Peru free trade agreement (H.R. 3688)

[Hydroblunt]

Quote from WaveStrider:

Think of all the jobs the International Highway from Mexico to Canada will produce!

Good thing so many manufacturing jobs were lost - that way there is plenty of labor needing jobs!

In fact, everything seems to have lined up perfectly over the last few years to do it. Amazing the ducks all lined up so well on their own!

A Spanish company got the contract, they might outsource labor to Americans. Although I would assume that they will bring their own engineers & technicians, then get Mexicans to do the work.

As for after completion, it will actually hurt US jobs, as the plan is to stop using American truckers and use cheaper Mexican truckers. Less money & less regulations. Less safety also, but who cares about that.

I actually think an International Superhighway is a good idea, although I would prefer a rail system.

 

[ShoeshineBoy]

Quote from Hydroblunt:

Oh please. Nothing will change for the better, it's been established in the last 10 years. All this pressure on corporations has yielded little results. They either start lying or covering it up to appease the concerned consumers. It's even to the point where "Made in ***" are faked by putting a little piece of the product in Europe or USA, when it was really made in a sweatshop.
The second these sweatshops receive any pressure to become more humane, the operation is shut down and moved to the next third world nation whose leaders are willing sell out their population.

The best part about it is that these third world countries become held hostage by the WTOs & multinationals. Their local economies cannot support their populations anymore. Substinence farming has been beat down into poverty, when only 30-40 years ago it allowed families to live a reasonable standard.

Wake up, you are using rhetoric to support this Happy Land idea of how great NAFTA and WTO are, completely avoiding the real life results. This is not new breakthrough stuff, this is at least 10 years old. Open your eyes, the trend has been set into motion, the results are clear all over the world. And you see the effect is has on your own country. So what's the argument for supporting this again? Because you want them here? That might be the next step.

Sorry, but all the free trade is helping to alleviate poverty. Asia is the prime example. Why? Because they are often the most free trade. Those countries are drastically better. Are you seriously arguing that China and other Asian countries, for example, are no better off?

 

[drsteph]

Thanks for the post.

Peru has had stronger ties to the US than most other latin american nations - you should see the size of the embassy down there - reminded me of what they were describing being built in bagdhad.

With my geopolitical slant, I would argue that strengthening ties between the US and Peru is looked at as a hedge to China and a counterweight to Argentina/Brazil. Peru has tremendous natural resources and with China's worldwide natural resource grab, it might behoove us to strategically deny them.

On the other points made I have weak opinions but certainly cannot say that they are wrong.

 

[Hydroblunt]

Quote from ShoeshineBoy:

Sorry, but all the free trade is helping to alleviate poverty. Asia is the prime example. Why? Because they are often the most free trade. Those countries are drastically better. Are you seriously arguing that China and other Asian countries, for example, are no better off?

How is it alleviating poverty in the face of the evidence of what these people working at these sweatshops turn into? They are slaves, nothing more. They make just enough to buy food, sleep & go to work. That's it. When they get too old (like 30) or injured or sick, they are fired and are left with nothing. Well not nothing, the health problems from unsafe work conditions & physical abuse stay with them forever.

The illussion you are seeing is from the top 5-10%, which would gain one way or the other. Everyone else are just slaves and have lost means of self substinence.

You NAFTA/WTO proponents are total hypocrits. You want "free markets" (which is a dream anyway), yet require a self governing organization to come in and establish it, while asking the government of the exploited nation to support its establishment & even help police it. Yet you cry socialism whenever workers try to stand up for rights, safe conditions, wages & some basic regulations.

Let's look at Asia. China vs S.Korea. One relied on "Free Trade", the other developed from within. I know which one I prefer hands down, in every category. Do you?

 

[ShoeshineBoy]

Quote from Hydroblunt:

How is it alleviating poverty in the face of the evidence of what these people working at these sweatshops turn into? They are slaves, nothing more. They make just enough to buy food, sleep & go to work. That's it. When they get too old (like 30) or injured or sick, they are fired and are left with nothing. Well not nothing, the health problems from unsafe work conditions & physical abuse stay with them forever.

This is often true. But the bottom line that you're ignoring is that even in this extreme case, the workers are generally much better off than if they didn't have the job in the first place.

You mention that they're fired and left with nothing at 30. In general, they probably had nothing before they were hired. And I doubt that you have any stats to prove that their health is truly destroyed and most are fired at 30. I'm sure it happens, of course, but I think you are painting as black a picture as possible w/o anything to back it up. If I'm wrong, let me know.

