bitcruncher Wrote:Ronald Reagan is the reason why all our jobs are being shipped overseas. Ross Perot was right about the giant sucking sound that would be heard in NAFTA passed. It just took longer than he anticipated. Reaganomics is slowly killing the national economy, and it is being accelerated by the fact that Nixon took us off the gold standard, so that not all of our currency is backed any longer. We have become a nation of borrowers, and freeloaders, such as those about to be bailed out because they elected an incompetent CEO, who will probably get a government paid bonus to get the hell out of his chair.
We bail out huge corporations, whose board members and executives run it into the ground, and Republicans are the first ones to say this bailout is needed. But that isn't the capitalist way. Capitalism states that supply and demand dictate, and if you can't cut the mustard, somebody else will.
Not anymore. Republicans and Democrats alike have become socialists...
But I'm basically an anarchist at heart, even though I usually vote Libertarian in Presidential elections...
I usually vote libertarian not only in presidential elections, but all the way down the ballot. I agree with your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th paragraphs, but I'm not sure I follow your first one.
I'm not sure why to blame Reagan and Reganomics for jobs going overseas. If anything, it seems to me that the way to keep jobs here is more, not less, emphasis on the supply side. We are borrowers as the inevitable result of consuming too much and saving too little of our income.
Perot opposed NAFTA, but not free trade. He had actually invested millions and called in a number of political favors to develop Alliance Airport as a duty free zone north of Fort Worth. Despite the sound bytes, the real reason for his opposition to NAFTA was that Alliance was a whole lot more desirable project without NAFTA than with it. I'm surprised that you, as a libertarian, are opposed to free trade.
We've lost lots of jobs overseas, but the only ones that can be attributed to NAFTA are those that:
1. Went to Canada or Mexico, and
2. Would not have left the US without NAFTA.
A large number of our lost jobs have been to places other than Canada or Mexico. NAFTA had nothing to do with those. A large number of the jobs lost to Canada or Mexico were never going to stay in the US; the impact of NAFTA was that those jobs went to Canada or Mexico instead of going to China or India. To the extent that relieves some of the illegal immigration pressure, that is a good thing.
True, we are becoming a nation of borrowers and freeloaders. I'm just not sure how you blame that on Reagan.