The truth as to why the American Economy is Faultering.
 

It is a tough spill to swallow and I am surprised no one has realised it yet, however Free trade agreements by participating nations are not being honored properly.

These agreements range from Outsourced Labor to taxation of materials to and from countries. Free Trade has not stimulated the American Labor but has infact crippled it, Less Americans making money makes less money back to the economy, less money to investments.

It goes on and on and why the news is not really discussing this, Free trade Agreements have broken the American Economy in all secotrs and nothing will change it till those agreements are either reviewed or abandoned by the American Government.

Fact Americans need more real jobs, not more Jobs working at Walmart and Starbucks or serving fast food.

It's a good theory but Globalization is a must. If you can pay someone in india to do a job just as good as an American for 1/2 the cost.

Americans need to quit being so lazy is what it comes down to.

Lazy and money mongers. Do you really think we'd be using china with the risks of poisoning our kids and killing ourselves and our pets from tainted food and toys if we could get shit Made in the USA at around the same price?

If product X cost is $100 in the USA and $26 in China, which do you think a company will pick to stock? Now if it was $27 and $26 I am sure they would stay here.

So what you are saying is.. to fix our economy.. we need to pay our workers $3 a day too! Brilliant!

the only way we as an economy will last is if we get ridd of bush..:mad:

Free trade has been great for our economy.

What is REALLY crippling the US economy is the welfare and entitlement society we have created.

We pay people to do nothing, and we punish people for working (taxes) --and we wonder why our productivity is lagging.

You're a douche, but you're right here.

No idiot. What I am saying is that companies don't need to make 30 billion dollars a year in profit and CEOs rake in 10 million in bonuses. If we made our goods cheaper to provide to our own companies in the country to sell to our own citizens, we wouldn't rely on foreign shit so much. The only reason China is going anywhere is because our entire manufacturing line is there right now.

There is no doubt that Free Trade hurts the job base but the main reason is debt. The US has out spent itself. The money is not worth anything, and the banks are so greedy they got into sub prime knowing the bottom would fall out at some point and that the governement would have to step in to bail them out.

If free trade agreements are finally working towards fucking the united states, GOOD. They've been fucking everybody else for so long now the tables are bound to turn sooner or later...

Why is it cheaper in China? Simple, Americans demand a Disneyworld where everything is perfect. That has a cost that American consumers and Corporations don't want to pay.

*Has a Chinese manufacturer ever had to go through the disgustingly expensive and time consuming "environmental impact study" before building a new factory?
*How about waste disposal once the factory is running, what kind of regulations exist in China.
*Union wages.
*OSHA
*Workers comp
*Liability Insurance
*Preservation of natural resources.
*ETC . ETC, ETC

Americans want everything perfect, everyone taken care of, the environment perfect ..... FINE, but there is a cost involved in doing so. A cost that American consumers obviously don't want to pay, that's why everything is made in China ... duh.

Now we are going to pay.

Oh stop with the right wing bullshit. Companies making record profit and at the same breath laying off thousands of americans to replace them with indians.
Less than 5% of us companies actually pay taxes so thats bullshit also. AlienQ is correct.

Also your forgetting who are you going to get to work for 30 cents a hour?

You pretty much nailed it...
America, the land of the free. Where everybody believes they have the right to an absolutely perfect everything, without having to work or pay for any of it...

The US isn't alone in this, but they're certsainly at the hea dof the pack when it comes to real world ignorance.

As usual your brilliance defies logic.

I think you'll find the correct phrase is;

It is a tough pill to swallow. Most people swallow pills, not spills, get it????

But given your single digit IQ I don't suppose you have much room up there besides "breathing skills".:thumbsup

No, Americans all want higher minimum wage laws yet will buy their products from China where people make 30 cents an hour.

No not americans, american companies big difference.

Thats a load of crap. Next time you get on a CS call with some ass hat in Inidan that you can not understand remember that you posted this.

amen brother :thumbsup

And gas prices???

By boosting the economies of China and India due to outsourcing and manufacturing we have increased those countries oil demands. Now our gas costs are soaring.