But, finally, you're still ignoring the facts that millions and millions of people have had their salaries drastically increased. That's just a fact and we owe it all to globalization.

I agree that there are abuses, but in general millions and millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. The transformation in India has been incredibly and I doubt there's a person in the country who would want to go back.

I just don't see how you can argue that this is negative when so many of the world poor have been helped so drastically...

 

[ShoeshineBoy]

Quote from Hydroblunt:

How is it alleviating poverty in the face of the evidence of what these people working at these sweatshops turn into? They are slaves, nothing more. They make just enough to buy food, sleep & go to work. That's it. When they get too old (like 30) or injured or sick, they are fired and are left with nothing. Well not nothing, the health problems from unsafe work conditions & physical abuse stay with them forever.

The illussion you are seeing is from the top 5-10%, which would gain one way or the other. Everyone else are just slaves and have lost means of self substinence.

You NAFTA/WTO proponents are total hypocrits. You want "free markets" (which is a dream anyway), yet require a self governing organization to come in and establish it, while asking the government of the exploited nation to support its establishment & even help police it. Yet you cry socialism whenever workers try to stand up for rights, safe conditions, wages & some basic regulations.

Let's look at Asia. China vs S.Korea. One relied on "Free Trade", the other developed from within. I know which one I prefer hands down, in every category. Do you?

Btw, if you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe Scientific American:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=0004B7FD-C4E6-1421-84E683414B7F0101

Here’s a quote from that article:

“The trend is particularly pronounced in East, South and Southeast Asia. Poverty has declined sharply in China, India and Indonesia--countries that have long been characterized by massive rural poverty and that together account for about half the total population of develop?-ing countries. Between 1981 and 2001 the percentage of rural people living on less than $1 a day decreased from 79 to 27 percent in China, 63 to 42 percent in India, and 55 to 11 percent in Indonesia.”

And here’s what they say about Asain sweat shops:

“In poor Asian economies, such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia, large numbers of women now have work in garment export factories. Their wages are low by world standards but much higher than they would earn in alternative occupations. Advocates who worry about exploitative sweatshops have to appreciate the relative improvement in these women's conditions and status. An Oxfam report in 2002 quoted Rahana Chaudhuri, a 23-year-old mother working in the garment industry in Bangladesh.

This job is hard--and we are not treated fairly. The managers do not respect us women. But life is much harder for those working outside. Back in my village, I would have less money. Outside of the factories, people selling things in the street or carrying bricks on building sites earn less than we do. There are few other options. Of course, I want better conditions. But for me this job means that my children will have enough to eat and that their lives can improve.

In 2001 Naila Kabeer of the University of Sussex in England and Simeen Mahmud of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies did a survey of 1,322 women workers in Dhaka. They discovered that the average monthly income of workers in garment-export factories was 86 percent above that of other wage workers living in the same slum neighborhoods.”

Finally, here's what it had to say about protectionism:

"Reduced protectionism. The major hurdle many poor countries face is not too much globalization but too little. It is hard for the poor of the world to climb out of poverty when rich countries (as well as the poor ones themselves) restrict imports and subsidize their own farmers and manufacturers. The annual loss to developing countries as a group from agricultural tariffs and subsidies in rich countries is estimated to be $45 billion; their annual loss from trade barriers on textile and clothing is estimated to be $24 billion. The toll exceeds rich countries' foreign aid to poor countries. Of course, the loss is not equally distributed among poor countries. Some would benefit more than others if these import restrictions and subsidies were lifted"

 

[Hydroblunt]

Quote from ShoeshineBoy:

Btw, if you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe Scientific American:

If you read my initial posts and paid attention, you would see that I have long known about this. These countries are now held hostage by Free Trade Zone, economically speaking.

20-30 years ago, rural lifestyle was decent substinence. Now it's poverty to the point of driving people to prostitution. Behold, a Free Trade Zone sweatshop comes to save the day.

I know how hard you are trying to hold on to this free trade myth & its ideology, but thats not how the world turns. You can't get the peasants to become sweatshop slaves if they are content with substinence farming. There is nothing more valueable to the individual than pure self sufficiency. In feudal eras they did it by taxation, in USSR, they used force. Nowdays the tools & methods are highly evolved, you have IMF, World Bank, NAFTA, WTO and puppet dictators.

