What GDP gains? Without government injections of capital derived from debt, including spending deficits, SS 'surplus' collections and supplementary funding for Iraq and their economic flow through multipliers, GDP would be stagnant at best and in reality showing a decline.

While educational and retraining programs sound like a positive step forward, what jobs would the education/retraining be directed at? The US is in a post-industrial service economy and replacing skilled manufacturing/professional jobs with 'new' jobs in the service sector requiring lower skill levels and offering diminished pay and few or no benefits. What would people be retrained to do?

NAFTA has not cost Canada, Mexico or the US any significant job loss. Those countries, and others, are experiencing job function relocation to China, India, Malaysia and other developing countries that offer the low wages, efficient operating costs with supporting infrastructure that attracts capital investment. The former circumstance of industrial jobs that offered unskilled entry level jobs with an almost guaranteed path to skills, better wages and benefits are long gone in the Americas. What remains of manufacturing in the NAFTA scenario is almost exclusively assembly of components actually manufactured in developing countries that make more money for those developing countries from bypassing finished product quotas and tariffs.

GDP gains as in having a larger market to sell U.S. goods. More sales mean that much more added to GDP. Also buying goods cheaper than they can be produced in the U.S. is a plus for the consumer.

I don't think I need to explain how furthering education allows for people to get better jobs than manufacturing jobs. People do not go to college expecting to get a job in factory unless it's a management job.

Americans are wealthier than they were 14 years ago and, with unemployment under 5 percent, are more likely to have jobs. (In the decade before NAFTA, unemployment averaged more than 7 percent.) More Americans own their own homes. Fewer Americans are going to bed hungry—dramatically so, if you scan the data on obesity.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Unless your currency value decreases in relation to the producer country currency to where those goods become very expensive and your payment imbalance creates additional debt to service with no industrial base to manufacture them at a lower cost. Which is the scenario we're now going to face.

In most cases those jobs lost in the industrial sector didn't require any higher education. We're now experiencing the loss of professional jobs that do require higher education in all industries, including service industries, to developing countries who have greatly expanded and enhanced the quality of their educational systems. What do we retrain those people to do?

What you ignore is the fact that because of the change in currencies our exports are now going up which means it will trend towards and increase in manufacturing because of this. You seems to ignore the positives.

And I repeat the part of my post you ignored. Americans are wealthier than they were 14 years ago and, with unemployment under 5 percent, are more likely to have jobs. (In the decade before NAFTA, unemployment averaged more than 7 percent.) More Americans own their own homes. Fewer Americans are going to bed hungry—dramatically so, if you scan the data on obesity.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Not at all. I just don't consider minuscule gain in exports due to a failing currency a positive circumstance for the US consumer facing higher priced imports with stagnated wages. What does a post-industrial country with a weak currency that consumes more than it produces really have in the way of competitive exports other than government subsidized goods and services. That has little to do with NAFTA other than making Canadian commodity goods including the all important oil and electrical power far more expensive for US consumers. Even the Peso is up against USD.

Since you seem to be a firm believer in government numbers and feel-good propaganda without reference to which economic tier is wealthier or the effect of NAFTA I'll make only one comment and that's a suggestion you examine how unemployment was calculated at the beginning of the Reagan administration, comparing that to current calculations. I won't even get into the types of jobs currently being generated as versus the 1980s. As I stated, the US hasn't lost any significant number of jobs due to NAFTA.

I'm sorry. I never realized that economic data is government propaganda. Do enlighten me about it.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Every western country is engaged in redefining their 'unemployment' number calculations on a semi-regular basis. No two countries in the world calculate or measures employment figures, unemployment rates, GDP, inflation or productivity in the same way. Methinks they do this to prevent or discourage comparative analysis.

Apparently, most governments also routinely change their formulas used for calculating these complex figures on a semi-regular basis to make comparative analysis with past data also difficult.

Their reasons for this are obvious. It is easy to lie with statistics and 90% of the population can usually be fooled by these 'massaged' figures.

Indeed, how many times have you been told that the USA has a higher productivity and GDP growth rate than Europe over the last twenty years? Serious comparative analysis shows that Europe and the USA have maintained parity in GDP growth almost every year and if anything, productivity has been rising just slightly faster in Europe than in the USA. But the official published figures suggests the opposite. All mass media and political discussions focus on the official numbers, not the actual ones.

So do you think this is done to trick people into supporting trade?

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I never said these are actual, existing statistics; I said that they are what willl come if NAFTA is not abolished.

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War is a racket, no more. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that the vast majority of the people don't know about, and that only a small inside group understands. A racket is designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

-Smedley Butler, who saved America from fascism in the 30's.

...And serving in the Army is relevant how?
Also, I don't read Time or any of that other crap. It's almost all either entertainment or false statements. Thank you very goddamn much.

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War is a racket, no more. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that the vast majority of the people don't know about, and that only a small inside group understands. A racket is designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

-Smedley Butler, who saved America from fascism in the 30's.

Why shouldn't that be the business of the employers? They are Americans, too. Why should the poor be able to force the employers to only hire their incompetent, obsolete asses (comparatively speaking, of course) when better choices are available?So stop being lazy and incompetent.

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

And that assumption is based on what, exactly?

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

So where are you getting some of the shit you post here from?

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

Well put. I laugh especially hard at the now popular government positive 'adjustments' to past period economic reporting numbers. Since the government reports on a period basis relating to annualized numbers, it was to be expected.

Not necessarily. Rather to make it difficult for you to actually challenge their decision that trade is good.

Likewise with everything else the government does. They don't like you to have good hard data that proves they are doing a lousy job of things. They go to great lengths to make it difficult for you to get that data.

Good data is out there, but it has to be 'distilled' from the Government sources by serious experts in their fields - who have only a small audience for the 'good data'.