FREE TRADE vs. AMERICA

I will not be on the air this evening. I am very sick. Liz may be doing the program on her own, but I am not sure.

FREE TRADE ON PALEO RADIO

GREAT VIDEO ON IRRATIONAL TRADE

My friend Blake on the irrational attack of libertarian purists against those of us who support free trade under the proper conditions but do not believe that those conditions are currently being met in light of burdensome regulations, taxation, and fiscal policies. Great video!

PRECIPICE IN FRONT, WOLVES BEHIND

Miss American Pie bids farewell to the Working Class Jack as companies downsize, outsource, and offshore what were once American jobs. This once great nation of producers has run out of steam somewhere between Pauperism and the ghost town of the eternal Proletariat. Our microchips are now potato chips, our steel manufacturers are now McDonald's. All the while our politicians and economists whistle away the day, not knowing for a second what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the pink slip.

Those hit worst are the young, the poor, and those without a college education.

The young could work these jobs, believing that it was a stepping stone to something better. They knew that while the job may be tedious and redundant, it looked excellent on a resume. And with wages superior to Taco Bell, they could save up for a home or higher education.

The poor are hit especially hard here. Many of these people are willing to work long hour on the line in order to meet the demands of a meager life. These jobs may not have the skill level of the medical field or law, but it put food on the table, clothes in the closet, and checks in the bill statements. And with enough savings, little at a time, they had a greater chance at social mobility.

For those without a college education, jobs of this nature were a way to feel the pride of work and private ownership without having a degree to their name. They may have gotten married right out of high school. They may have had difficulties that would be difficult to overcome in a college setting. They may have come from a family without sufficient funds to send them to college. Maybe they simply wanted to dodge the bullet of student loans that so many spend years paying off in full. Whatever it may be, they had their reasons, and now their hopes are dashed to pieces.

And let us not forget the elderly. While I did not mention them before, it would be foolish to ignore the impact downsizing, offshoring, and outsourcing has on them. Many of them, ripe in age, have hit hard times. Social Security just isn't what it was made out of be. Health risks increase and insurance is hard to find. There may have been a death of a loved one, leaving them with less money and more bill. These people often find themselves back on the line, working tough hours, but it allows them to get by, and with some sense of accomplishment.

All of these people are hurt by the absurd faith based economics of so-called free trade. Each of these groups have been hit hard by executives who would rather benefit from slave labor and wages that work out to pennies on the dollar compared to the pay given to their fellow Americans. The almighty dollar is their creed, capitalism is the executive's national anthem.

Still, our politicians hold their breath in hope that their faith based economic theories will benefit America in the long run. We are assured over and over again that the loss of these jobs will result in the creation of other jobs. This may be true, it may not. The bigger question is what kind of jobs will be created. As it stands right now, the fast food industry and janitorial services are leading the way.

ANOTHER JOB BITES THE DUST

A dear friend of mine just informed me that her husband lost his job. What kind of job? Manufacturing. What state? Michigan. Typical, all too typical.

Free trade advocates may wish to minimize this as mere collateral damage in the pursuit of some globalist utopia, but it was what put bread and butter on the table for this Michigan family. Hope the worker in China, India, Mexico, or any other beneficiary to free trade trade policies enjoys the work and wages this Michigander once did... well, at least the work.

THE DISTRIBUTIST MANIFESTO

1. Distributists propose to go back to fundamentals, and to rebuild society from its basis in agriculture, instead of accepting the industrial system and changing the ownership.

2. Distributists affirm that the evils which Socialists trace to private ownership of property do not flow from the institution as such, but from the maldistribution of property which has come about as a consequence of laws favoring large ownership at the expense of small, and the absence of laws to prevent the misuse of money and machinery.

3. Distributists would not only restrict the use of machinery where it stands in the way of widespread distribution of property, but also where it conflicts with what they are accustomed to regard as the permanent interests of life.

4. Distributists insist that the interests of society, religion, human values, art and culture come first, and that machinery should be prohibited wherever it runs counter to them.

5. Distributists believe that the only legitimate use of money is to use it as "a common measure of value," and that all the problems of money, which so often people to believe in the existence of a kind of economic witchcraft, arise from the fact that there are so many people in the world who do not want to use money as a common measure of value, but to make more money.

6. Distributists believe that the way to make money a common measure of value is to fix prices, wages, and rents at a just level... [this would be] the first step towards a general restoration of property by destroying the power of the capitalists to undersell small men.

7. Distributists seek a return of a Guild system. They advocate such regulative Guilds (over against productive Guilds) is that the enforcement of standards, moral conduct, and workmanship, over industry, would operate to take the control of industry out of the hands of the financier and place it in those of the craftsmen and technicians.

8. Distributists believe that they key to the problems of property, usury, and credit are seen to be found in the fixation of prices, wages, and rents at a just level.

9. Distributists believe that in a perfect society people are held together by personal and human ties, and not by the impersonal activity of the state. The state is "to enable good men to live among bad."

10. Distributists believe that a society is only in a stable and healthy condition when its manufacturers rest on a foundation of agriculture and home-produced raw material., and its commerce on a foundation of native manufactures.

11. Distributists are opposed to Free Trade theory even more than its practice, recognizing in it the principle of social disintegration... It stands to reason that nations which pursue a national self-sufficiency will have less reason to quarrel with one another than those which follow international policies; while nations with normal and mixed economic will better understand each other than nations of specialists.

12. Distributists do not attempt the formation of a new political party, but seek to attain their ends through the permeation of existing parties, the platform, the Press, and other organizations.

13. Distributists restrict their activities to urging upon the public the necessity of reviving agriculture, to the end of making this country as self-supporting as possible as regards to essential foodstuffs; while in connection with this revival it advocates the fixation of prices at a just level (standard prices), organized marketing, and the control of imports.

