foreign influence haven’t prospered above their neighbors.
You wanted to discuss NAFTA
Not really. You were harping on the decline of unions, and I noted that the policies of the Left had much to do with that decline, policies that were anti-industry, and included promotion or non-challenge of illegal immigration. You uncorked this doozy:
The left did not give us rampant illegal immigration. NAFTA did that…
which I found gratingly inaccurate and we were off and running.
I realize we discuss one topic at a time, but you have a way of compartmentalizing issues with a kind of finality that misses much. We get: illegal immigration => NAFTA, end of discussion. Wealth concentration => plot by the elites, end of discussion. Poor countries => colonialization, end of discussion. Etc.
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There you go again, making bland unsubstantiated assertions as if you had any force behind you other than the place form which they are drawn. Colonies, for instance – have you not heard of the Roman Empire? DO you not know that a large part of the reason for World War I was the Ottoman Empire and … oil? Do you not know that the flow of wealth is form colony to mother country, and that the mother country never lets the colony develop? \
Are colonies always profitable? The American attempt to colonize Iraq was utter dismal expensive failure. There is question as to whether the British imperial reign in India paid off. Historically most colonizers have overextended, and find themselves unable to keep their colonies from a military standpoint. That part bogs them down, but from the movement of wealth standpoint, it’s always profitable to have colonies.
Your statement that there are wealthy countries that did not have colonies is a non sequitur. So what? Your statement that Canada has prospered is true, but do remember that the US in history always wanted to colonize Canada, invading it five times, and British power prevented it. The 48th parallel is a graphic representation of the power of the Brits, which is why they were despised. They prevented our expansion. Canada is prosperous because the Brits were forced by American expansionism to keep them armed and strong.
Anyway, your arguments in this area carry no weight, as you have no familiarity with specifics, and merely make general assertions without the necessary background to defend them.
_________
Your assertion about the decline of unions is wrong on its face, as most American workers want to join a union but cannot. Please internalize that concept.
_________
I have provided you with a resource that should be a starting point in your research regarding the effects of NAFTA. Instead you did a running critique without substance, quit in the middle and never went back. I have also told you that NAFTA is not the only cause of immigration, as there have been weather and banking disasters down there as well. Nothing is ever black/white, and there are only tendencies one way or another, but with NAFTA, the tendency is actually a preponderance of evidence. And it makes sense, as those who pushed NAFTA did not care about its real consequences, and only wanted to capture new markets for export, import cheap labor and export pollution. All of the selling points were pure bullshit relying on the precepts of neoclassical economics, which do not work in real life.
Developed countries can benefit from free trade, as they are on the same platform. Non-developed countries need to develop internally, and free trade prevents development, just as mother countries never let colonies develop. Oh wait, I forgot, this is Fred. It’s all because of the superiority of the white race, or which you are a part.
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What a laugh-a-thon of a comment. You pretty much agree with me that colonies don’t equal wealth, and then go off on one of your crackpot tangents about us wanting to take over Canada, and that helped make them wealthy.
And now WWI was about Turkey and oil.
and that the mother country never lets the colony develop?
I gave you a number of counter-examples, and pointed out that side by side countries develop in contra to colonial influence.
A country’s wealth is better explained by the characteristics of the people, rather than the amount of colonialism and imperialism. How can you suggest you offer an informed opinion if you don’t take this into account? Example
most American workers want to join a union but cannot.
No, most workers want a good job without a union.
I have provided you with a resource that should be a starting point in your research regarding the effects of NAFTA.
Please. This is conversion by handing out Bibles. I read halfway through it and saw nothing I haven’t seen before. His stats agree with me, not you, and he quoted them in a way to make his case. “One doesn’t have to eat the whole apple to know it is rotten.” But since it is apparently so important to you, I’ll finish reading and commenting.
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Fred, it has to stop some time! You don’t know about the role of the declining ottoman Empire in WW1 or the carve-up of the middle east afterwards. Where the hell do you think Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Syria came from? France and Britain carved up the area, the Huns were dealt out. The first use of poison gas against Kurds was done by the Brits. Gallipoli was important because it was a narrow straight needed to access oil fields.
I can lead you to fifty polls of American workers who want to join unions but cannot, and once again we are horse and water.
Regarding NAFTA and that paper, you were halfway through and it was causing you cognitive dissonance so you ran away. You’ve constructed a brick wall, no new information allowed in. You’re a hack
No disrespect.
