Stigma of the Tea Party?

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Ok, I see the table now. Looks like roughly a 10% drop over that 40 years. So not looking great, I'll admit, but there are a lot of factors going into that and I'm very reluctant to pin the blame on the inflation rate, which was quite low for most of that time.

Here is a good link: http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/Wages+and+Benefits:+Real+Wages+%281964-2004%29
This chart only goes to 2004, and real wages have plummeted since then. The free trade policies of the US are selling out Americans workers to the benefit of the corporate elite. Our competitors are using protectionism, while our politicians give corporations permission to sell the US down the river.

2001 through 2008, the increase in U.S.-China trade deficits eliminated or displaced 2,418,800 U.S. jobs, Even if increases in demand in other sectors absorb all the workers displaced by trade (an unlikely event), as many non-traded industries will pay lower wages and have less-comprehensive benefits than traded-goods industries. Unlike other currencies, the Chinese yuan does not fluctuate freely against the dollar. While the value of its currency should have increased as China exported more and more goods, it has instead remained artificially low, and China has aggressively acquired dollars to further depress the value of its own currency. China has tightly pegged its currency to the U.S. dollar at a rate that encourages a large bilateral surplus with the United States.

Competition with low-wage workers from less-developed countries has also driven down wages for other workers in manufacturing and reduced the wages and bargaining power of similar workers throughout the economy. The impact has affected essentially all production workers with less than a four-year college degree—roughly 70% of the private-sector workforce, or about 100 million workers.
Where does the profit go that corporations make from lowering wages by sending American jobs overseas? It goes in the pockets of the corporate elite, who in turn compensate the politicians with donations.

NAFTA was enacted in 1994 and China was given free trade in 2001. Are the changes in the graph coincidence, or has our government been selling us out to the corporate elite? We the people need to get back control of the government from the mega-corporations.

Here are a few supporting documents.
Ten Flaws in Free Trade Economics
http://blog.usw.org/2008/08/02/china-trade-promises-all-snake-oil-%E2%80%93-fair-trade-crucial/
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp260/
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/class/hu/Christ/va199/intltrade/discuss.htm
http://usliberals.about.com/od/theeconomyjobs/i/FreeTradeAgmts_2.htm

We need to support the tea parties and keep the tea parties out of the hands of the republicans. We need a third party that supports the interests of the "Median Families".

Mudboy, out of your sources, the only good one was this one:

http://blog.usw.org/2010/03/28/debating ... ectionism/

Which had the following points.

1) GDP is not wellbeing.
2) There are externalities in economics.
3) Trade may not be sustainable
4) Free trade does not improve income inequality
5) Factors of production can move between nations
6) Factors of production are not mobile within nations
7) The economy is not always at full output
8 ) Short term efficiency is not necessarily the biggest determiner of long-term growth.
9) Free trade may strengthen our rivals
10) Economies of scale exist.

Now, point 1 is pretty trivial, and for the most part, most increases in GDP actually are beneficial, that does not mean that disasters don't occur, but, I don't think it is reasonable to attribute most GDP changes to disasters and destruction.

On point 2, well... developing foreign nations are always going to pollute because they care less about the environment than improved economic conditions. The US was pretty much the same way. As for hidden positive externalities, well.... sure, they can exist, but I am not sure that enough are expected to really make the real losses relevant.

On point 3, the problem is that this kind of issue where consumer desires might not be liked could potentially exist without free trade. As it stands, the national debt is financed by a lot of foreign currency, and the major non-renewable resource that is being imported is foreign oil, so I don't think that either concern is that dramatic in any sense.

On point 4, to some extent this is true, however, the same could easily be true with any technological improvement. We might see that this new technology replaces labor more cheaply, or that it requires human capital to work or whatever have you. In fact, that's the complaint of the Luddites.

Point 5 is true in that trade theory is a gross simplification, and technically his possibility can actually happen, this does not mean that free trade is a bad policy choice though due to a possibility.

