ever asks pertinent questions.
Just like they can't bring themselves to call out lies when they hear them.

You need to check out the weekly jobs report. We lose hundreds of thousands of jobs weekly - but not to trade. And add even more new jobs!

Where we can document import-related, TAA can help.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/06/22/faces-taa-how-program-can-help-change-so-many-lives

Why were there no machinist jobs?

Where did those jobs go?

I used to live in Michigan and there were many many retirees living a good life on their pensions from the auto factories.

I no longer live there but looking at Detroit I'm thinking many of those jobs are gone and the number of retirees has dropped.

these simple observations that show what BS this is.

That's called competition, innovation and globalization.

I'm down South. We got Mercedes Benz, Honda, Hyundai, BMW, Volkswagen... and robotics and computerization. Fewer people on the line. Few unions. 401Ks.

Short of isolationism and protectionism, and higher prices and shittier products for the American consumer, globalization is here and now.

Do we really want our Democratic Party to fight for the past or face the future?

You ever see the movie "Norma Rae"? Textile plant?

These are the jobs you want to keep here for us? I sure wish I could spend my life gluing soles onto Nike tennis shoes. Ahhh, that would have been the life. Hope it paid enuff for booze and drugs - gonna need lots of booze and drugs!

Did you know lots of jobs suck worse than NAFTA?

I don't know if I could would like a job making cheap iPhones and iPods and iPads and Macs. But I'll tell you what - you couldn't afford one if it was made in Silicon Valley!

his testimonial has all the earmarks of propaganda

I've worked 43 years in medical field. I chose that field because:
1. It interested me
2. My job couldn't be shipped out of the country.
Now of course some medical jobs can. TeleRad allows a radiologist in other countries to read radiographs done in America. Australia is a prime example.

I hope your right but having lived through NAFTA and the destruction of jobs, wages not keeping up,etc I think your wrong.

As far as a machinists being a terrible job, have you seen what a respiratory therapist does? Are you sure that more enjoyable?

I'm done, enjoy your life.

Do you have any original thoughts? Thoughts of your own?

and spout it over and over and over and over until everyone is 'convinced' it must be true?

Nah.

I'll just source and cite our Democratic president's website and associated facts.

You know - 'cause I'm a Democrat.

That was you, correct, from your previous post? Praising the fact that the South "has few unions"?

No, in fact, you do not appear to be an actual Democrat. Why would have us believe otherwise?

The South has a union history. Most of those jobs are gone.

Now, Southerners are skeptical of 'the union benefit'. Now, we are in 'right to work' states which further erodes union power and financial strength.

I am a strong union advocate. I don't trot it out for political argument in opposition to fact.

When we have unions arguing to be exempted from increased minimum wages because they negotiated lower wages, union leadership has lost their way. When unions won't spend the money and fight the fight for low-wage workers, Walmart workers, retail and service workers, unions have lost their way.

We need a new paradigm, a new model for unions. The old model, the old 'union bosses', are fighting for the past. Fighting the future.

The union fights for the right to free association, the right to organize, the right to collective bargaining. These are universal human rights.

What does it tell us when workers say they don't need these rights?

And then...

But we will broach no criticism of Democratic institutions and contra-positions they take -- that would be an inexcusable offense.

Obama bad. Union good.

Got it.

Not war. Not the subsidies that get showered on to Obama's corporate buddies - but from Medicare.
Wonder what is next.

Pelosi had already negotiated non-Medicare funding, but she killed that last week.

Now, Democrats are free to get any kind of funding they want for additional aid for displaced workers. I'm sure the Republicans will go along with any old idea.

Maybe Pelosi can get it back to last weeks win before she voted it down? They do have the alternative funding in another bill yet to be passed.

OMG whatever would they do with less missiles, planes, weapons covered with spent uranium ( the gift that keeps on giving).

So let's just take it from the old folks out of a pot that's been raided before

We need a clean TAA bill.

New jobs created could require totally different skills set or located in other parts of the country. TAA helps.

really think the TPP will have a net gain in jobs?
Really?

To everyone not in the middle class and below.

Anything (I'll even give you a hint that there are a couple, though most indicators are significantly better today than in 1993).

Compare unemployment today (U3, U4, or U6,as you prefer) to 1993. Ditto median wages. Ditto median incomes. Ditto wages and incomes at each quintile. Child poverty. Food insecurity. US manufacturing. Pick one and show it's worse today than 1993.

flat wages is a positive?

[img][/img]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

Why does DU refuse to actually look at those wage charts they post? They were flat from 1975 to 1995, and rose between 1995 and 2015.

a 10% increase over 20 years?

You don't think so?

and just stop (both of us) using macro economic data to support our side re: NAFTA.
It is a poor argument for either of us. You must look at the actual jobs NAFTA affected, and there is little consensus on that.
Though I have seen good data on wage suppression.

Offshoring to Mexico started in the late 1970s and didn't particularly speed up after NAFTA.

I agree macro indicators aren't a great way of judging a deal, particularly with trade with Mexico being like 3% of GDP. But like you allude we don't have much on the specifics of displaced workers.

How many jobs were created by lower prices on imported goods? We don't know, but it's non-zero.

Took a big hit if I'm not mistaken. If the loss of jobs isn't enough, than there is no way we can compete with low wage, developing or under developed countries. The corporations and shareholder may do very well but the middle class and the employees not so much.

Help me understand how well we're all doing under nafta and soon the Trans-Pacific agreement?

I was responding in a subthread were we kept using gross eco-data.

Sometimes looking at DU on a phone or tablet gets confusing.

you can't tell which reply is to what.

