Free Trade equals fewer jobs but more rich people

For the last couple of days the circus on the East Side of Manhattan was in full swing. Now I do think that countries should work together and am by no means opposed to a world forum. However, when you have someone like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad espousing ludicrous theories about an event that happened almost ten years ago, you have to say "wtf?"

Now politics is politics and we know he is playing to a specific audience. The video of him making his outrageous accusations will get played for a receptive audience and actually increase his prestige.

Of course criticizing the UN for allowing this behavior is really not fair since we have plenty of similar examples in our own current political races. The country is suffering significant economic problems, caused by many different factors but certainly exacerbated by the widespread export of jobs due to lifting of trade restrictions under our business oriented past administrations. Now, free trade is good on a macro basis, but if you have the highest standard of living, what free trade will do is level the playing field over time, meaning that those on the top will suffer some while those on the bottom will benefit. So we have an increase in unemployment while large corporations send jobs to India and China (either directly or by replacing American made products with theirs) and they boom while we suffer. Of course it is not convenient to let most Americans in on this so instead the problems are blamed on policies that really had nothing to do with the problem.

Since we seem unable to improve our competitive position, and increase jobs in this country, we are left with a large number of angry Americans who are willing to listen to almost anyone who promises to make things better. Lets extend the tax cuts for wealthy Americans so they can invest more money overseas. Lets cut benefits to our poorest Americans to force them to accept jobs that won't support their families. This is basically the tea party platform and to a large extent the Pledge to America. It isn't worded that way but they perpetuate a myth that allowing tax rates to revert back to what they were when we didn't have a deficit will destroy the economy.

The economy we have now is the recovered economy. Growth is going to remain anemic unless we improve the competitive posture of the country. The policies we need to pursue are actually pretty simple, reduce dependence on foreign energy, switch to a tax on products sold in this country, and make pension and health insurance costs a social responsibility and not a business cost. Simply this would reduce much of the incentive to export jobs. It certainly wouldn't destroy incentive to work but would allow all Americans some peace of mind related to medical bills and old age.

Certainly, the benefit level can be supplemented with private insurance and private investments, but for those who work at low paying jobs their entire lives, in their old age they would have enough to get by.

Now the Tea Party Tools of the rich denounce common sense proposals like this as socialism and unamerican. Of course many of these angry people would have a hard time actually saying why socialism is so bad, but these policies are social policies, not socialist policies. Generally it levels the capitalistic playing field.

The Pledge to America promises to enforce the constitution as originally intended. Really? In 1789 we had slavery, no voting rights for women, no direct election of senators, no income tax, etc, etc. I guess they mean as originally written and subsequently amended, but maybe not, I can't tell.