It isn't about education or competitiveness. TPP is about shipping jobs to Vietnam - $5/day.

[whereisjustice]

That's the average salary in Vietnam.

TPP isn't about our lack of education or competitive skills.

It's about crushing our resistance to living on $5 a day.

The difference in worker salary between US and Vietnam is pure tax-reduced profit in the pockets of CEOs.

Nothing you can learn in school will explain why TPP is a good deal for anyone but Wall Street billionaires.

Perhaps that's the motive behind our corporate sponsored education initiatives.

Dumb us down to $5/day.

[Octafish]

1. The carrot is the 'Hope' you'll be a billionaire someday.

It's just a carrot.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. More of a carrot seed, than a carrot.

[meow2u3]

9. More like an iron rod in the shape and color of a carrot

that they call a carrot--until you chomp down on it and find out your teeth are all shattered!

[corkhead]

32. no, it's a tiny animated gif of a carrot

[BrotherIvan]

43. Perfect

[TBF]

39. Well that or you'll get a special level in heaven.

Seriously ..

[cali]

2. no offense, but it's about a HUGE amount more than that.

I've posted extensively about the real threats. Job loss is actually less of threat than many other particulars.

[daleanime]

11. And all as real as a cheap imported clothing.....

[TBF]

40. The job loss is probably the thing we can use

to get people's attention. My fear is loss of the internet - there is no way to organize globally if we can't reach across the globe. Capital is now global so we must be global in our resistance.

Everyone is right - they are shifting us all to the lowest common denominator in their quest for more profits. There will be significant other issues as well.

EFF's website on what we are going to lose in terms of intellectual property protections: https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp

[Baitball Blogger]

3. It's a racket that affects every class level.

Our education system requires us to pay $50,000 a year in tuition, but the market trend is to ignore the U.S. graduates and favor workers from other countries.

I say that one problem exposes the other. How can the business community claim that we do not have skilled workers here, when tuition is up to $50,000 a year? Are our colleges really that bad? Maybe our kids should go to the overseas colleges so they can have the certified backgrounds that seem to be landing the jobs?

[WinkyDink]

6. The excuse means that our skilled students won't work for peanuts.

[Baitball Blogger]

7. But that excuse won't pass muster with the H1B Visas will it?

If low pay is not a bonafide legal excuse to request H1B workers, why does this issue even have legs?

[JDPriestly]

16. Yet your points are belied by the fact that foreign students flock here to study in our

universities. It's really a racket, just a big racket. Meanwhile, university adjuncts, those who do a lot of the grunt work that is part of university teaching, are barely paid a wage they can eat on much less live on. We have a friend in his late 50s who has been the equivalent of an adjunct for years and still has not paid back his student loans. Together, he and his wife just don't make enough to buy a house or pay back loans. It's a really horrible system. Where does the tuition money go? To the top administrators and to building new structures. There's a scam for you.

[Baitball Blogger]

18. Definitely, money is to be had in the construction business.

Last edited Tue May 12, 2015, 09:40 AM - Edit history (1)

The American college system is a catch and release capitalist model. Expand universities, increase enrollment and release students into the dry job market world. Nobody holds these institutions accountable. And I agree that administrators are getting paid far more than the teachers. What is worse, these universities are expanding in ways that only prolong the pain. They come up with think tanks that include political players from the status quo who use their names to reach into the municipalities around them. They take control of the community leadership positions and lie, lie, lie to grease the way for construction decisions that impact private communities.

It is all about construction, and nothing about community.

[whereisjustice]

58. Thank you. I have also made this point, yet we are forcing school systems to spend millions

on Microsoft and Intel products made by people in China and India in unregulated low wage markets. When our students graduate, deep in debt, with "mad PowerPoint and MS Word skilz" they'll struggle to find a job in retail but perhaps those skills will make for compliant cash register operators.

[WinkyDink]

5. Exactly. Why anyone thought that globalization was meant to raise the world's salaries and bene-

Last edited Tue May 12, 2015, 01:05 AM - Edit history (1)

fits is 100% astounding. It was ALWAYS meant to lower the Western standard of living.

Salaries, benefits, time-and-a-half, unions----ALL REDUCE PROFIT. AND PROFIT IS GOD.

[fasttense]

10. The idea of "free" trade, globalization and laissez-faire economics

has always been more of a religion than an actual reasoned system of trade and economics.

