Thank you for a lucid, cogent argument that needed evey word that you used– proving that two and a half bumper stickers of twittering is insuffficient in a civilized conversation

“The reduction in wages is simple economics. You have a large increase in available workers due to more women working, without a corresponding increase in the number of jobs. “
“As for off shoring, there is nothing sacred or special about the American worker. Why does a worker in India or China or the Philippines not have the same right to a job that you do? They work just as hard, have the same level of education and charge 1/3 the price. Why would I not offshore? Just as companies have to compete in the global economy, so do workers.”

Well, here are a few problems I see with that:
1. Businesses are off-shoring, in part, to avoid having to obey safety and environmental regulations. Even if such laws exist in the countries to which they export the jobs, they are often not enforced, either as a deliberate policy to lure businesses, or as a result of bribery. Pollution, left unchecked, will eventually affect the entire planet.
2. This practice does at least as much harm as good for most of the people living in the countries to which the factories are re-located. Yes, I am aware that most Third World subsistence farmers would gladly take a job in a sweatshop working 12 hours per day with no break for $1.25 per hour, because it’s still better than subsistence farming. But, as soon as the local economy starts to improve enough that the workers realize what they are missing and start agitating for better wages, the businesses re-locate yet again to the next untapped market of cheap labor, leaving the locals out of work, and now without their farms to go back to.
2. These businesses have been built using the resources of the United States, much of it funded with our tax dollars. Every business benefits from roads, bridges, canals, ports, law enforcement, fire departments, etc. The workforce that built these businesses was educated in public schools. The founder and the executives may have gone to college on the GI Bill. And now, having taken what they can from our society, the businesses abandon their responsibilities to benefit a few fat cats at the top, leaving the workers who built the businesses unemployed and local economies devastated.
3. Something else I’ve noticed is that free trade fanatics seem to think it’s perfectly reasonable for businesses to take advantage of the difference in the cost of living to hire cheap labor. But, apparently, it’s not okay for consumers to take advantage of these same differences. Remember a year or two ago when there was such a stink about people getting drugs (the legal kind) from Canada because they were cheaper? Oh, no, we can’t have that. American consumers are our captive cash cows. Another example is DVDs. I found this out when my sister (who lives in Europe) sent my wife a DVD collection. The DVDs won’t play on an American DVD player. So we watched some of them on my laptop. But guess what? There is a limit to the number of times the software is allowed to switch back and forth between US and European compatible DVD formatting. And I’m not talking about anti-piracy software. These were legally purchased DVDs. But, the thing is, due to the difference in the cost of living around the world, movie distributors who charge $20 in the US can only charge, say $4 in Indonesia. So we have to prevent some industrious Indonesian entrepreneur from buying legal copies and shipping them back to the US to sell for $10 each.

THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE LIKE SUXBY PERDONT JOHNNY BOY PHIL GIMMY ARE ABOUT,THEY USE THE SOUTHERN IGNORANCE TO KEEP THE GOOD OLE BOYS AND GIRLS BROKE STUPID AND BLIND.

Can U?

Communication itself is at stake. Try twittering. You are forced to be brief. They only allow 25 words or less. It’s the greatest thing to evolve from human communication. And guess what? I invented it.

“It’s the perceived threat of war that justifies facism, whether there exists a threat or not.” (W, 2002)