There are decades of events behind this. When the Chinese sweatshop workers are interviewed and asked why are they working at these factories where they earn just enough to survive and nothing more, they say that the rural lifestyle is no longer sustainable. Well why is that, when food stuffs are more expensive now than in the past? When the demand for local farm goods is higher than ever? When the population is growing and agricultural crops are barely keeping up?

 

[ShoeshineBoy]

Quote from Hydroblunt:

If you read my initial posts and paid attention, you would see that I have long known about this. These countries are now held hostage by Free Trade Zone, economically speaking.

20-30 years ago, rural lifestyle was decent substinence. Now it's poverty to the point of driving people to prostitution. Behold, a Free Trade Zone sweatshop comes to save the day.

I know how hard you are trying to hold on to this free trade myth & its ideology, but thats not how the world turns. You can't get the peasants to become sweatshop slaves if they are content with substinence farming. There is nothing more valueable to the individual than pure self sufficiency. In feudal eras they did it by taxation, in USSR, they used force. Nowdays the tools & methods are highly evolved, you have IMF, World Bank, NAFTA, WTO and puppet dictators.

There are decades of events behind this. When the Chinese sweatshop workers are interviewed and asked why are they working at these factories where they earn just enough to survive and nothing more, they say that the rural lifestyle is no longer sustainable. Well why is that, when food stuffs are more expensive now than in the past? When the demand for local farm goods is higher than ever? When the population is growing and agricultural crops are barely keeping up?

Look, I'm as much "anti-Establishment" as you are. But not everything the Big Boys do is Evil Incarnate. Sometimes they do the right thing for the right reasons. Sometimes they do the right thing accidently. And this is one of those situations. No matter how you slice it you've got hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty and a new much, much larger middle class.

Basically, the rest of the world is where we were at in the 20's in many ways where the pendulum is more in the favor of big business than labor. But they need to go through the same "rising from the ashes" process that we did. No one should deny them this right any more than one should have denied the right of our country to go through the same.

All this "the masses are enslaved by the business proletariat" sounds downright quasi-socialist in nature, although I don't believe that that is your stand at all.

Again, I go back to India. I know a lot of Indian guys and they would not go back for anything to do the days of thirty years ago. They are infinitely better off overall as a country and many, many have been lifted out of poverty and into the middle class. Are you seriously arguing that India is worse off today??

 

[Hydroblunt]

Quote from ShoeshineBoy:

Again, I go back to India. I know a lot of Indian guys and they would not go back for anything to do the days of thirty years ago. They are infinitely better off overall as a country and many, many have been lifted out of poverty and into the middle class. Are you seriously arguing that India is worse off today??

You are talking about a country, whose leadership was always driven by Western interests, along with IMF & World Bank. Need some lessons on Indian electrification projects and what that did to many self sustainable villages? Funny, same arguments you make now were used by your own Indian leadership.
Whatever success they experience is at the expense of the dwindling American middle class and product/service quality. The whole offshoring to India is mostly a sham anyway, it's not cost savings, it's product & service degradation.
The second the corporates can move those operations to a cheaper base, they will, leaving all your Indian friends wondering how free trade screwed them over. In fact, with IB layoffs, it's slowly starting to happen. If the financial problems continue, expect wage pressure on Indian offshoring. But the cost of living, which has risen over the last 10 years, won't revert back.

It's not about evil interests, it's about the fact that the elite view the masses as cattle. Can't really blame them, most of the time they are proven right.
And people like you willingly follow the plan, thinking idealistic concepts preached to you by media. Like I said, the populations who let this happen to them, deserve the end-results. You're anti establishment? So why do you support huge multinational corporate interests controlling economies of whole nations?

Sweatshop after sweatshop is being established, conditions stay the same, never improve. Corporations specifically ask for conditions that allow these type of operations to be possible. Do you need a diagram to understand the trend? Laid-off American workers are blaming their Indian & Chinese counterparts while the consumer sees a degradation in quality & CEOs line their pockets. Meanwhile Globalism & Free Trade are portrayed as great things.

I'm done discussing this, either you will see my point or you won't. I used to believe your viewpoint, when I was younger & naive, before I peeled away all of the layers. There are centuries of history behind this, the old terms were Mercantilism & Imperialism. It's not about evil madmen doing this to people, it's people allowing themselves to be exploited & manipulated, then crying "conspiracy nut" when someone tries to wake them up.

 

[ShoeshineBoy]

Quote from Hydroblunt:

I used to believe your viewpoint, when I was younger & naive, before I peeled away all of the layers.

A patronizing attitude doesn't strengthen your argument.