There is really no proof that it helps anyone but the uber rich and their handful of employees.

[pampango]

26. For the bottom 75% incomes have risen dramatically in the last 25 years. That is a good thing.

OECD study: Income gains to top 1% last 30 years - US worst (by far), Europe best (by far).

In Nordic countries and in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, about 90 per cent of growth went to the 99 per cent of middle and low-income earners in the same period.

Larry Summers, who was secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton and is now a Harvard professor, has pointed out how the constant push for tax cuts and the erosion of union bargaining rights has led to greater income inequality.

The study calls for higher marginal tax rates and fewer tax deductions and credits aimed at high income earners. It also advocates wealth or inheritance taxes.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/top-1-taking-lion-s-share-of-global-growth-oecd-says-1.2627154

As the study shows, the problem that the US middle class experienced is allowing our own 1% to capture 90%+ of the income gains in our country. The middle class in most of Europe did not allow that to happen and "90 per cent of growth went to the 99 per cent of middle and low-income earners in the same period".

We can continue to see the significant gains for the poorest 3/4 of the world without our middle class hurting if we tame our 1% just as Europe has done. Our middle class does not need to recover its lost wealth at the expense of the world's poor but out of the obscene gains of our own 1%.

[Nevernose]

47. Sady, the only voters with the power to address this

Are far busier with Jade Helm 15 than reading about shit that might actually affect them.

[packman]

8. Remember-America's poor are the envy

of the world - so sayeth Congressman Issa. This will just make the poor of America less envious.

[Enthusiast]

12. The goal is to force Americans to accept a MUCH lower standard of living through any means possible.

[JDPriestly]

17. While very wealthy people move the "profits" around and gamble on where they will be safe.

They are undoing the progress toward a decent standard of living that Americans fought for beginning in the 18th century through two Roosevelts and an LBJ.

And Fox News leads the struggle on the part of the rich to grab it all. I hate to say it but Obama is their dupe when it comes to economic issues.

[Enthusiast]

27. President Obama has surrounded himself with people giving him bad advice.

That is being charitable.

[hifiguy]

44. It's just another tool in the long running project

of giving the plutocracy all the benefits of socialism and the peasantry - that's us, IOW everyone but the plutocrats and their necessary enablers like politicians and high-powered lawyers - the sharpest edge of capitalism's wedge right up the old fundament.

A labor force existing at the barest subsistence level is the ultimate goal of capitalism, especially predatory capitalism. Twas ever thus.

[Enthusiast]

63. Well I don't like it.

I hope more of us will wake up to these pressing realities so we can unite to end this bullshit.

[gordianot]

13. Vietnam where have I heard that before?

Oh yes the son of a famous WWII Admiral got shot down bombing a light bulb factory full of women. He also got to talk to a gaurd about Jesus while playing in the dirt with his foot. I thought the war was about offshore oil? How wrang can you get. Well now the winning Communist overlords can exact revenge for America shitting (a couple decades) on a small country in Southeast Asia. So the Communist overlords have a new Domino Theory in practice. Use Capitalist greed against your Western adversary to win. Lose a war of aggression in Southeast Asia you win. Win a war against Western Imperialism you too could win big and have an opportunity to get even.

Chuck Norris you could become a POW for real.

[whereisjustice]

56. They really are hanging us with the rope (jobs) we give them.

[gordianot]

57. Wow 1776 posts appropriate.

[raouldukelives]

14. I agree, but it ain't just the billionaires.

Every dollar in the markets pushes us toward this. Sure, the billionaires push for this, but so does every other shareholder.
That is the reason people financially back them, because they get results. Because they agree with the actions undertaken, the endgame and they don't care where our how the money comes, just that it does.

[JDPriestly]

19. But if you want to know how the economy is doing here at home, don't look at the stock

market. It's a sham. It's a gambling game.

Look at interest rates at your bank. Ask them how much they will pay you in interest to loan your money out to someone else. It's almost nothing. Our economy is growing so slowly that our money is sought for locally.

Here.