Popular Distributists: Hilaire Belloc, Cdr. Herbert Shove, George Maxwell, G.K. Chesterton, Arthur Penty, H.J. Massingham, Eric Gill, Harold Robbins, Father Feeney, Father Coughlin, the contributors to I'll Take My Stand and Who Owns America?

FREE TRADE MEETS DETROIT

From Paleo Radio, January 11, 2008.

THE ILLS OF FREE TRADE

Forrest Research projects these being the top-10 jobs in demand over the next 10 years:

1. Waiters and waitresses
2. Janitors and cleaners
3. Food preparation
4. Nursing aides, ordinaries, and assistants
5. Cashiers
6. Customer service representatives
7. Retail salesperson
8. Registered nurses
9. General and operational managers
10. Postsecondary teachers

As Lou Dobbs rightly points out, only three of these require a college degree.

THE RISING TIDE OF POPULISM

Populism has gotten a bad rap over the years. It is used in a loose fashion by those in the media. Many have gone so far as to identify it with fascism, and a fascism grossly defined. Populism is as rich as fascism is awfully misconstrued by equating that particular philosophy with the tragic figures of Hitler and Mussolini. While I don't intend to justify fascism, I think that politicians and journalists alike would do well to reevaluate their understanding of its philosophy. Same goes for Populism. It is with the latter that I am concerned here.

Populism is rather broad. One can be right-wing, centrist, or left-wing, and still be classified a populist. At its core, it is little more than a view of society in terms of rivalries. It recognizes the reality of class distinctions, unjust inequalities, and the will to power. Typically, populists (at least in America) have taken aim at the social and economic injustices being done by a small group of people over against the general populace. They see a danger in oligarchy and plutocracy. They acknowledge the threats that a powerful and wealthy elite have on a people who lack both the political tools and financial resources to defend themselves from the onslaught.

This is especially seen when discussing trade, immigration, and multiculturalism. It is here that the will of the few appear to be imposed upon the public at large. Whether it is the damaging cost of free trade upon American workers, mass immigration (both legal and illegal) changing the culture, or mandatory multicultural sensitivity training, we see the minority elite imposing their ideology upon an unwilling and resentful populace.

Whether or not one likes those most commonly identified with populism (i.e., Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Thomas Flemming, Ralph Nader, Theodore Roosevelt), they cannot deny that much of what they say has roots in political and economic realism. The ideologues may see populist economic nationalism and a rigid non-interventionism as things of the past, but the numbers, both of lost jobs to so-called free trade and lost lives to imperialist adventures around the globe, speak for themselves. Numbers never lie, and the numbers are there for all to see. We don't need Ross Perot's charts, we need look no further than our paychecks and the ever growing number of those who have lost well-paying jobs to people in China, Mexico, and India.

However the political tides turn, one this is for certain, populism is on the rise. Some may call it reactionary, and they may be right. But it isn't a blind knee-jerk reaction to political phantoms and economic illusions. The reaction is a gut feeling that what they see and feel is very real, and that what they see and feel is reflected in the language of the populists.

FREE TRADE & IMMIGRATION

I have been on both sides of the paleoconservative vs. libertarian debate. On economics, I've been both a Russell Kirk style paleoconservative and a Ron Paul paleolibertarian. On immigration, I've been both a Pat Buchanan restrictionist and a Gary North libertarian. On war, I have been both a Rush Limbaugh imperialist and a George Washington non-interventionist. All of this to say that in the almost 12 years since I began my journey into the realm of politics and economics, I have been all over the ideological map.

Some say that I have been fickle. I would prefer to see it as an evolution of sorts. I've investigated into various schools of economic and political thought, embraced what I thought was good while tossing to the side what I thought wasn't so good, and tried to apply my views as consistently as humanly possible. While I don't blame onlookers for seeing me as one who is tossed to and fro, I think that it is foolish to demand that one never allow him or herself the possibility for change.

Back to the present. While I have maintained what could be generally referred to as paleolibertarianism, I fear that my beliefs are based more upon a Utopian belief in man and ideas than a realistic understanding of the way things are.

Case in point: free trade. While I claim that unfettered free trade will better America, I've watched the gradual (and predictable) decay of our economy. Worse yet, I live in a city (Battle Creek) and a state (Michigan) that has been hit particularly hard by free trade policies. While I am aware of the other factors involved in our demise -high taxes, regulation, greedy unions, mandatory wage laws- I can no longer look at myself in the mirror and deny that free trade is more of a religious faith than a safe economic policy. Whether it is outsourcing or off-shoring, free trade seems to be killing us.

Then there is immigration. I have advocated freedom of travel and hire (i.e., open borders and employment) for years. While we supposedly have neither, the impact illegal immigration and the illegal employment of undocumented workers has had on our market gives us a sneak peek into what such a policy would do. Truth is, it doesn't look good. Low paying jobs are no longer available, in many regions, to those without degrees. We are having a populace that is being forced into furthering their education in hope of keeping up with the Gonzalezes and the Changs. But when all is said and done, we still haven't done enough. All the degrees in the world won't help in "free trade" America, just ask those with Ph.D's.

These are just a few of the possible complaints one could have against libertarian free trade and immigration. We could include the perils of being a consumer society, the dangers of trade deficits, and the radical change of cultural and political power through mass immigration, but why belabor the point? Bottom line, many of the ideals I have held for years simply aren't passing muster. Not only are they not passing, they are failing miserably.

Thank God I'm not too proud to admit when I may have been wrong... too bad our politicians and economic "gurus" can't do the same. As of right now, I fear that they are shining brass on the sinking ship of a once great nation known as America.