I’ll post seperately (and soon) about why the US government has zero business providing guarantees to health care, but the question I pose is why does the government taking over that obligation from the union suddenly make health care cost neutral?

The reality is the government would need to pass along the cost of health care to the consumer (much like the union mandates do today). This comes in the form of higher corporate tax rates. Currently, the US has a counterproductive high corporate tax rate of 35%. That will likely increase to afford health care coverage to all.

However, we live in a globalized world. Higher corporate tax rates will have a material impact on where companies decided to set up shop. Why set up a business in the US, and get taxed at 35% when you can set one up in say, Ireland, and have a taxation sub 20%? Or Slovakia, or Romania, or Poland? Those nations all have corporate tax rates lower than the US, and with the expansion of the EU, now have the logistics and labor to competively sell goods to a global marketplace.

Which is one reason NAFTA is so good for the US, it gives us built in trade partners for all the stuff we make here in the US. Do the Democrats actually believe they can renegotiate the terms of NAFTA to protect jobs in the US and still provide healthy export markets? To the contrary, Canada will suddenly look to establish free trade agreements with EU members, and the US will be priced out of the marketplace. All in the name of job protection.

Regarding education, free trade and the migration of manufacturing jobs does not mean the end of good career opportunities for people that do not want to pursue a college education. There are some jobs which can never be sent to another country. As we import more goods, people are needed to work as longshoremen, crane operators, port inspection authorities, railway operators, truck drivers, expediters and other jobs of their ilk related to logistics. Further, as we build and expand our infrastructure to support more import related activities, opportunities in construction and construction management make themselves available.

To say nothing of the fact that free trade creates more opportunities than it eliminates. The biggest threat to manufacturing jobs in Ohio isn’t Mexico, it is Texas. Automakers don’t want to set up a new plant in Ohio because they will be hamstrung with prohibitely high costs associated with union labor (to say nothing of the fact that Ohio’s state income tax is burdensome). Meanwhile, Texas is a right to work state, so manufacturing jobs are created. Why wouldn’t a car manufacturer, looking to build a new plant, simply set up shop in Mexico? Because the cost benefit analysis does not immediately send all labor work to the lowest cost provider. Rather, components are sent to Mexico and in return we can concentrate on training a high skilled workforce to operate more sophisticated machinery. Manufacturing jobs may be fleeing Ohio, but they aren’t leaving the US.

Meanwhile, new opportunities become available which were previously non-existent. Science has advanced to the point where we can efficiently turn corn into ethanol to power vehicles. Warm bodies are needed to man plants going up in places such as Iowa and Nebraska.

It must be remembered that governments only create taxes and laws. They do not create jobs. That is why the Democrats anti-trade rhetoric is so damning.

Even in something as quintessentially American as the L.L. Bean catalogue, almost every single item says “Imported” next to it. The ones that don’t say Imported say something like “Made with U.S. Wool assembled abroad” or something like that. Flip over every calculator, pair of scissors, item of clothing, whatever you own; I’m sure 90% of everything you own was manufactured abroad.

And why not? In a free market, it makes sense to buy something for cheaper and still sell it for more. If I can import rubber bouncy balls from China at $.20 per dozen and sell them for $1 a peice, that sure beats making them myself for $.50 a peice and selling them at $1 a peice, right? Well the reason it costs so much to make anything in this country is simple: Healthcare. If Healthcare was gauranteed by the U.S. govt, as it is in virtually EVERY other developed country, maybe the U.S. wouldn’t be such an expensive place to manufacture goods.

But that’s not giong to happen any time soon, so the U.S. is moving toward a “Service Economy” whatever in the HELL that means….which as far as I know means not manufacturing based. So we are going to require a better skilled workforce capable of adapting to the new “Services Based” economy. That would be great, if anybody could afford an education in this country without leveraging themselves into indentured servitude for their natural born life.