Bank interest rrates. Check here on the rates YOU would get if YOU put money in the bank.

http://www.bankrate.com/?ec_id=m1077678&s_kwcid=AL!1325!10!5462085001!20545458393&ef_id=VVDO0QAABC@R1A-w:20150511154625:s

It's the low interest rates that are driving the stock market up. It isn't the great value of the American companies. The differential between the price an article made in China or Bangla Desh goes for here and the low cost of producing it goes in the pockets of the 1%. It doesn't really get paid out to shareholders in dividends that much. CEOs take their share too. But the stock market rises because there is nothing else to do with small amounts of money saved by small savers.

Our economic crisis is in my opinion much, much worse than anyone admits.

[Hoyt]

15. It's about developing new markets and securing our future.

Brookings --

"Conclusion

Globalization is here to stay, and failure to pass TPA or to conclude the TPP will not change this. However, TPP is a key opportunity for the U.S. to continue to determine the terms of globalization and to ensure that its development supports U.S. growth and welfare.

The TPP is an agreement that will support a U.S. economic future that is geared towards innovation in high-end manufacturing and services. The TPP will also underpin a global economic system that is rules-based, consistent with U.S. values, and strengthens the ability of U.S. businesses to compete in TPP markets. Such a system will ensure that the U.S. benefits more fully from the global economy—and the opportunities here are significant. Currently, 95 percent of the world’s population lives outside the United States. Global middle-class consumption is projected to grow from $21 trillion in 2009 to over $56 trillion in 2030, with most of the growth happening outside the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific region. [8]

The TPP will also support other strategic goals of the U.S. in the region. As noted, the TPP is a central part of the U.S. rebalancing towards Asia. In this way, the TPP will underpin U.S. alliances with TPP parties such as Japan and Australia and provide opportunities for the U.S. to deepen its relationship with emerging strategic partners such as Vietnam.

Thus, the TPP is an important trade agreement that will produce economic and broader strategic gains for the U.S. The TPP negotiations can be concluded this year but achieving this will require Congress to pass TPA. It is time for Congress to act. "

http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2015/04/09-trade-promotion-authority-trans-pacific-partnership-negotiations-meltzer

[JDPriestly]

22. And the Brookings Institute has seen the agreement while congressional aides and the rest

of us have not? Why is that? Because they are for it no matter what?

Those are all vague statements about what the hoped-for, fantasy effects of the agreement will be.

If it is so good, let those of us who can read it with NAFTA in mind, . . . . READ IT.

Is that sooooo hard.

If the Brookings Institute can wax heavenly about the TPP and the TPIP, then surely such a venerable group of experts has seen the agreement?

Or is the Brookings Institute just another propaganda tool of the free-traders?

Have you personally seen the agreement, Hoyt? I ask that because you post here nearly every day that I am on-line in favor of the agreement. How can you be so sure it is so great?

Are you just in favor of the theory of free trade? Do you have a personal or business or other interest in advocating for the TPP?

I can tell you that my interest in advocating against it is based on what I have seen as the result of other trade agreements. I would love to be able to read the TPP, but in my experience, the trade courts undermine democratic processes, sovereignty and in particular are incompatible with our Constitution which requires a very specific separation of powers system, elections and guards against over-reaching by our judiciary. The TPP over-rides all those safeguards on our democracy.

In addition, as so many have pointed out, the TPP imports low wages and will in the not too distant future make it impossible for Americans to pay their water, electricity and heating bills. Forget buying cars. Forget education.

Over two centuries, we fought against oligarchy and built a society, a capitalist society, in which ordinary people could have access to education, to skills, to the opportunity to earn a living that allowed them to live in dignity with running water, electricity in our homes, medical care, enough food, and all the things that make our strong middle class and our charities and government help for homeless people possible.

Now, wealthy people are trying to fool us into thinking that all the cheap products from China and other developing countries that we bring in to satisfy our own greed for lots and lots and lots and lots of things -- junk really because they are so poorly made that we have to throw most of them away in a short time -- are just great.

They aren't. First, those producing the products are basically slave labor. We hear a lot of complaints and rightfully so, about our own country's abuse of slave labor for about two centuries.

But when we buy things from China and other underdeveloped countries, we are buying things that are made by people who are desperate and who have no choice but to work for slave wages.

We should instead be making our own products here at good wages and then helping people in other countries make things for their domestic markets. A person living in Bangla Desh should be able to buy things made in Bangla Desh.

The theory behind world trade is that a maximum benefit to all will result if what one country has -- say a raw material or labor -- in abundance and can produce cheaply is exchanged on the international market for what another country has in abundance and can be produced cheaply.