I've been down this road before.

I'll believe it when I see it and I hope I don't see it.

the critical thinkers, not so much

It will be modest, but it will be a net gain, just like after NAFTA.

Feel free to bookmark and post employment numbers in a couple of years

that period coincided with the tech boom.
There is much debate about actual job increases due to NAFTA and there is evidence of downward pressure on wages because of it.

Nah, I have trouble believing that a boom based entirely on replacing people with software created jobs.

you could actually look at the job increase in the tech sector.

less to disprove an alleged causation.

One may need more evidence than just the fact that manufacturing employment and wages increased during the Clinton years after NAFTA to conclude that NAFTA was the cause of this improvement. However, the health of the manufacturing sector after NAFTA does even less to disprove that theory.

One could argue that the New Deal, or each program that was a part of it, was inconsequential in the creation of a healthier economy and a strong middle class. Perhaps the recovery from the stock market crash and the onset of the depression was going to happen anyway. The US had many boom-and-bust economic cycles and depressions before the 1930's and recovered from them without a New Deal. The argument would be that the improving economy and middle class under the New Deal was just 'correlation' not 'causation' and would have happened without a New Deal. I doubt that either you or I believe that.

"Net gain of jobs, just like NAFTA."

Reality.

Now I'm not so afraid...

Even if a policy is "good for our economy and jobs" that only means that on balance it is a positive; not that no one anywhere loses their job because of it.

If we adopted total 'free trade', like between California and New York, with every country there would be winners and losers (who required help from a TAA). If we went with a 2015 "Smoot-Hawley) and used high tariffs to reduce trade to zero, there would be winners and losers (who require help from a TAA). And for every trade policy from 'free trade' to 'Smoot-Hawley', there are going to be winners and losers (who need help from a TAA).

Tea party republicans do not oppose TAA because there should be no need for it. (And they oppose fast track and TPP for other reasons as well as the TAA. They want none of them.) They oppose it because it is a 'big government' program designed to help average Americans.

I honestly don't see what's so difficult about that and what keeps DU from grasping that fairly simple idea. The people whose jobs go away will need training for new jobs.

Honestly though, relocation assistance would probably do more people more good. The sun belt and coasts will do well, and the rust belt will do badly.

Many good-paying, stable, highly technical jobs get destroyed.

A few low-paying, transitory, retail-type jobs are created.

The economy correspondingly shrinks -- as has been the pattern since NAFTA-type deals and China's MFN status have been put into place, the nation eventually dies, the populace gets mad, shills and the people for whom they speak sooner or later have to run for their lives.

Median wages and incomes went up; on the whole, textile jobs lost to Mexico were replaced with higher paying jobs in the services sector. My guess is the result will be something largely similar.

I don't pay attention to some anonymous shill's lying with statistics. I read actual research from real economists.

http://www.epi.org/blog/naftas-impact-workers/

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/24/what-weve-learned-from-nafta/nafta-lowered-wages-as-it-was-supposed-to-do

http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_snapshots_20061004/

https://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTA_10_jobs.pdf

Name a metric by which American workers are worse off today than in 1993. The bullshit here is not from me, but from people who can't answer that simple question and continue to spout off about NAFTA despite that.

You have a religious belief that NAFTA made things worse but you can't come up with a single metric by which American workers are worse off now than before it.

So why would you pull it out of your a$$ and claim that they do?

Unemployment went down after NAFTA
Discouraged worker rates went down after NAFTA
Wages at all quintiles went up after NAFTA
Income at all quintiles went up after NAFTA
Wages and income went up more in the 20 years after NAFTA than the 20 years before it.

Why alleged Democrats consider that outcome bad I have no idea; I suppose it's an obsession with manufacturing as the only "real" kind of employment.

I notice you still can't answer: what's a single metric by which workers are worse off today then in 1993?

Seriously, just name one. I'll even give you a hint that there are a couple.

How hard is it to just look up a number which you are certain exists and post it? I've posted all kinds of numbers about this in multiple threads: unemployment, labor participation, median wages, median incomes, wages at quintiles, income at quintiles... all better than 1993 and all improved more in the two decades after NAFTA than the two before it. Can you post just one set of numbers that got worse? Like I said there are some; just find them, then we'll at least both be actually arguing a point.

A segment of DU is very emotionally invested in painting a distopian picture of America that doesn't correspond to any measurable reality.

None of the data from the links I provided which contain tables or statistics show anything of the kind, that (quoting you) "unemployment went down after NAFTA...discouraged worker rates went down after NAFTA..."). And yet for some reason, you continue to persist that the links I cited seem to "agree" with you in some manner.

Your method of argument appears to consist of 1) some sort of repeated tossed-off, blanket claim that the person who provided the links didn't himself read the links; and 2) an equally repeated desperate, wild-eyed assertion that research studies which completely negates your drivel somehow "agrees" with you.

Try your act somewhere else.

My girlfriend is from the Philippines. I wish we could buy some of the bananas and rice they grow in the provinces and help them out.

is not opposing trade. It's opposing the specifics of the TPP.

about this subject.

And it follows quite logically.

And it was a cheap shot and a non sequitur; a veritable twofer...

To infer from a simple musing that I am unaware of subsidies and price supports is fucking staggering.


You and your pal need to find a pinata because I sure am not one.

I can't begin to fathom the inner demons that must taunt them

Maybe this can be a learning experience for both of us.

I did find how you got defensive about the issue, rather than reflective, humorous, however.

I simply mused that it would nice to buy rice and bananas from the Philippines.