Personally, I would love to see either the government take care of a.) Education, b.) Healthcare, or (GOD FORBID) c.) both Education and Healthcare. Also, give out subsidies, give out tax breaks, do whatever it takes to get manufacturing back to the U.S. so even if you don’t have a college degree you can earn a living wage (Yes, a “living wage”) and support a family. Our expectations are going to have to come down a bit…every American might not be able to own a two storey house and have a Ford and a Chevy in the garage…but there has to be a middle ground between absolutely restricting trade and living in a service economy where you are either Rich or Poor, with nothing in between…

This is the greatest country in the world…we’ve got diverse and plentiful natural resources, a diverse and vigorous people, a well-structured government friendly to business. There is no reason why we can’t figure this problem out so that the American people don’t keep getting shafted, and so we can be, once again, an example to other nations.

I argue that we don’t need to make this trade off. That requiring basic workplace standards AND buying foreign products can actually help both sides: we get cheaper goods and the workers supplying them improve their quality of life. What I’m against is a race to the bottom on price without any consideration of the human toll.

In short, free trade needs to promote actually freedom, not just freedom of choice for the consumer. How would you feel know that saving 20% on thousands of items meant that many people had to work fifteen-hour days in sweatshops? Well, it’s not a hypothetical.

What’s more, protecting the basic rights of the worker levels the field, allowing us to compete on price. The U.S. isn’t actually terribly anti-competitive. Why else would the Japanese manufacture cars here? The notion that our choice is between decent wages and workplaces versus foreign sweatshops is false. But make sure that the foreign shop is run up to snuff, and then the U.S. can compete on price and quality.

In short, I’m against protectionism but for ensuring our way of life is promoted through trade. We don’t need cheap goods so badly that we should trade our souls for them.

It’s common sense that we can feed everyone in the world right now at current or sub-current production levels. Everything else isn’t about meeting necessities, but about opening markets and creating consumers for products, most of which they don’t want or need.

That’s where the exported notion of quality of life/middle class/1st world comes in. Any acknowledgment that the (never mentioned) 2nd World produces enough to meet the needs of people is crossed off.

So, we have reached the other end of the bell curve and see diminishing returns on this amazing growth. Cheap goods are great, but not when they poison us.

The argument that we have full transparency is charitable. With a lot of research, you and I can decide not to buy from Mattel or others, but most of this purchasing isn’t done on the personal level, but at the corporate level.

And of the consumer purchases, I’m not certain it’s reasonable to expect people to do that much work before they buy food, toys, furniture, etc. American citizens, perhaps naively, expect the food and drug administration and other government organs to protect them.

These organs have failed in recent years because they have been starved by people in the current administration who believe that the market makes good decisions. And the market does, over time. Over an extended series, coin flips fall distribute heads/tails evenly. But in the short term, I do not trust my health and safety to a coin flip, nor do I trust the transparency of businesses that thrive in opacity.

I expect my government to use the powers we give it to help us. Very few product ingredients are transparent. There is no way to know where all components have been mixed and under what conditions and at what cost unless I do a tremendous amount of research.

I expect my government to do that research and to create minimal standards, and they do. They don’t always enforce them, but I want them to. At least in a global economy, the more sensible European Union is willing to step in and ban certain toxic chemical compounds (for instance) and thereby force producers to alter their processes to meet minimal standards, not just minimal costs. Luckily, we get the benefit of this foreign regulation, because producers will adjust their minimal standards to the more stringent EU rules due to its purchasing power.

Even if all information were transparent, government exists to protect the weakest among us, including the dumbest of us. And I don’t expect dumb people to spend 20 minutes on Google trying to figure out which toys won’t poison their three year olds. The markets can decide which toys it LIKES best, but shouldn’t have to DECODE which toys are safest. Big difference. When it comes to basic health and safety, the markets are cold, efficient and not humane.

I’m all for other nations freely trading with us. It’s a dream, though. We find all kinds of reasons to keep Africa from exporting products to us. We tariff, we say they’re using genetically modified seeds (good luck finding heirloom seeds for less than twice the base cost!), or other doggerel.

Luckily, consumers have already shown a willingness to buy some of these products when they are marketed as being helpful to the third world (or organic, etc.), which is basically a form of charity, but a more effective form of charity, as you note, than World Bank loans that (for all I know) may finance child armies and basic graft.

A President can have a dramatic impact on this process by ensuring basic standards are met by foreign producers, and their moral leadership can help place a value on goods and services obtained reasonably, at fair price, and with the safety, health and well-being of both the worker and the consumer in mind.