That works for things like trading agricultural products like rice for natural resources like iron ore or oil or even gold or copper, etc.

But when countries trade their cheap labor and ask so little for it and then buy nothing in return, we get what we have today: a glut of cheap, practically slave, labor that eliminates the market for well paid labor. There is no market today for goods produced by labor that is paid a wage that enables the worker to buy the goods made by ANY laborer in the world.

There is no glut in the rice market or the oil market or the copper market. Those are all resources with a more or less finite limit to their quantity.

But there is, compared with the demand for labor, an enormous glut of it. That is especially true of poorly skilled labor. But it is increasingly becoming true for very skilled labor even doctors, teachers, lawyers, technicians, etc.

And right there is the flaw in the economic theory that favors free trade. That theory PLACES THE VALUE OF A HUMAN BEING AND OF A MATERIAL OBJECT OR MATERIAL OR RESOURCE ON THE SAME LEVEL.

Excuse me, but the value of a human being and that human being's needs and potential productivity cannot and should not be valued in an economy as the economic equivalent of a thing or a resource.

Yet the oligarchs, the extremely rich, the people who run things, view one human working in a factory as interchangeable with another. The point for the oligarchs is to reduce the compensation, that is the market value, of the time, the work, the LIFE of a working person in the US to the value of any other working person in the world. That means that for the worker in China whose living standard is rising now if we sign the TPP, he or she will have to compete with workers whose living standard is yet to rise. That means the Chinese worker will now be forced to struggle to make ends meet on even less than he or she is now earning.

We have seen how that has worked here. I live in Los Angeles. The homeless people that i see on the streets now are middle-aged in many cases. Thanks in great part to free trade, they are treated as things that have been thrown out, discarded because they are used up and no longer of any value. They no longer mean profit to our oligarchs.

Meanwhile many Americans live on credit and minimum wage or low wage jobs with no hope of obtaining the life-style of their parents or even their grandparents who, there is a good chance, may have owned their own homes or farms.

The more we trade, the richer the oligarchs get, the less prosperous we are, the worse our jobs are, the more the oligarchs view us and treat us as mere things and not as human beings.

That's why I oppose the TPP.

That's my experience. That is what I have observed in my 71 years of life and my travels.

Now you, Hoyt, tell me again why you think that free trade and the TPP are so wonderful. Cause I'm sorry, but I do not believe that you really think free trade is God's gift to Americans. I really do not believe it. Cause it ain't.

When the people who make things can't afford to buy them, something is wrong. When the sole purpose of making something is not to make society better but to make your own life exaggeratedly better, you have no human values. You are yourself but a thing. You have no real love for others. What is such a life worth? Very little in my view. But that is what we are seeing today. And not just among the Fortune 500. The leaders of a number of so-called "developing" countries are enriching themselves at the cost of their citizens.

[Enthusiast]

29. The Brookings Institute just another propaganda tool of the free-traders.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL] [URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[Hoyt]

31. See how much the poor or anyone else makes trading among ourselves or working for small companies.

Ever worked for a small company, supplying office supplies, baked goods, services, etc., to local folks? If so, you likely got paid squat, with little or no benefits.

People here make a lot more working for large, successful companies, unless they have no real skills, then they are screwed (more needs to be done to help that like increasing minum wage and training, but that's another issue).

[JDPriestly]

33. So let the large companies produce the products they sell in the US in the US.

I have one word for free trade: DETROIT.

Free trade destroyed Detroit. Free trade is to blame for that fact that the people in Detroit who used to earn decent livings working in America's auto industry can no longer pay their utility bills.

The TPP will turn the entire country into one big DETROIT CITY.

That's why I oppose it.

[Hoyt]

35. Nope Detroit producing crummy, high priced, gas gussling cars destroyed Detroit.

With a few exceptions, people aren't going to pay American made prices for stuff they can buy much cheaper overseas.

I like acoustic instruments and think American instruments are among the best made. But, in recent years you can buy very good instruments made in China for 1/3 the cost. I'm sticking American while I can, but lots of people have been able to enjoy fine musical instruments at substantially less by buying from overseas. I think that is good.

Truthfully, I'm not a Nationalist. I believe we are part of a big world, and borders aren't where my horizon ends.

