Trans-Pacific Pact

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[Dave Roberts]

Sandy, I think you are on target on this one.

[Tim Bonney]

[ET]

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

Sorry I have to report this but ...
.

Interesting for me to note that CNN did not report on this.

[KeithE]

[ET]

The text of the thing is not even final....I'm not going to get all worked up over it. I know Krugman is thumbs down on it, but he's not calling it the end of the world like you and Bernie Sanders. If I recall correctly from the CATO article, even once the text is made public and makes it's way to Congress, it will be argued over for 3-5 months.

Got other things to do.

As for the poor, do you think the poor in those countries who have those "outsourced American jobs" are better off or worse off than before they got those jobs? Due to the rising incomes in places like India and China, I'd say my position supports the poor in other parts of the world far more than you and Bernie's position. Stop trying to be greedy Americans and hoarding all the jobs you think are rightly and exclusively to be set aside solely for American workers and for which the poor in other countries should be prevented from competing for. What about "spreading the wealth"?

Maybe you should study up on labor costs and the concept of comparative advantage.

[KeithE]

[ET]

[KeithE]

I trust Sachs far more than CATO Institute in general. But I’ll agree that the environmental rules and provisions should not be in the TPP. They are non-specific and non-accountable just like the corporations want them. They even enshrine the right to sue a government for setting rules that limit their profitability. It is way past time that corporations pay for their externalities costs they drive and the raw material they expend. Labor laws should be in the TPP like Sachs thinks since they are within the subject matter.

It is never too early to follow these matters. NAFTA has driven hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas, suppressed wages in the US, has caused the influx of immigrants due to killing agriculture in southern Mexico, and has cause much environmental degradation along the US/Mexico border. Read . It has tremendously helped multinational corporations. . We simply cannot let his happen again and should in fact repeal NAFTA.

[ET]

I suppose you won't acknowledge the role that any number of regulatory burdens imposed on American manufacturers by the "government is good" crowd may have played a significant role in "exporting" those so-called "American" jobs?

We live in global economy, not in the "Utopian" times of the 1950s or 1960s when most of the world was underdeveloped and/or laying in ruins from WWII and there really wasn't any other place to get goods other than "made in America". If GM or Ford or the "Evil Corporation of American" want to produce stuff and sell to the world, then they have all sorts of options. They can set up shop in America, Japan, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Latin America and a host of other places.

That's fine if you want to impose any number of regulations to "benefit" the American worker - Obamacare or single-payer, paid family leave, free college, free daycare, free this and free that - but apparently you and a good number of other folks can't face the fact that companies have options these days. When the labor and regulatory costs of your collectivist mindset make it noncompetitive to employ Americans to produce goods to ship around the world, then it makes perfect business sense to seek to produce goods elsewhere in order to stay competitive with businesses around the world.

We can have our EPA, EEOC, SEC, Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, Obamacare or any other number of regulatory requirements that you and your buddies at commondreams can think up, but folks have options. If you want to drop a few million in regulatory costs on "Evil Corporation of America" because you think everybody ought to get this or that for "free" or that the EPA should squeeze out the next .00000001% of mercury from drinking water or that inexpensive energy produced by coal should be made significantly more expensive to produce, then Mr. Big Bad CEO of ECA can run the numbers and decide that it is more advantageous to produce widgets in Mexico and ship them to China for sale, because making them in America with all it's "government is good" business costs is stupid when his competition is making them in India and shipping their widgets to China for sale.

There may be certain regulatory costs we are willing to bear and accept the trade-off in lost jobs/manufacturing capability because the benefit to us is deemed more desirable than the costs (such as some basic set of air and water rules, food inspections, etc.), but I imagine what folks like the commondreamers seek is protectionism - they wish to be able to lay whatever regulatory burdens they deem "good" on corporations and then have protectionist measures in place so that companies won't find it economically feasible to move elsewhere. If they do move, however, you and the commondreamers will just yell, "SHIPPING JOBS OVERSEAS!" and assume that most folks won't bother to think any deeper on such matters than silly rhetoric to discover the perfectly justifiable reason for moving.

You say you don't trust CATO, Keith, but you apparently are oblivious to the extent to which they write about corporations pursuing government favors. Some of that is natural. If gummit is going to make a treaty that affects my business, I certainly want to make sure I don't get the shaft in the deal. I'd want it to not hinder my business at best, but unguarded self-interest might also temp me to seek one that was more advantageous to me than to my competitors. That's the nature of the beast.

I read the stuff from CATO primarily because they do take on issues of .

I'll follow the discussions on the TPP from afar. Some folks will benefit. Others will get hosed. Just the way it works, unfortunately. Whether or not there's enough in there that is so objectionable that it should be ditched remains to be seen.

[Sandy]

[ET]

Pretty much the kind of response I've come to expect from you, Sandy. A lot of rhetoric claiming evil motives on the part of others. Nothing much in the way of substance. If you can convince yourself that Mr. CEO is just greedy and wicked, then you don't have to deal with reality when he shows you his spreadsheet that says, "the costs you are imposing on me don't make it worth my while to be here".

Since you have decided his motives are evil, then his numbers are suspect and you can claim to be the angel on the side of good against the CEO and the forces of evil. Makes for ear-tickling sound bites, but doesn't do much to help solve the issue.