# American Economy



## indago (Nov 7, 2008)

Back in 1992, the Congressional Representative from our District sent out a flier to his interested constituents about the pending free trade agreements in the Congress, requesting our views on the legislation. I wrote back: "It is well known in this country that the United States has a well advanced economic system and society; advanced beyond the economies of some of the other countries with which we trade. Our working people are protected in the workplace by legislation which requires a safe workplace environment. Our manufacturers are required to clean discharges into the environment to limit pollution. Many working people have contracted with employers a retirement program, and health insurance. Compensations for labor have advanced commensurate with the liberties and freedoms of the Americans, allowing Americans to have a more autonomous lifestyle. The United States is being invaded by goods from foreign countries that have provided a haven to our manufacturers who wish to avoid the costs of a clean environment, and a free people. Some of these countries have manufacturers of their own who avoid these responsibilities. The Americans cannot compete on this type of "free trade" basis. To compete, the Americans would have to regress back fifty to one hundred years, a move hardly acceptable by the American people. 

According to the Constitution of the United States, the United States Congress was granted the power to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States". The Congress was also granted the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations". With these powers, the Congress, and their staff, have the capacity to determine, for instance, an equivalent automobile, comparing one from a foreign manufacturer to one of our own, and, considering the price differential between the two, lay a tax upon the imported good to balance it with our own. In this way the money could be used to "pay the Debts and provide for the ...general Welfare" of all of the States of the United States." 

I mentioned also the writings of Adam Smith and Francis Hutcheson. Adam Smith, a British economist who has been quoted by American statesmen, and Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, wrote, in his book Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, "If the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether...". He noted that "two great engines for enriching the country, therefore, were restraints upon importation, and encouragements to exportation." Mr. Smith had studied under Professor Francis Hutcheson, who had written, in his book System of Moral Philosophy, in the chapter Of the Nature of Civil Laws and their Execution: "Foreign materials should be imported and even premiums given, when necessary, that all our own hands may be employed; and that, by exporting them again manufactured, we may obtain from abroad the price of our labours. Foreign manufactures and products ready for consumption should be made dear to the consumer by high duties, if we cannot altogether prohibit the consumption;..."

What Adam Smith and Francis Hutcheson are saying is: If you do A, then B will happen.

A) Eliminate duties and tariffs on goods imported into this country from the lesser developed countries.

B) Manufactures will increase in the lesser developed countries, and will decrease in this country; some manufactures here will close down; they will move their businesses to the lesser developed countries; workers in this country will lose their jobs; the economy in this country will shrink.

Well, the Congress did A, and B happened.

Our Congressional Representative voted against the free trade and fast track legislation, but too many of his fellow Congressmen voted in favor of the legislation. Our Congress was warned about what would happen over two hundred years ago, but they did it anyway. The changes didn't happen overnight, but they did happen, and will continue to happen; and now we are reaping the harvest of this shame. Good, solid tax bases have fled the country and now the States are attempting to lay the burden of support on the victim: employees who have been left to scrounge for crumbs and to seek much lower paying jobs. We were told: "Give your job to the underdeveloped countries so that they can have the wherewithall to purchase the products that you are making." Now, I'm not a Nuclear Physicist, but does anyone else see the Catch 22 in this???


----------



## Speedy Petey (Jan 10, 2007)

And this has to do with the electrical trade how???

So far out of you first three posts the first two had to be deleted by the site admin, and now this. 

Do you have an agenda sir? This site is not here for things like this. There are plenty of other sites and boards out there for this kind of thread. 
Heck, go over to the sister site www.contractortalk.com and post this in the "Politics & Religion" forum. They'll welcome you with open arms. :thumbsup:


----------

