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Date Posted: 04:05:25 11/28/07 Wed
Author: Paul Baker
Subject: Re: We are winning!
In reply to: JMR 's message, "We are winning!" on 19:56:53 11/27/07 Tue

Wow, what a hypocrite. "Let's make sure the developing world stays a 3rd world" & "It's not our fault their countries are poor!". You can't force countries not to develop. Just like you can't force Crazy jim to develop his mental capability.... lol, Pinocchio... :p

> SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
> >href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/341294_broo
>ksonline28.html">http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/
>341294_brooksonline28.html
>
>Lou Dobbs' immigration message is winning
>Last updated November 27, 2007 10:07 a.m. PT
>
>By DAVID BROOKS
>SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
>
>BEIJING -- Lou Dobbs is winning. He's not winning
>personally. He's not going to start winning
>presidential awards or elite respect. But his message
>is winning. Month by month the ideas that once
>prevailed on the angry fringe enter the mainstream and
>turn into conventional wisdom.
>
>Once there was a majority in favor of liberal
>immigration policies, but apparently that's not true
>anymore, at least if you judge by campaign rhetoric.
>Once there was a bipartisan consensus behind free
>trade, but that's not true anymore, either. Even
>Republicans, by a two-to-one majority, believe free
>trade is bad for America, according to a Wall Street
>Journal/NBC poll.
>
>Once upon a time, the fact that hundreds of millions
>of people around the world are rising out of poverty
>would have been a source of pride and optimism. But if
>you listen to the presidential candidates,
>improvements in the developing world are menacing.
>Their speeches constitute a symphony of woe about
>lead-painted toys, manipulated currencies and stolen
>jobs.
>
>And if Dobbsianism is winning when times are good, you
>can imagine how attractive it's going to seem if we
>enter the serious recession that Larry Summers
>convincingly and terrifyingly forecasts in Monday's
>Financial Times. If the economy dips as seriously as
>that, the political climate could shift in ugly ways.
>
>So it's worth pointing out now more than ever that
>Dobbsianism is fundamentally wrong. It plays on
>legitimate anxieties, but it rests at heart on a more
>existential fear -- the fear that America is under
>assault and is fundamentally fragile. It rests on
>fears that the America we once knew is bleeding away.
>
>And that's just not true. In the first place, despite
>the ups and downs of the business cycle, the United
>States still possesses the most potent economy on
>earth. Recently the World Economic Forum and the
>International Institute for Management Development
>produced global competitiveness indexes, and once
>again they both ranked the United States first in the
>world.
>
>In the World Economic Forum survey, the U.S. comes in
>just ahead of Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany
>(China is 34th). The U.S. gets poor marks for
>macroeconomic stability (the long-term federal debt),
>for its tax structure and for the low savings rate.
>But it leads the world in a range of categories:
>higher education and training, labor market
>flexibility, the ability to attract global talent, the
>availability of venture capital, the quality of
>corporate management and the capacity to innovate.
>
>William W. Lewis of McKinsey surveyed global
>competitive in dozens of business sectors a few years
>ago, and concluded, "The United States is the
>productivity leader in virtually every industry."
>
>Second, America's fundamental economic strength is
>rooted in the most stable of assets -- its values. The
>U.S. is still an astonishing assimilation machine. It
>has successfully absorbed more than 20 million legal
>immigrants over the past quarter-century, an
>extraordinary influx of human capital. Americans are
>remarkably fertile. Birthrates are relatively high,
>meaning that in 2050, the average American will be
>under 40, while the average European, Chinese and
>Japanese will be more than a decade older.
>
>The American economy benefits from low levels of
>corruption. American culture still transmits some
>ineffable spirit of adventure. American students can't
>compete with, say, Singaporean students on
>standardized tests, but they are innovative and
>creative throughout their lives. The U.S. standard of
>living first surpassed the rest of the world's in
>about 1740, and despite dozens of cycles of declinist
>foreboding, the country has resolutely refused to
>decay.
>
>Third, not every economic dislocation has been caused
>by trade and the Chinese. Between 1991 and 2007, the
>U.S. trade deficit exploded to $818 billion from $31
>billion. Yet as Robert Samuelson has pointed out,
>during that time the U.S. created 28 million jobs and
>the unemployment rate dipped to 4.6 percent from 6.8
>percent.
>
>That's because, as Robert Lawrence of Harvard and
>Martin Baily of McKinsey have calculated, 90 percent
>of manufacturing job losses are due to domestic
>forces. As companies become more technologically
>advanced, they shed workers (the Chinese shed 25
>million manufacturing jobs between 1994 and 2004).
>
>Meanwhile, the number of jobs actually lost to
>outsourcing is small, and recent reports suggest the
>outsourcing trend is slowing down. They are swamped by
>the general churn of creative destruction. Every
>quarter the U.S. loses somewhere around 7 million
>jobs, and creates a bit more than 7 million more. That
>double-edged process is the essence of a dynamic
>economy.
>
>I'm writing this column from Beijing. I can look out
>the window and see the explosive growth. But as the
>Chinese will be the first to tell you, their dazzling
>prosperity is built on fragile foundations. In the
>United States, the situation is the reverse. We have
>obvious problems. But the foundations of American
>prosperity are strong. The U.S. still has much more to
>gain than to lose from openness, trade and
>globalization.
>
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------------
>-------------------------

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