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Old 09-08-2011, 03:34 AM  
Tempest
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: West Coast, Canada.
Posts: 10,217
US is becoming a nation of hamburger flippers - Ross Perot 1993

Poor ol Ross Perot (Ron Paul reminds me of him)... He was right about a lot of things.. Of course he saw Mexico as the place that would create the "giant sucking sound" of jobs leaving the US due to NAFTA but it ended up being entire world. LOL

Quote:
US is becoming a nation of hamburger flippers
The US is swapping good manufacturing jobs for lower paying service jobs. For instance, the University of South Carolina reports that between 1978 and 1990 South Carolina lost more than 58,000 manufacturing jobs. At the same time, the biggest job gains in South Carolina were in restaurants, bars, and grocery stores-more than 72,000 service jobs were created in such establishments. It?s a bad tradeoff. The lost manufacturing jobs paid an average of $279 per week. The replacement service jobs pay only $127 a week-less than half as much. The result: the living standards of working men and women are declining, and America is becoming a nation of hamburger-flippers. How can Congress consider NAFTA, which will destroy urban jobs, at the same time that it is considering the Clinton Administration?s urban empowerment program, which will try to create urban jobs by spending $800 million a year of taxpayers? money over the next 5 years to provide incentives for businesses to locate in urban areas?

NAFTA is good for investors & bad for jobs
Ultimately, NAFTA is not a trade agreement but an investment agreement. NAFTA?s principal goal is to protect the investment of US companies that build factories in Mexico. This is accomplished by reducing the risk of nationalization, by permitting the return of profits to US businesses, and by allowing unlimited access to the American markets for goods produced in Mexico.

Manufacturing industry needed for self-defense
Manufacturing is vitally important for this reason: without the ability to manufacture, the US cannot defend itself. Manufacturing is important because it provides the greatest number of high-paying US jobs. These are the types of jobs that US workers need if they are to buy a house, build a retirement nest egg, and create a better future for themselves. It is just plain wrong to think that ?progress? as a nation requires shifting from a manufacturing economy to a service economy.

NAFTA will encourage illegal immigration
[It is a myth that] NAFTA will reduce illegal immigration. As manufacturing in northern Mexico expands, hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers will be drawn north. They will quickly find that wages in the Mexican maquiladora plants cannot compete with wages anywhere in the US. Out of economic necessity, many of these mobile workers will consider illegally immigrating into the US. In short, NAFTA has the potential to increase illegal immigration, not decrease it.

NAFTA allows prison-made Chinese textiles into US via Mexico
The US apparel market is further opened under NAFTA to producers operating out of Mexico. An exception is that a substantial portion of the apparel made in Mexican factories must use fabric manufactured in North America. The intent is to protect US and Canadian textile jobs. However, Chinese and other foreign textile makers have already figured a way around this provision by building their own factories in Mexico. NAFTA establishes rules that deny preferential treatment for goods produced outside of North America. The way for a Japanese or European company to get preferential treatment, of course, is to build a factory in Mexico. US textile makers who want to be competitive will be forced to move jobs to Mexico or go out of business. Assume the US could put enough customs agents along the border to inspect every item exported from Mexico to the US. Are those customs agents going to be able to tell the difference between a shirt made by prison labor in China and a shirt made in Mexico
Here was a list of the things he wanted to accomplish... How many of them have been accomplished in the almost 20 years since?

Quote:
The goals of United We Stand America include:
To get our economy moving and put our people back to work.
To balance the budget.
To pay off our nation?s debts.
To build an efficient and cost-effective health care system.
To make our neighborhoods and streets safe from crime and violence.
To create the finest public schools in the world for our children.
To pass on the American Dream to our children, making whatever fair shared sacrifices are necessary.

On Government Reform: United We Stand America: create government from the people
The purpose of United We Stand America is to give the people a voice. You own United We Stand America. UWSA?s goals include:
To re-create a government that comes from the people-not at the people.
To reform the federal government at all levels to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse.
To have a government where the elected, appointed, and career officials come to serve and not to cash in.
To get rid of foreign lobbyists.
To get rid of political action committees.
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