The American Spectator

Reader Mail

School's Out

8.6.08 @ 12:01AM

TRADING PLACES
Re: RiShawn Biddle's Trade School:

It will never dawn on the anti-traders that now you are going to be paid based on what you know and what you can produce rather than just getting a high wage because you happen to live in the USA. They believe that it is a birthright to a high wage simply because you live here and have a heartbeat. Close trade and everyone will have a lower standard of living (except the very rich) since they will have to pay more for inefficient and costly manufacturing and services.
-- B. Peek

Although I agree with Mr. Biddle's assertion that the educational experience of today's students is woefully inadequate to the task of creating a knowledgeable work force, I think his arguments supporting "free trade" are not supported by the facts. We don't have anything like "free trade," regardless of whatever regional agreements with whomever signatory countries we've aligned ourselves with. Rather, we have "managed trade," which is a costly bureaucratic nightmare for any company that attempts to do business in today's international markets. In "managed trade," we see expensive inequities and disparities foisted on businesses by governments around the world that would not stand up in a competitive capitalistic system. The social requirements of the welfare state demanded of businesses by these governments have undermined the ability of their own national companies to be successful. These governments then negotiate preferred status with their "free trade" partners to protect whatever market sector within their borders needs foreign assistance to remain solvent.

For misguided political reasons, successive U.S. governments have played this game with such foolish alacrity that we have lost our pre-eminence in many industries, such as energy, steel, machine tools, shipbuilding, electronics, garments, and now automobiles. There is no rationale for any "free trade" agreement to be of such scope and scale that it would fill the National Archives. Such agreements distort the markets and result in lost opportunities to employers and employees alike, and are usually "one-way" in their outcomes, that is, for the benefit of countries other than the U.S. These attempts of the politically well-connected to game the system result in the inability of businesses to be profitable here, the lack of employment options for workers, whether white collar (the H1-B Visa fiasco) or blue-collar (construction and trades job loss), and runaway illegal immigration.

Perhaps it is time to take off the rose-colored glasses and objectively assess our position after over fifty years of "free trade" agreements, rather than blindly continuing this folly. We need to become advocates for truly open markets and demand that our trading partners do the same. If we don't do this, any educational improvements we enjoy won't be nearly enough to overcome these economic barriers to progress.
-- Harry Hill

Your Mr. Biddle argues for the benefits of world trade agreements, and I have no trouble with that opinion. What he fails to define is the role of our "strong" unions in the destruction of domestic industries. I propose the following economic law -- the strongest the union, the faster the destruction of their industry.

For example:

1) automobile industry -- a very strong union which obtained back in the 1970s 49 days of paid holidays, health benefits for extended family members, and the highest hourly rate for unskilled workers in the world (unskilled because they work on automated machines);

2) electronic industry -- also a very strong union, so strong that televisions, radios, computers, cameras, telephones, etc., etc. come now exclusively from abroad;

3) textile industry -- a very strong union that first chased that industry from New England to the South and then from the South to Mexico, Bangladesh, Turkey, Spain, Guatemala, etc., etc. I forgot to mention the shoes.

In all this one should not forget the unions of government employees, for example those who sent the visa extensions to the 9/11 terrorists 6 months after their attack. And then there is the teacher unions who destroyed the best schooling system in the world to the point where many of our doctors, nurses, professors, scientists, writers, etc., come here from abroad, and about half the population is functionally illiterate. In a recent "proficiency" exam of our 8-graders here in Las Vegas they were given mathematical questions with 4 possible answers; three of those four were utterly beyond any possibility, so that an idiot could guess right just by inspection. A blind chicken would have guessed 25%; our "students" guessed 53%! Imagine that!

So they are twice as smart as the blind chicken!

It is unfortunate that such government "services" cannot physically be outsourced. It is also against the spirit and soul of this unique country to allow the government unions to act against their employees and to steal us blind -- us, the people of this free country!
-- Marc Jeric
Las Vegas, Nevada

"Many of these students will struggle to enter and then graduate from college or get into programs for high-skilled industrial positions such as machine tool manufacturing, one of the sectors benefiting from globalization. And ultimately, they will be left behind by a booming world economy."

You really can't be serious with this statement. Did you read what you wrote? Benefiting? There has been no sector harder hit than molds and machine tools. This ridiculous statement makes the rest of this article complete drivel.
-- Joe Kotvan, Pres.
Dragon Die Mold, Inc.
Warrenville, Illinois

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