But hey, look how much I saved at Wal-Mart :Oh crap

You guys are way off, it has nothing to do with free trade or "outsourcing". The federal deficit and the fact that we print the worthless paper we call currency as fast as the presses will roll are the main problems. When you build a house of cards, it has to come down at some point. What we're seeing now is only a tiny part of the economic catastrophe that's about to occur. You know, the one we all thought we could put off until we were dead. Us boomers have fucked the economy with our unrelenting greed, wastefulness, and short sightedness. The idea of America as a financial superpower comes to a complete end in 2008. This time next year the world will look a lot different from where we're sitting.

lol you think this week was rough on your 401k, wait until China drops the USD as their reserve, and then every central bank on earth races to follow suit. People with hundreds of thousands of dollars cash in the bank are literally going to be smashing their kids' piggy banks looking for a silver dollar to feed their families with. We used to laugh at Russians who had to bring a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bred. That is exactly what is in store for the USD. I'm sorry but everyone who didn't see this coming is a damned fool.

Maybe once we rebuild the economy under China and India's "Marshall plan" for us, people will remember not to take financial advice from talking heads on TV networks owned by ultra rich guys who want you to be poor. A lesson hard learned but thoroughly remembered.

What did you guys expect would happen when we stopped disclosing how much money we were printing (m3 reports, I believe they used to be called), and stopped caring about actually having the money we were spending? Did anyone even care about these things when they were happening, or was Survivor on that week? Something tells me people will start caring now.

I put all of my savings in gold in 2002 and I must say, I am way, way smarter than almost every other human being I have ever talked to, read, or seen on television. Personally I can't fathom how even a semi-literate troglodyte could have missed this inevitable conclusion. I suppose we're all just propagandized from birth to believe that Amerika is perfect and whatever our leaders are doing must be in our best interest. It was so stupid I almost don't feel bad for all the people who are going to be loosing their savings.

Curious, do you live in China?

I sure don't, and do not plan on moving to such an overpopulated place anytime in my life. This isn't China. I appreciate anything done in the USA to help the environment and natural resources.

American consumers are/were trained to embrace cheap Chinese goods at the hands of business people bringing them over and profiting. Not that they do not want to pay, they just are used to what they are used to.

Chinese manufacturers are putting poison in our pet food and children's toys to save a buck.

I do not think it is so much the spoiled American mindset, there are alot of hard working Americans with excellent educations going to complete waste.

goto the local Hardware store and see for yourself, ya will find people in them with college degree's that can not find work suited to thier educations.

American Labor Forces have suffered intensely as jobs have shifted over sea's. Union jobs even!
Auto manufacturing for example has been huge in jobs for America and was a staple income for many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of families.

With less money in our economy, and exhorbant credit debt rates going beyond 24% in many cases along with Mortage problems the Average American is absolutly getting screwed. I think Sub Prime mortgage thing would not be a problem if more Americans had a dependable income. In many cases people that experienced Sub Prime Mortgage had the ability to refinance on another lender unfortunatly income was and still is the main problem not the credit standing for a better home loan rate.

This has been happening for quite some time now and this is why I think the Economy is beginning to fold to recession. Well Recession has been on for almost a year now in my opinion.

Just re-iterating that just because unemployment is down does not mean that it bides for a good economy when most people are taking jobs is small mini mall's and food services.

Welfare is only 1% of our Federal budget. How is that hurting our economy again?

No I don't live in China, I'm one of the few American consumers smart enough to realize our policies come with a cost. I will pay more for US products.

If you are a real environmentalist you wouldn't purchase goods from a country like China.

DING DING!!! We have a winner! :thumbsup

Lets not forget what we define as succesful in this country. We consider someone poor if they can't buy an IPOD or the newest designer purse. People want to live above their means, drive fancy new cars, grab a $5 cup of coffee in the morning.

Our idea of success is much different from the rest of the world. Someone in another country would consider a nice home with a family a great lifestyle. We don't.

Lets not foget that Piracy is rampant as well.

Meaning American Products in not just Media are essentially ripped off, duplicated and sold by nations participating in these Free trade Agreements.

Cell Phone Knock Off's, Software copying, PC Hardware, even Hardrives, car parts are being pirated and this one can be sure has had a big ripple effect as well.

Nations participating in these Free trade Agreements are massively not following suit to the agreements. Even in Labor!

Meaning in many of the Free trade Agreements Sweat shop's were not supposed to be in play and many countries agreed to have many of the protections Americans would have such as OSHA, Insurance, Retirement etc...

Free trade Nations essentially said yeah we will not do sweat shops and we will fight piracy and they have not one fucking thing about it.

Copyright infringement/piracy costs the U.S. economy $58.0 billion in total output and costs American workers 373,375 jobs*


*These figures taken from Institute for Policy Innovation.

