Obama News Conference

[Eric5273]

Originally Posted by JCL

You are focusing on Mexico. You should focus on your largest trading partner. And if you want to focus on Mexico, you should talk about textile jobs (and the accompanying legislation on origin) and dumping cheap agricultural products into Mexico, and not just on factories.

When did Burma join NAFTA? Must have missed it.

You just disproved your own argument re NAFTA causing an economic slide in the US. First you said that slide had gone on for 22 years. Now you say that US wage decline has gone on for 40 years. Once again, NAFTA came along in 1992.

Your turn. Time to bring the WTO and corporate elite into it, I think.

The general concept of NAFTA (and all the other "free trade" agreements) is not a problem. But there should have been provisions added to exclude countries which do not have proper labor laws and living wages. As I pointed out in my example of Burma, we cannot "compete" with some countries, and should not be expected to.

NAFTA certainly did not cause the problems. If you want to get technical, Capitalism is what caused the problems. NAFTA and the other free trade agreements just helped the problems get worse by sending jobs overseas to places that have cheap labor and no labor laws.

We now have a situation where more people in the family need to work in order to maintain the same standard of living, yet there are fewer jobs available than before.

The only kind of plan which will fix our economy is one that results in raising the wages of the average American worker by a significant amount. No other solution will help.

[Eric5273]

Just to point out some statistics on wages, below is a graph printed in an article in today's news showing the median hourly wage in both NYC and in the United States over the past coupe of decades. The average wage in NYC has dropped by about 9%, while the average wage in the entire country has gone up by about 7% over that period. Notice how the biggest declines were in the years right after NAFTA was passed.





Now take a look at the cost of living, which has gone up by about 50% during the same period.

[JCL]

Originally Posted by Eric5273

The worst thing that Clinton did was to sign NAFTA. That has hurt our economy far more than anything in the banking sector.

Originally Posted by Eric5273

NAFTA certainly did not cause the problems.

So which is it?

Doesn't NA in NAFTA refer to North America? Now you are referring to overseas agreements. And Burma still isn't in NA.

Your graphs don't distinguish between cause and effect. You can't point to a year and say that is when NAFTA came in, and that is the same year that bad things started happening. It is illogical. Especially when you refer to 40 year slides in economic conditions. But if you did want to link NAFTA to a decline in wages, you would have to accept that when wages came up, it was because NAFTA was repealed. When was that again?

[Quicksilver]

Homey Bush had eight years to
use his pooper scooper and clean
that mess up.........

Instead.... he added to the mess...

I believe as time goes by we are gonna
find out how much he stunk it up.

Originally Posted by FSETH

Requirements for borrowers were eased during his administration and he appointed the main people who ended up milking Fannie Mae for millions. He really laid the "turd" before Bush. Bush was just unlucky enough that it started stinking when he became president.

Wasn't there also this little issue about one of Bin Ladens speed boats crashing into one of out military ships? We could have had him then, pre-911.

Still think he left the country in great shape? There are many Presidents who get credit and catch blame for things that really aren't of thier doing.

[Eric5273]

Originally Posted by JCL

But if you did want to link NAFTA to a decline in wages, you would have to accept that when wages came up, it was because NAFTA was repealed. When was that again?

It hasn't happened yet. Wages "go up" when they outpace the rise in the cost of living index. The last time wages went up more than the cost of living index was before NAFTA.

And BTW, I did not mean to single out NAFTA over any of the other "free trade" agreements. I mentioned it because NAFTA was the only one of these agreements that was ever debated in the American news media and by our politicians. Once that debate was over and NAFTA was signed, all the other agreements followed with very little discussion or debate. For that reason, they are all linked to the initial signing of NAFTA, which was the beginning of a major change in our economy.

While the decline in wages started many years earlier, it certainly accelerated greatly in the years following the signing of these free trade agreements. To suggest that there is no relation between jobs moving overseas to places with cheap labor and a decline in wages here in the US is just foolish.

[Eric5273]

Originally Posted by Quicksilver

Homey Bush had eight years to
use his pooper scooper and clean
that mess up.........

Instead.... he added to the mess...

It was actually all Barney Frank's fault. Even though the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate, and had a Republican President, this Democratic congressman had the power to fix everything and did not do so. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity said this, so it must be true.