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Regarding NAFTA and that paper, you were halfway through and it was causing you cognitive dissonance so you ran away. You’ve constructed a brick wall, no new information allowed in.
What in there caused me cognitive dissonance? Kind of a compliment, in that at least I’m cogitating on the issue, rather than just cutting and pasting what my trainers tell me. I read the whole thing. There was nothing there I hadn’t seen before, just the usual slant from not looking at all the numbers, and the usual narrative of “illegals do work US citizens don’t want to do”, “produce will rot in the fields without illegals”, “immigrants make us richer”, blah blah blah. These things don’t hold up to scrutiny.
Also no dealing with why there were problematic levels of illegal immigration before and after NAFTA, and problematic immigration from non-NAFTA countries otherwise.
Where’s the evidence that Germany fought massive trench warfare in Europe for the privilege of carving up the Ottoman empire? Germany didn’t have much serious intent on the Middle East, even in WW2, when oil was a much more important resource than in WW1: Rommel had to beg, cajole, and craft to get any resources. The Middle East was a largely undeveloped area with poor roads and infrastructure. True that it was carved up by Britain and France, but done in an un-serious way.
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You have so much to know, and there is so little time. I suggested to you once before that you read Yergin’s The Prize, a history of oil. Yergin is a conservative and would offer you support for your thesis that Shah Pavli was a benign force.
Also, Google “penetration pacifique.”
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Okay, here we are again, reading and writing. NAFTA. The root of all evil.
I randomly start in where I left off and the first line I read is, “Bybee and Winter claim that as NAFTA subsidized the corn imported by the US into Mexico, the costs to the US were on the decline as the profits were on the rise.” This is sloppy writing and thinking. The complaint was that the US government subsidized corn, and there is a vague addition here that removing Mexican tariffs was an added subsidy. But Mexican’s are now buying corn for less money, and this is generally the path to economic development. The author goes on here to pimp the line about former farmers out of work and destitute etc, but there is the other side of the equations: Mexicans paying less for corn. Anyway, the usual leftist economics are being pushed here….Now I’m into part IV, assessing the pros and cons of hiring illegals. He’s using self reported data on use of social services by illegals, which under reports usage. Here’s a money quote: “They are a financial burden for hospitals and jails, but this is applicable to all low income, uninsured populations as a whole.” Yes, but why then import them? He mentions the canard that illegals are doing “unwanted jobs”. How does this ridiculous meme get created and promulgated? Here’s a quote you will like, “it is clear that the negativity and controversy which surrounds illegal immigrant workers is nothing more than anger, frustration, and racism.” Maybe people are angry and frustrated for a valid reason. And of course we have to throw out the racism charge. Mandatory….This section touts the benefits of illegals to the US, using dubious sources (a CNN website quoting various “experts” with the usual laugh lines of “produce rotting in the fields” without illegals). Something worth noting that the author points out is that support for illegals is highest among the college educated class. Illegals don’t compete for their jobs. So what we have here is a mechanism for the elites to screw the lower class. Excellent. Let’s have more of this. Oh, we do… Here’s another money quote, ” Simple mathematics is at force here. More workers equals more products, which ends in more money spent within and without the US on items produced in the US.” How come this doesn’t apply to Mexico?: ‘Simple mathematics is at force here. More workers equals more products, which ends in more money spent within and without Mexico on items produced in Mexico.’ Sounds good. Let’s go for it….More bullshit quotes about produce rotting in the fields…. According to Howard, the availability of homes, provided by illegal immigrants, was a large portion of the reason the housing industry was able to sky rocket over the past decade. Mark, can you share with me the irony of that quote? …Section here about the benefits of NAFTA, mainly quotes from Mexican government officials. Seems to have been some real economic growth in Mexico….Next section is on immigration reform. Nice ideas. One still has to control a border to make them work….Next section is on natural disasters and government malfeasance in Mexico that hastened the exit of people. Now they can make a fresh start in Bell, California and get away from all that…. Now the conclusion: many factors cause emigration from Mexico, NAFTA made it worse.
So you are proud of this as a link? A college student reads some magazine articles and writes a paper. Not that good.
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Let me amend the above. Instead of “Not that good” let me say he did a good job of laying out one side of the argument, but it is a slanted view.
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Is that not how we argue? We are all deep in confimration bias, so much so that we just have to accept it about one another and debate with the premise in place. Your job is to bring yourown bias in and confront his head-to-head, as you do with mine. Merely saying he is slanted is akin to saying that the letter V is slanted. it is the nature of the beast.
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