[JDPriestly]

36. You won't be able to buy anything if the US continues to allow jobs to be exported.

And producing crummy, high priced, gas guzzling cars was a stupid thing to do. But our oligarchs insisted on it so they could raise their profit margins. We could have retooled our industrial plants to produce cheaper, smaller cars here had Detroit not left that production to foreign countries, but our oligarchs wanted to produce those cars in other countries.

Detroit was a lot more than the auto industry.

I have a relative who, when he first started driving a truck was hired to load trucks at plants in the US filling them with the machinery from American industry. He drove those loads to places from which they were shipped on to countries like China. They are literally using our machinery to produce products to send back to us.

My complaint is that China and other countries do not buy goods back from up. Back in the 1970s, I worked for a small oil company, writing reports on the news on oil and other economic news. The theory then was that the US would produce agricultural goods and the rest of the world would produce industrial products. No one asked what would happen to the livelihoods of the American factory workers. No one cared. It was just a bunch of economic theorists pleasing the rich, especially the Middle Eastern oil sheiks and others in the oil business.

It is foolish to think that free trade is going to benefit any of us. It won't. It's just lack of experience in the world that causes people to think it could. If we had an excess of money, a positive trade balance, it might make sense because it really would increase our export markets. That is not going to happen now. We have to wait. Maybe some day free trade will pay for the American people. But at this point, it only pays for the very rich. And that goes for all countries. It really only pays for the very rich in the countries that participate in these agreements. It may look like working people in China have improved their lot at this time. But soon a country with even lower wages than China will being to compete. (That's the sales pitch on the TPP isn't it?) Then the Chinese will lose out just as we have.

And the point in world trade originally was to spread democracy. China is still ruled by one party. -- It calls itself the Communist Party. So much for spreading democracy through free trade. And as you know, China does not allow freedom of the press or of even internet use, so it may be a wealthy and rapidly developing country, but the people are not free, and they do not live in a democracy. They live in something slightly better than a state of slavery and they sell products to us with wages that undercut our market and our standard of living.

[Hoyt]

37. Personally, I think we got a little ahead of ourselves on the standard of living thing.

Some folks missed out, but a lot spent way above a sustainable standard of living. We are now in an adjustment period. Hopefully those on the low end will benefit. But, failing to pursue things like the TPP won't help, no matter what people think.

[JDPriestly]

38. That's your opinion. Based on the many years that I have watched free trade in our society,

I strongly disagree with you.

I say again: DETROIT and I add, our huge trade deficit.

Our trade deficit represents money we have borrowed in order to buy those cheap musical instruments you so love. Our trade deficit directly represents lost jobs, lost opportunities and lost hope for Americans especially young Americans, middle-aged Americans who have lost their jobs and can't find appropriate new ones and more than any other group members of minorities who are less likely (although not always the case) to receive inherited wealth.

I totally oppose free trade.

The myth that free trade helps ordinary Americans is simply false. It does not. It hasn't since Reagan.

[Hoyt]

41. No, the trade deficit does not represent lost jobs. That's simplistic.

If that were true, we would not have had all the jobs created in the 1990s and since Obama took office.

A trade deficit might produce changes in the types of jobs to some degree. But, in the end technology is probably more responsible for lost jobs.

Here's an article that says economists have 3 views of trade deficits -- one bad, one good, and one in the middle.

You are convinced they are bad, but here's another view:

". . . . . .Economists who consider trade deficits good associate them with positive economic developments, specifically, higher levels of income, consumer confidence, and investment. They argue that trade deficits enable the United States to import capital to finance investment in productive capacity. Far from hurting employment, they believe that trade deficits financed by foreign investment in the United States help to boost U.S. employment.

"Some economists see trade deficits as mere expressions of consumer preferences and as immaterial. These economists typically equate economic well being with rising consumption. If consumers want imported food, clothing, and cars, why shouldn't they buy them? That range of choices is part of a successful economy.

"Perhaps the best view of trade deficits is the balanced view. If a trade deficit represents borrowing to finance current consumption rather than long-term investment, or results from inflationary pressure, or erodes U.S. employment, then it's bad. If a trade deficit fosters borrowing to finance long-term investment or reflects rising incomes, confidence, and investment—and doesn't hurt employment—then it's good. If a trade deficit merely expresses consumer preferences rather than these phenomena, it is immaterial. . . . . . ."


