Hi, my name is MadHound, and I use a (insert electronic device here) made in China.

[JDPriestly]

65. I have been reading the book, The Help. It was quite popular a couple of years ago.

It is about the relationships between African-American maids and their Southern white employers in the early 1960s.

It describes the economic system that enabled white Southerners who were financially comfortable to profit and otherwise benefit from segregation, Jim Crow, separate an equal and all the other euphemisms for exploitation of a minority.

Using the excuse of freed trade, the very wealthy elite around the world is trying to bring back that economic system. We do not have to have free trade. We could end or better yet modify some of the trade deals that make it so cheap to exploit foreign workers. Yes, prices would rise here, but so would wages and, and, as you say, the quality of goods.

If we modified our trade agreements to protect our markets to the point that we did not have so much joblessness and underemployment (people doing jobs for which they are overqualified), we could still help develop foreign industry and avoid turning ourselves into just another pool of maids, virtual slaves, for the very rich.

If we modified our trade agreements, we could encourage young Americans to learn trades, to become engineers and at least to learn to make things and do things.

A rarely mentioned effect of the current obsession with free trade is the fact that Americans don't know HOW to make telephones or computers, etc. We don't even understand what goes into making things like fabric or toasters or washing machines any more. Our children do not think about these practical things because they are useless since there are no jobs making washing machines, fabric or toasters.

Of course, if we want to modify our trade agreements, we have to learn to live more frugally and more creatively. Well, that is, we would have to learn to live more frugally and more creatively now rather than be forced to tighten our belts and live at the standard of those who live in the third world in a few years.