You're right, immigration and outsourcing aren't hurting you. They're helping you. So why are you crying about it? You never said "dirty Hispanics" but I felt the same vibe as EastChestnut. Thinly veiled racism is how it feels to me. Reagan's "welfare queen" story didn't really refer to African Americans, did it?

Where did your family come from? Unless they were from England, they probably experienced the same stuff that SE Asians and Latinos are dealing with today. Very few immigrants come with the skills that they wind up using here. Irish immigrants were largely tenant farmers, but they learned how to build houses, run businesses, practice law, etc. So will today's immigrants, legal or illegal, unless nativists get there way. That would really impoverish America on so many levels.

And the point about my father is that he is not p*ssed about it. He was at first, but he's dealing with it. Dem's da breaks in a capitalist free market. When I first told him that I thought it could be a good opportunity, he saw my point. I did his job at 19 and felt broken at the end of every week. I don't know how he did it at 59? It does suck that he's never going to be able to retire, but that is a result of choices he made a long time ago. He taught me to value education, like a lot of immigrant families are doing right now with their kids.

YE, that was my point to cerebrus.
NAFTA actually didn't hurt PA much. PA was a dirty industry state. Mining shut down, steel (the indsutries steel supplies had left long before NAFTA). there was also automation, powerful unions that could be avoided simply by going south. Philadelphia lost the furniture industry to MI which lost it to Carolina. That was all outsourcing. How many people buy Ford here? I see lots of Foreign cars on the road here. Mexico itself has been losing jobs to China.

__________________
"You down wit OPM?"
Fumo: "Yeah, you know me!"

Then, there's no problem then is there?


I lost my sympathy for the whining when the Midwest of the US shut down for business. They had the population and the political will to affect the outcome of the various trade agreements the last 5 presidents were signing into effect--and yet nothing happened.

When Ohio put Bush in for a 2nd term I tossed my hands up and said "well, I guess they're more worried about gays than they are worried about going on welfare and losing all their jobs. So let them go hungry and run to community college to learn how to excel at medical transcription and changing bedpans. It's over!"

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WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk

I saw a news show a few weeks ago that was talking about how there are so many Chinese college grads and not enough jobs over there. One guy was to short for some job...even though he was qualified in other areas...I thought that was pretty silly but then again we dont live in China.

I was in China & Hong Kong back in 97....great place & great people. I have nothing against the Chinese or the Mexicans...I just dont like to see Americans losing jobs regardless of who they are losing them to. Im a little more concerned about China as a military power then an economic one but thats offtopic

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Eat your heart out Mr. Obama.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what is for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote" Benjamin Franklin

Yes there is a place where you wont be treated like a child.

Nope...all is peachy.

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Eat your heart out Mr. Obama.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what is for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote" Benjamin Franklin

Yes there is a place where you wont be treated like a child.

I think out of all the states that are in the midwest region, PA went south well before NAFTA was even a gleam in H.W.'s eye. C'mon, Billy Joel's song about Allentown (c. 1982) turning into crap came out well before NAFTA was signed (1994). A state ripe with political corruption and high taxes was very-much a heavy influence on poor conditions to operate a business more than the threat Mexico ever posed to Pennsylvania jobs. Compound this with the desire to switch to nuclear energy over coal and Japan producing steel at competitive prices, and well... there goes all those planned pensions.

Pennsylvania could have even ridden the tech boom that put a lot of positive juice in most of the states--but instead here it turned into a modest economic improvement that largely benefited scattered rich suburbs.

The states that have seen big economic gains in the 90s (NY, TX, CA, FL, NM, AZ, VA, SC) all did so coupled with a marked increase in immigration--both legal and illegal. These people seem very resourceful at starting businesses from scratch and working for what seems to be almost impossible to live-on wages.

Call me crazy, but immigrants to this country seem to be one of the few answers we have to compete with almost unbelieveably low wages seen in foreign countries where our manufacturing and intellectual property is fleeing to.

So, unless you can find a president that is willing to rescind NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT and the hundreds of micro-agreements out there and throw up 18th century tariffs back into the picture, and deal with the massive inflation that would result from 200-1000% price increases... until that happens, it's probably a better idea to make better calculations on what career to go into than to reverse 50 years of immigration and trade policy.