Read more: International Finance: Trade Deficits: Bad or Good? http://www.infoplease.com/cig/economics/trade-deficits-bad-good.html#ixzz3ZryLHPev

Fortunately, we have a lot of foreign investment in this country. Of course the Nationalists freakout and think the foreigners are going to enslave us.

[JDPriestly]

23. In short, free trade and the TPP and TPIP are about making human beings and their

labor, creativity and lives into commodities to be bought and sold like so much lard or oil or potato chips. That's what it is really about.

It is immoral. It is cruel. It will draw all of us back into a dark age of anger and revenge and for most of us ever more difficult lives.

Today we are trying to fight against the Chinese industrial revolution. We are doing that by trying to find new slave laborers in even poorer countries to service our markets and destroy our workers' standard of living.

[b]Free trade is a form of economic cannibalism in which country by country we try to reduce the living standard, that is eat the fat from each other. That is not the way to build a working world economy.

If the TPP were based on moral considerations and did something other than further make human labor a commodity rather than the socially useful, wonderful effort and joy that it could be and should be, then we would be seeing it even if it is a work in progress. We would be reading it. But instead we are getting a huge propaganda campaign aimed to sell us on this horrible agreement so that when we read it we will have difficulty reading it for what it really is. This TPP must be very awful, worse than we can imagine if it has to be sold to us this hard.

[BainsBane]

52. Actually that's what capitalism does

As Marx observed over 150 years ago. Labor is a commodity under capitalism. That is a fact. There are many good reasons to oppose the treaty, but to pretend labor is an expression of joy in the absence of it is absurd. Anyone who could make a comment has clearly not done any manufacturing job. Taylorization, Fordism, and before that alienation from the means of production turned labor into repetitive tasks that yield profit for manufacturers. People sell their labor because if they did not they would starve to death. That is the nature of capitalist society, not treaties, and it has been for more than a century now. I don't see why people feel compelled to create these bizarrely idealized constructs to oppose something like TPP. It's not necessary nor does it conform to reality, and thus only undermines your own argument.

Exploitation of labor, however, is not the same as buying and selling human beings, which is in fact slavery. There is a crucial distinction.

[JDPriestly]

53. You work to get paid.

My point is that free trade is intended to allow for a country that can produce a particular commodity very cheaply to exchange it with another country that produces some other commodity very cheaply. That is considered efficient because the countries can trade with each other to reduce the prices of the commodities and thus the finished products for each trading partner.

The problem with treating labor as a commodity in a "free" trade context is that the efficiency, the reduction in the price of the finished product is achieved by subjecting the laborers in poor countries to horrible working conditions, long hours and low pay.

In turn, the laborers in heretofore wealthy countries need to compete with those poorer laborers in poor countries. The products become less expensive. But the laborers in the countries involved in the trade agreements cannot earn enough to buy the things they need, much less the products they produce.

In the US workers fought for first the 10-hour day, then the 8-hour day, then the 40-hour week and actually got laws in the first 20 years of the 20th century that established those labor rights for all American workers. We get overtime if those figures are exceeded. We also got workers compensation laws, OSHA eventually and union rights as well as many other laws.

We changed the status of work from being just a commodity that could be sold at whatever price the market would bear into a commodity that could not be devalued below a certain point. We did that because we recognized that we should not simply treat humans and human labor as a commodity that could be traded at the lowest price that could be obtained in a free market but as a being with inherent value, a politically and economically valued being. Our labor laws reflect the fact that humans and their labor are not just another material commodity.

That as I pointed has been law here for over a century with improvements in it as we have progressed. The TPP and other trade agreements do not really recognize that hard-fought value system. They revert us back to the 18th and early 19th century when, as you say, we had pure capitalism, no labor laws and labor was merely another commodity.

The conditions in which people worked especially in mines before our labor laws were instituted were so appalling as to be frightening. We changed that. Our ancestors changed that.

These trade agreements are taking us back to an era when human labor is merely a commodity. Yes. it is capitalism, the very vilest, ugliest side of capitalism. We changed that. We amended our laws and with them our capitalism to value human labor. The aim of the trade agreements, or perhaps not the aim but the unintended result will be by requiring American workers to compete with poorer countries that have not enforced the laws we enforce in our state and federal courts and regulatory courts to accept again very low, perhaps inhuman working conditions and pay.

i oppose the TPP and all trade agreements. Let us trade with countries that adopt our labor and other standards.