Globalization evens everybody's quality of life out... it means a kick in the nuts for us, we've been living good lives with luxuries at the expense of workers in other countries.

your all over it mate! its going to be hard times ahead!

Indeed, globalization has not helped the USA.

porn is a great example of Globalization. the price of content has stayed low while the cost of production as tripled.

If Chinese citizens are willing to sell themselves for $1/hour, buyers obviously will be attracted. That's how the labour market operates.

Welcome to the global economy.

Hell, I blame......Tube sites and the lack of high quality midget porn.
Yeah thats it. midget porn.

NosMo

True, but companies would still rather have you talk to an Indian at less cost than an American. There's also a reason why you get automated messages when you call just about every CS line for any company. People are expensive, they are lazy, they go on 2 hour lunches, they go on 1-year maternity leave, they get drunk and show up late for work, etc. etc.

So do you think the majority of American corporations really care if customers are frustrated with their CS experience? Obviously not, that's why you get the Indian on the other line and not and not someone from Indiana.

one of the best threads I've seen here for a long time. To bad everyday joe and the CEO won't ever read this or even get a grasp on whats happening.

Once I read the problem is we are a good enough country, like in japan cell phones work in subways.Here your lucky if it works in your house but we are ok with that. You pay 10 bucks to go to a movie, to be shown fucking tv commercials thats the point of paying the ticket no commercials but we are passive as consumers. So companies give us shit and we smile.

i'm moving to france

You forgot one very moot point on your anti-american razzle..
We can and do grow our food in our backyards lol..
Eating a pepper salad right as i speak... mmmmmm dirt... NOT SAND

I think the economy has never been so GOOD, but the population was cash starved.

40% of the world's cash is sitting in offshore bank accounts.

The rich and super rich are making 15%/year, Joe 2% at most.

what i dont get about all these so called political economy experts here, and bush haters... Bush is the one who FIXED china's economy.... and shown them the power of the free trade... so ugh yeah, dieing dollar... doom... lol ok

The populist rhetoric makes for good sound bites and gives you a nice feeling of righteous indignation but it's not based in fact.

The fact of the matter is, and pardon my french, but the chinese and indians are our new n*ggers.
They're not picking cotton, they're making tshirts and tennis shoes, but it's the same principle.
Instead of owning them and having them work the fields for 18 hours a day and providing them with room and board, they work in chinese factories for 18 hours a day for less than it would cost to feed them here

You can whine all day about union this and pension that and sentimentalize about how good you think things used to be....but the fact is that our standard of living is double what our parent's was and more than triple what our grandparent's standard of living was. (depending on your age I suppose, my parents are baby boomers and my grandparents went through the depression and WWII)

The problem that people have now is their ANXIETY over the economy, not the economy itself. It's the uncertainty about the future that scares people and makes them see things as worse than they are. Our parents and grandparents worked at the same place all their lives, we change jobs 5+ times before we're 40. That uncertainty is what worries people, when in fact they are better off than their parents or grandparents were. :2 cents:

The media greatly increases that anxiety.

No, not big difference.

If Americans had such a problem with it, they would boycott Walmart, Walmart would go out of business, and half of the chinese manufacturing base along with it.

Consumers don't care where things are made anymore, they care about who has the best thing for the lowest price.

Indeed. Their ratings go up when people are panicked, so they definitely sensationalize everything that's even slightly negative.

I dunno when i was 6 everything was made in china/tawain, was junk then
now im 40 and eerything is still made in china/tawaiin, now india,pakistan and its still junk.. Can work slaves all they want.. they can't make nothing good cept for a smaller camera we no longer need.

So whats different today? Only thing i see different is instead of buying a toro lawn mower at a service shop that will last 20 years, we buy whatever crap is at home depot and throw it away in 2 years... multiply that by whatever else we buy and use. So guess what.. all the chinese / tawain / india people come setup business here to milk the cow.. now its milked, they will go home and all will be back to normal... No more hyandai dealerships, no more toyota dealerships... bye bye oh wait they make those here now they just ship in the parts lol

But, that lowest price comes with a cost. That was the main point in my first post.

homes where i live were going up so fast it had to break sooner or later

Excellent post.

Few Americans understand the most basic principles of economics, the media exploits their ignorance.

How much in fees do you think online trading companies have made in the last few weeks due to media hype?