Rick, I like debating with you! I may not agree with you, but at least you don't lower yourself to the condecnding pseudo-intellectual crap some do (I can think of at least one of those of late)
China has been TAKING some jobs away from us, we have not been sending those jobs overseas. The difference between the two is this. The BIG 3 automakers all have plants in Canada and Mexico, if the United Autoworkers put too much pressure on them, they start closing domestic plants, and maaking those models in Mexico, where they can get a weeks labor for about $100, vice $1500. Yes, it's tragic that the people who lost thier jobs now have no work, but who priced themselves out of the market? At least the profits still get spilt by the mostly American stockholders. If the jobs are lost to China, it means that some company american or otherwise lost the ability to compete (it's damned hard to compete with slave labor, the chinese use convicts) and the jobs and the profits all go to the PRC. Now THERE'S a socialist paradise for you, if you dis the government there, they'll shoot you and bill your family for the bullet! Or put you in prison and make you produce cheap tools that one of the nationalized tool comanies will export to the US so someone will get a new tool set for Christmas. As I said before, our country is far from perfect, but I have been all through the Med, and the Persian Gulf, and I wouldn't want to live in any of those other places. We need to look out for one another, and WE as individuals, need to assist with people going hungry around us, not the government. If I have to have the government MAKE me help my fellow human being, then I'm a pretty sorry ****. The free enterprise system works, but if anything gets put out of balance in any moving system, the system will try to artificailly correct itself. if we price ourselves out of the labor market, and shop for the cheapest prices at the store with the bigger paychecks we get, we will find ourselves out of jobs. I like the idea put forth by Tom Clancy in one of his books. Place the same restrictions on a nations exports to us that they place on our exports to them. If goods are produced by slave-labor, then tax the crap out of them to level the playing field. But if we do this too much, you better like California wines and American cars, forget about Armani suits, and Dominican cigars, because we will have an isolationist economy, and no one will want to trade with us, because their goods cost too much when they finally DO get to the marketplace for anyone to buy them.