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WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk

Bush caused them to lose their jobs? I'm not sure you're familiar with the midwest. the chcago area is doing well. IN is actuallt getting a new auto plant (Honda). Problem is, other states like MI are still making things others aren't buying. As article I read said, it appears everyone can making money building cars in america except the American companies. to be fair, most competitors are choosing not to deal with the UAW. And most democrats have always had rather negative things o say about "flyover country."
technically, PA is also in teh mid-atlantic region.
Well, I know you were in Texas, but I think you've missed a few things here. Tech and biotech fueled a huge boom in the western suburbs in te mid 1990's. How do you think chester country go so wealthy? It was mostly farmland not so long ago.
you should probbaly scratch NY off that list. There is hardly a tougher place to do business than NY state and outside of NYC, the state is struggling.

As Dave Chappelle said, "America is addicted to a lifestyle it can't afford."

So, how exactly will rescinding all those managed trade agreements going to make our lives better? I'm not sure you've really thought all of this through. I know you are vehmently anti-trade, but you are blaming trade for all of our problems.You assume that isolationism is going to be able to return high paying jobs (despite the fact that those jobs were created by selling to the entire world). The last time your anti-trade ideas took hold was in 1929....it didn't work out so well. Trade has been freed up since the 1970's and it's pretty clear that the country as a whole has been improved as a result (even if Philadelphia has not).
Everyone harps on cheap labor, but nobody wants to asky why it costs so much to live and do business in the US. I guess it's always eaier to blame someone else. why not blame canada? It couldn't be the enormous expenditures spent ruining American lives (drug war), foreign entanglements (foreign wars), our interests (aid, bases, etc), and decades of failed programs. It couldn't have anything to do with a system that spends more on education but delivers less than any other developed nation. A nation where people can sue for anything.

__________________
"You down wit OPM?"
Fumo: "Yeah, you know me!"

Actually these comments were directed at cerebus.

America's problems aren't so different from Europe's, which has the same problems all the rest of Western civilization does. We're not alone with the issue of "asylum seekers." Spain and France are getting weary of Arabs and muslims making their way into the country. Britain is tiring of Indians, etc. There's a long list of countries who have raised their intolerance levels since the explosion of global trade agreements.


eldondre, no one has yet answered the question--those getting laid off with multiple degrees, seeing their white coller work flee overseas... what hope do these types of people have? I guess there's plenty of money to be made becoming a hairdresser. I guess that's better than doing external financial audits and wasting all that time in your life studying international accounting for 2 years in college.

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WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk

Immigrants will be paying for all of our Social Security. Like the rest of the Western world, our total population isn't keeping up with our elderly population. That's a much bigger problem than NAFTA. Philly has been losing jobs to the Carolinas since the 1930s. (Where did the textile industry go before it went overseas?) Jobs move around. Birmingham, UK lost a lot of their textile jobs to us in the 1840s-1880s.

BTW, Canada lost a lot of jobs to the U.S. during the original Free Trade Agreement that preceded NAFTA, as well as to NAFTA. Yet the Canadian economy is doing pretty well. Public debt in Canada is 30% of GDP vs. America's 80% of GDP (worse than most 3rd World countries) despite expensive social programs. These are the things we should be worried about, not the loss of antiquated industrial jobs.

Interestingly, we also run large trade deficits with Canada, Japan, and Europe...noen of which are cheap labor places. Also, from what I've read, Britain's tension has little to do with Indians. It's the Arab population that has peopel worried.in case you missed their homegrown terrorist network. It is calling into question the approach of multiculturalism. Indeed, the results of multiculturalism have some labelling it plural monoculturalism. I agre it's quite natural for current residents to get worried any time there is a large influx of immigrants. However, it's not the immigrants fault that we encourage multicuturalism instead of assimilation. Also, I read that since Bush has cracked down on the border, many mexicans that were previously migrants (travelling back and forth between the countries, viewing SoCal as part of MExico) have become full blown immigrants...meaning bringing their families and buying houses in the San Joaquin Valley. To me that indicates that if the choice is forced, many Mexicans will choose to become Americans and most likely their kids will be as American as any other immigrant group...provided we don't bend over backwards to prevent them from having to assimilate.

what people are those? I don't know any laid off accountants and there are plenty of jobs in that field in the papers. IT isn't exactly a dead industry either. While I don't necessarily support the H1 programs, all those industries are still doing okay. Assuming there really were a problem, I'd assume they were smart enough to figure something out. There's always room at company for someone with a good accounting background. And international accounting is becoming ever more useful in this global economy.

__________________
"You down wit OPM?"
Fumo: "Yeah, you know me!"