[BainsBane]

54. Okay, that seems reasonable

and accurate. I find it more persuasive than your post about labor as a joy.

[JDPriestly]

61. I've always liked to work even when I was washing dishes at a pizza place.

Even when I worked at McDonalds. It's the way I am.

[BainsBane]

62. A strong work ethic is admirable

and I have actually enjoyed service jobs myself. Manufacturing work, however, has been divided into repetitive and monotonous tasks to enable manufacturers to reap greater profits by relying on as much unskilled labor as possible. From everything I've read, that greatly increases the monotony and decreases the sense of satisfaction.

Service jobs in my experience can be pleasant because you interact with customers. The problem is they pay so badly.


Before the capitalist era, people worked the land, often land they tiled without formal title. In Europe they were serfs, in the Americas land was farmed by communities. Creating a wage labor system entailed removing people from land. If people had an option, they choose to farm the land and raise their own food. It was only went they lost access to that land that they sold they labor to someone else. It's not so much that people would choose to be idle, but that working for someone else's profit is a function of the capitalist economy and something that people do out of economic need.

[JDPriestly]

65. The dishwasher does not interact with people.

I am something of an introvert. I have not done factory work. A lot of it is automated today.

[Skittles]

66. the only people pimping this garbage are the ones who will benefit from it

they can all FUCK THEMSELVES

[sulphurdunn]

24. At last you understand the problem.

Millions of Americans and people in other countries are not at all happy with how the US is determining the terms of globalization and skeptical to the point of cynicism that such agreements are designed to promote the general welfare of any but a fraction of the American people or the people anywhere else. A lot of data mongering and happy hyperbole won't change that.

You see, in a democratic republic it is the responsibility of elected officials to provide for the common welfare. When only 20% of the people believe TPP will raise wages or create jobs at home, and when such an agreement is kept secret and justified by a lot of father knows best claptrap about their economic ignorance and threats to national security if they don't roll over, it's no wonder they suspect they're being suckered. They are usually correct, especially when their mistrust is based upon precedent.

[Hoyt]

42. The governments, and people that vote for them, seem satisfied.

[sulphurdunn]

46. I vote for some of those who make decisions

in this government. I am not satisfied. Right now only a slim majority of Americans support TPP. That percentage declines every time more information about its contents is revealed. I really don't care what kind of public support exists elsewhere. Furthermore, public support of a trade agreement no one knows much of anything about in detail says more about perception management than informed judgement.

[Hoyt]

48. Most of the people against it wouldn't read it if were right in front of them.

If you want to see what it will be like read NAFTA, other trade agreements, the negotiating documents, the USTR goals, Obama speeches, United Nations and WTO arbitration rules, etc.

It's right there for anyone that really cares. Most of the critics don't.

[sulphurdunn]

49. Most of the people who support it would read it?

Upon what do base that dubious inference? I thought you said in an earlier post that NAFTA and TPP are apples and oranges. So, how would a read of NAFTA be enlightening? What does USTR support for it have to do with what's actually in the document? I admit to being utterly baffled about the relevance of WTO arbitration and especially the UN in all of this. Since you have made this appeal to authority it would help to include some specific examples of the connection.

According to your last sentence it seems everything is right there for the critics who can't be bothered to read it and the supporters who apparently don't need to. Forward me your copy. I will happily read the whole thing and get back to you.

[Hoyt]

50. TPP is an improved NAFTA, especially in the areas critics gripe about.

Like I said above -- and you missed it -- take NAFTA and add new USTR goals, Obama pronouncements, etc., and you should be able to figure it out.

[sulphurdunn]

67. That's the problem.

I shouldn't have to figure it out inferentially by researching something other than the TPP itself. Certainly not by intuiting the pronouncement of President Obama or the unctuous assurance of the trade representative. Furthermore, and most outrageous, is the notion that what I can see of, when I can see any of it, will already be a done deal.

[erronis]

20. If all that these posts can do is to show what's in these agreements before

they are shoved (like an iron carrot) down the throat (or up the @ss) of the non-0.01%, it will be worth it. Even better if these can be canned and re-opened at a later date - with discussion.

Why won't Obama and HRC come out in favor of the 99.99%? Do the "leaders" think their benefactor$ will take care of them and their progeny for generations to come?

