Poor Man Survival
Self Reliance tools
for independent minded people…
ISSN 2161-5543
A Digest of
Urban Survival Resources
Democratic Policies, Such as NAFTA Equal More Layoffs
for US Workers
NAFTA has been a disaster for US workers
yet voters continue to support the democrats who pushed the Act through
Congress-Does that make Sense?
Since
the year 2000, the United States has lost five million manufacturing jobs even though our population
has grown substantially since that time. Manufacturing in America is in a
state of stunning decline, our economic infrastructure is being absolutely
gutted, and our formerly great manufacturing cities are in an advanced state of decay. We consume far
more wealth than we produce, and the only way that we are able to do this is by taking on massive amounts of debt. But is our
debt-based paper economy sustainable in the long run?
Back
in 1960, 24 percent of all American workers worked in manufacturing.
Today, that number has shriveled all the way down to just 8 percent. CNN
is calling it “the Great Shift”…
In
1960, about one in four American workers had a job in manufacturing. Today
fewer than one in 10 are employed in the sector, according to government data.
Call it the Great Shift. Workers
transitioned from the fields to the factories. Now they are moving from
factories to service counters and health care centers. The fastest growing jobs in America now are
nurses, personal care aides, cooks, waiters, retail salespersons and operations
managers.
No
wonder the middle class is shrinking so rapidly. There aren’t too many cooks,
waiters or retail salespersons that can support a middle class family.
Since
the turn of the century, we have lost more than 50,000 manufacturing
facilities. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of gleaming new factories have
been erected in places like China.
Does
anyone else see something wrong with this picture?
At
this point, the total number of government employees in the United States
exceeds the total number of manufacturing employees by almost 10 million…
Government
employees in the United States outnumber manufacturing employees by 9,932,000, according to data
released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Federal,
state and local government employed 22,213,000 people in August, while the
manufacturing sector employed 12,281,000.
The
BLS has published seasonally-adjusted month-by-month employment data for both
government and manufacturing going back to 1939. For half a century—from
January 1939 through July 1989—manufacturing employment always exceeded
government employment in the United States, according to these numbers.
You
might be thinking that government jobs are “good jobs”, but the truth is that
they don’t produce wealth. Government employees are really good at
pushing paper around and telling other people what to do, but in most instances
they don’t actually create anything except job strangling red tape.
In order to have a sustainable
economy, you have got to have people creating and producing things of
value. A debt-based paper economy may seem to work for a while, but
eventually the whole thing inevitably comes crashing down when faith in the
paper is lost.
Right now, the rest of the world
is willing to send us massive amounts of stuff that they produce for our
paper. So we keep producing more and more paper and we keep going into
more and more debt, but at some point the gig will be up.
If we want to be a wealthy nation
in the long-term, we have got to produce stuff. That is why the latest
news from Caterpillar is so depressing. In addition to the thousands of
layoffs that had been previously announced by the industrial machinery giant,
it appears that a fresh wave of layoffs has arrived…
Hundreds of mostly office
employees received layoff notices at one of the largest Caterpillar Inc.
facilities in the Peoria area this week, just as the company announced plans to
close overseas production plants and eliminate thousands more positions.
A total of 300 support and
management employees at Building AC and the Tech Center in Mossville this week
received job loss notifications that included severance packages, 60 days
notice and mandated Illinois Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act
letters.
During this election season, you
will hear many of our politicians talk about how good “free trade” is for the
global economy. But that is only true if the trade is balanced.
Unfortunately, we have been running a yearly trade deficit of between 400
billion dollars and 600 billion dollars for many years…
What you won’t hear is how
Pres. Bill Clinton sabotaged our workers with NAFTA or the North American Free
Trade Implementation Act in 1993 which effectively destroyed thousands of US
jobs. The goal of NAFTA was to eliminate barriers to trade and
investment between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The implementation of NAFTA on
January 1, 1994 brought the immediate elimination of tariffs on more
than one-half of Mexico's exports to the U.S. and more than one-third of U.S.
exports to Mexico. Within 10 years of the implementation of the agreement, all
U.S.-Mexico tariffs would be eliminated except for some U.S. agricultural
exports to Mexico that were to be phased out within 15 years.
NAFTA opponents – including labor, environmental,
consumer and religious groups – argued that NAFTA would launch a
race-to-the-bottom in wages, destroy hundreds of thousands of good U.S. jobs,
undermine democratic control of domestic policy-making and threaten health,
environmental and food safety standards.
NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, was created 20 years ago to expand trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Its secondary purpose was to make these countries more competitive in the global marketplace. It has been wildly successful in achieving this. NAFTA is now the largest free trade agreement in the world.
Why, then, is NAFTA so severely criticized? This success has come at a cost. One of the problems with NAFTA is that it's reduced U.S. jobs. A second disadvantage is that it has exploited Mexico's farmers and its environment.
Growth comes with costs,
and NAFTA was no exception. NAFTA is criticized for destroying half a
million American jobs and lowering U.S. wages. In addition, NAFTA
increases the U.S. trade deficit.
How did NAFTA contribute
to these problems? First, NAFTA cost more than half a million jobs, as
manufacturers moved to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs. The four
states that suffered the most were California, New York, Michigan and Texas
because they had had a high concentration of motor vehicles, textiles,
computers, and electrical appliances industries. Lower wages in Mexico meant
that workers in the remaining U.S. factories could not bargain for higher wages.
Companies could now threaten to move to Mexico if labor unions negotiated too
hard. Ford Motor and Nabisco recently
moved some of their operations in 2016, laying off US workers.
US firms what move
operations out of the country also pay not US taxes effectively shifting the
tax burden to what is left of the middle class and small business putting
everyone at a disadvantage while strangling growth and pushing the United
States to rank number 13 in the world in terms of entrepreneurialism [we used
to be number one].
Yours for better living,
Bruce ‘the Poor Man’
Arm Up System-Defense Without Regulation
PM’s Guide to Home Defense
It is a crazy world out there with plenty of violence and everyone knows you that under most circumstances, police usually arrive after the fact. Your rights to defend yourself are often under attack, even for non-lethal self-defense tools…Includes 2 books and 3 bonus CD ROMS
http://www.bonanza.com/listings/Guide-to-Home-Defense-Arm-Up-System-Defense-W-out-Regulation-Bonuses/370808566
PM’s Guide to Home Defense
It is a crazy world out there with plenty of violence and everyone knows you that under most circumstances, police usually arrive after the fact. Your rights to defend yourself are often under attack, even for non-lethal self-defense tools…Includes 2 books and 3 bonus CD ROMS
http://www.bonanza.com/listings/Guide-to-Home-Defense-Arm-Up-System-Defense-W-out-Regulation-Bonuses/370808566
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Additional
Resources
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The Prepper’s Blueprint: The Step-By-Step Guide To Help You Through Any Disaster
Prepper’s Home Defense: Security Strategies to Protect Your Family by Any Means Necessary
Contact! A Tactical Manual for Post Collapse Survival
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Survival Hacks From DIY Ready: Looking for some cool DIY projects
that can help you when SHTF? Wants to learn a new skill in the process? These
20 Diy Projects For Survival will have you prepared for anything and then some.
[Love Liberty? See How your
State is Doing Right Here Courtesy the CATO Inst.]
An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom
1 comment:
Do you think Democratic voters are smart enough to realize they're being duped? It's obvious to me they're pretty stupid as they keep voting for the same turds which keep like plantation slaves.
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