A real Democrat doesn't support the TPP...

[moriah]

64. I don't like hearing people debate who are "real Democrats" or not.

I admit that, like many others, my knowledge on what the TPP in its final form is/will be is limited.

Jobs being outsourced to India and other economies with workers who are highly skilled but the American dollar buys more there isn't going to stop with ridding us of free trade agreements, because it was greed, not treaties, that started the trend. Given my most marketable skills and old profession involves technology, I'm pretty aware of why I can't find a call center job now as easily as I could in 1998.

But, okay, take Amazon's video tech support (Mayday). It's pretty obvious they're outsourcing. Admittedly they're being recorded so they can't really say "Help me, they're keeping me prisoner and exploiting me!", but the employees look quite happy. And usually, for a transnational, Amazon is pretty good to their people.

Are those employees better off than the others around them, who don't get even whatever Amazon is paying? They employ a lot of women for Mayday, too -- and so for some, getting that job we're insulting them by calling them "serfs" to take, it might be the best job available.

Now, that doesn't mean I *like* the fact our dollar can buy so much in other countries that we can pay them less than an American would accept and the workers actually be happy with the deal. Human rights abuses so common in worse companies are totally unacceptable -- and that WAS one good part of the TPP, or at least that was the plan. To join, member countries had to enact worker protections we find laughable as Americans, but the workers there didn't even have at all. Now, like most things, implementation was crappy. But that goal, at least, is laudable.

Lastly, and no offense meant, but it seemed like while you spoke of exploitation of foreign workers, you focused a great deal on nationalism -- the "serfs" are "taking our jobs" is a meme that disturbs me on several levels. I don't want people in other countries making our iPhones with suicide nets surrounding the building, but we shouldn't be begrudging the foreign workers jobs. We should focus on building an economy with jobs that can't be outsourced, not essentially repeating the idea that the workers themselves are our enemies, if we're talking just about the impact on Americans.