There's a stink in DC above Tiber Creek. Just like in the days of some other emperors.

[RiverLover]

21. + a million! Thank you! And they can't wait for TPP in Vietnam...

Vietnam awaits Trans-Pacific Partnership signing
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/business/121471/vietnam-awaits-trans-pacific-partnership-signing.html

We abolish slavery here & pay slave wages there.

CEO & shareholders delight! Politicians' futures are set!

What's not to love?

[sabrina 1]

25. The propaganda says we are against 'equal opportunities' for the people of third world

countries'.

I would like to hear a more in depth explanation of what 'equal opportunities' means.

Until that happens, it seems to mean that US workers will share in this equality, by being forced to take lower wages, you know, so we are all equal, Globally.

This is what they must mean by the New World Order.

A cheap, Global Working force. It's no longer about individual countries.

Maybe raise third world pay slightly, and keep lowering first world pay, until we meet somewhere in the middle and are all sharing in this marvelous equality.

[bvar22]

34. That is what Ross Perot said in the 1992 Presidential Debate with Bill Clinton:

He even predicted the return of manufacturing jobs to the USA once the UNIONS were busted,
and wages and benefits of American Workers had fallen to 3rd World levels.

[font size=3]Ross was right,

...but Bill was smooth.[/font]
He was so smooth that when he told the American Working Class that they would be competing against Slave Labor countries for their jobs..... they cheered.

[hifiguy]

45. As nutty as Perot could be about some things

he called this in excruciatingly correct detail.

[sabrina 1]

60. Wow, he was so right! He answered my question and now we have the

history to prove he was right.

I would love to hear what he has to say about the TPP. I would definitely be interested in the opinion of someone who got it right. Too bad we never elect people who see things as they really are.

[DeadEyeDyck]

28. isn't tpp much the same as open borders?

The RW hates immigration because the immigrants take jobs for lower wages, yet they praise tpp for same.

[BainsBane]

51. That could be, but those jobs are going there

regardless and will continue, with or without the treaty. I don't support TPP, but I don't think people should be under the illusion that stopping the treaty keeps jobs at home. Firstly, most of those jobs have already left. Secondly, there is nothing stopping more jobs from leaving even if TPP is defeated. These treaties generally reduce or eliminate tariffs, but there low wages are already enough incentive to move jobs, particularly since more and more consumer markets are in Asia.

Did you call your Senators? The vote on Fast Track is tomorrow.

[glinda]

55. It is more about no defenses left to protect natural resources or nature....at all.

[whereisjustice]

59. It's all these things, the jobs go to Asia because if you go to urban area in China you will

find it difficult to find the sun on a day that the Chinese weather service says is "clear skies". It will be that brown circle in the sky, you can stare right at it, like looking at it through welding goggles.

The jobs go to countries with no regulations, no worker protections, no environmental protections, limited individual rights, etc.

This is what corporations want. THey don't give a shit about anything but pure, unadulterated cash. Any way they can get it.

If I were a research grad student today, I would be setting up shop in China and watching the progression of lung disease because you have 1 billion people who are lab rats in a grotesque experiment in exposure to toxic chemicals.

God help their children.

[Travelman]

64. Everything I need to know about TPP, I learned from Elizabeth Warren

I'm not even really any sort of Warren "fan;" not that I dislike her, just that she doesn't "wow" me like she does some folks. Nothing wrong with that either way; everyone has their buttons, if you will.

But on this one, she nailed it right to the wall. To paraphrase: "If TPP is so great, then why can't we see what's in it?"

I'm not really a "trade protectionist," though I do think that we need to be concentrating on creating some AMERICAN jobs for a change. A big part of my daily work involves people engaging in international trade. And, it's a bit hypocritical for any of us to rest upon our American laurels and laud American jobs while we simultaneously excoriate poor working conditions in Bangledesh or whatever; either we want to improve the human condition around the globe or not, and moving some Bangledeshi (?) worker from 18¢/day to $3/day* makes a HUGE difference in their living conditions, even if that's still slave wages by our standards.

But We the People are supposed to have a say in these things, and it sure as shit seems to me like We're being circumvented here.



*not actual figures; please don't anyone start decrying my numbers as somehow being "wrong;" the point is that there's still a huge difference from what was to what is. It's going from "sucks" to "sucks less," but at least it's improvement.