Point 6 is partially true, although there isn't perfect convertibility and neoclassical economics does assume homogeneity, it is also the case that there aren't likely total losses and it really isn't efficient to keep something going when all of the resources are better used elsewhere.

Point 7 is kind of wrong, as unemployment rates really do tend to be more impacted by the state of the economy than by trade agreements, and because of that, I don't see where a point is even being address.

Point 8 is relevant, but it is also relevant that nobody actually knows what the cause of long-run growth *really* is. Making the historical claim is also somewhat questionable, as while there is a grain of truth, it is also true that the US isn't a Burkina Faso at all, and that governmental plans to restrict trade or to pick industries to be successful tend to be problematic.

Point 9 isn't economic, as the entire point of it is just that the US should be more worried about its relative status than about making the world a better place. (AKA, the US should be a dick) Free trade does tend to benefit poor nations more than the US, and that's a reason to support free trade.

Point 10 does not get us anywhere either, because managing trade won't necessarily get us those great firms either.

I don't think Fletcher has much of a point or strong points in his argument, particularly given potential issues of trade wars that pop up when one tries to manage trade. Bernstein's argument is also quite weak as well.

Actually, profit goes into the hands of shareholders. And who are the biggest holders of US equities? Pension plans.

Yes, senior executives in publicly traded corporations take home big, fat compensation packages--but in return they are required to put big, fat dividends and capital gains into the hands of shareholders. If you have pension savings, then you are, very likely, a direct beneficiary of this aspect of growth. Even if you, personally, are not, hundreds of millions of Americans are.



The trouble with your graphic Mudboy is that it compares apples and oranges. The top 400 earners are, by their very definition, outliers. You cannot reasonably compare outliers with a general mean and establish any meaningful result. Yes, these 400 people are earning obscene amounts of money. But they were also earning obscene amounts of money in 1992. There's no causitive link demonstrated between trade policy and the growth rate of these 400 earners' incomes).

The real question that anti-free-trade advocates should be asking, and are conspicuously failing to ask is: would the United States be better off without free trade? The gross loss of manufacturing activity is not, in and of itself, a measure of prosperity.

How much service sector employment has been created by Free Trade? How has capital growth and market expansion benefitted the economy on a macro level? At the micro level? How has an economically prosperous PRC contributed to global peace and security?

It's not good enough to take selective statistics to demonstrate an economic principle.



The problem is that the Tea Party stands for more than, "the interests of median families." It stands for a host of wedge issues that ensure that it will never attract a broad spectrum of support.

Exactly. The Tea Party movement from the very start has even had people come in who tried to cross promote agendas such as racist groups and 9/11 truth movement. Those are discreditors and for something fun to watch, here is CNN trying to discredit. If you look at the first guy shown in this clip with Obama as Hitler you will see his cap says "Operation Chaos". The person isn't libertarian. There have been blogs of people asking others to come infiltrate the tea party to make it look bad and the media somehow finds those guys to fixate on. Then there is this rumor that the tea party was invented by Fox News but in reality, the first new tea party demonstration was held in 2007 over Ron Paul who Fox News made a mockery of and the tea party movement weren't pleased with any media at that time for how they treated Ron Paul who raised 6 million over 24 hours but little reports of it.

In this video the first guy can't even answer the question. All he does is repeat "He's a fascist." It's obvious the second guy interviewed is really apart of the tea party.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2baxw_YScxc[/youtube]


In Novemeber 2007, 4.3 million was raised in 24 hours. In December 6.04 million was raised in 24 hours for Ron Paul.
Ron Paul raised the most money from military voters. Anyone who claims Ron Paul is nuts, cannot think for themselves or thinks we should continue down this sociopathic/narcissistic path which all empires eventually crumble over.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKZmIzEMUN8[/youtube]


and here is the 2007 tea party website.

http://mysite.verizon.net/nathanielyao/index.html